The Big Lie(s) 2012

Yes, it does seem that the circus is coming back to town.  The GOP convention set to begin on Monday, to be greeted by a tropical storm [update: likely hurricane] with an embarrassingly Biblical name (but it's no real threat, says David Letterman, because David Akin says that no legitimate hurricane ever does real damage in Florida.)  Akin is himself gathering steam, money and support, the most vocal of which so far comes from Mike Huckabee.  His statement ends: "He made his mistake, but was man enough to admit it and apologize. I'm waiting for the apology from whoever the genius was on the high pedestals of our party who thought it wise to not only shoot our wounded, but run over him with tanks and trucks and then feed his body to the liberal wolves....Now is the time to focus on electing a conservative Senate Majority. And if the NRSC and RNC and the money-rich PACS won't help Todd Akin get us to the majority, then we'll do it without them."

Them's fighting words from the Rabid Right leader who is scheduled to speak at the GOPer convention.

Meanwhile some of the media dunderheads express disbelief that President Obama could be at least a little ahead in the polls when Americans say the country is on the wrong track.  (Morning Joe throws up a graphic that says 36% believe the U.S. is on the right track, and then he refers to "under a third of people" believe this, which certainly challenges my arithmetic.)  How could Obama survive that, they wonder.  Well, consider that there is something called Congress, dominated by GOPers who've made a mockery of it, and it is polling around 12% or even 10% approval.  Could that possibly have something to do with the feeling that the country is on the wrong track?  Huh??

There's a certain tension release to the humor but it's black humor, maybe gallows humor, because the situation is pretty grim.  Women in particular are expressing real distress and anger over the Akin-Ryan tyranny that threatens them.  And it was only a short step from criminalizing abortion and even some birth control to a candidate for sheriff who claimed he would have authority to kill doctors and women violating such laws.

It's crazy and it's not funny.  Even this premature glee by Democrats and tv commentators on the Missouri race--which Frank Rich agrees with me is not necessarily a foregone conclusion--when what the RomneyRyan campaign is actually doing, and how effective it might be, is being drowned out.  One of which is characteristically taking an old tendency to a classic extreme with the Big Lie.

The concept of The Big Lie has quite a history. Hitler ascribed it to Jews, Goebbels pinned it on the English, but it's become famous as a technique that Hitler and Goebbels employed in Germany. The U.S. Office of Strategic Services officially thought so, describing Hitler's core rules that included "people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it."

The Romney campaign itself as well as the Rovian money machine are beginning to spend their hundreds of millions on several Big Lies. Two stand out for being (1) factually disproven by neutral observers (2) repeated anyway, in campaign commercials and stump speeches.

Lie #1 is that it is Obama and not Romney-Ryan that is cutting Medicare.  The Obama cuts to Medicare costs do not cut benefits, now or in the future.  The RR plan shortens the life of Medicare even in the short run, and threatens its existence in their ten year plan. The Obama cuts to waste in the program will extend its life by eight years.  But since most people understand that the Ryan budget turns Medicare into a voucher program that will mean seniors won't be able to afford medical care, the Rove doctrine of attack your opponent's strengths is combined with the Big Lie. 

Lie #2--and the one that seems to have the most money behind it at the moment--is that the Obama administration has cut work requirements from welfare.  This is a complete lie, as every neutral observer and even some GOPers say.  But repeating it over and over can make it true--especially if its intended audience wants to believe it.

And that's the other key element of the Big Lie: it confirms an existing prejudice or worldview based on biased beliefs.  It's why it worked when applied to the Jews.  And it's why it may be working with the white (male) voters being targeted, because it is a barely coded correspondence: welfare recipients=black people and Latinos, but mostly black people.

Even that is a Big Lie, because most welfare recipients in the U.S. are white.  But it is a stereotype that a certain strain within the white population wants to embrace.  What makes it most toxic and disgusting this time is the implication that the first African American President is doing this.

The idea that the 2008 election proved that the U.S. truly has become post-racial was always dubious, and the years since then have proven this wishful thinking utterly false. Ta-Nehisi Coates writes about this in the Atlantic: "Barack Obama governs a nation enlightened enough to send an African American to the White House, but not enlightened enough to accept a black man as its president."

At least one observer believes this Big Lie may be working in the swing states, while everybody's attention is diverted elsewhere.  These Big Lies don't have to be motivating to everyone.  The Medicare lie is basically to muddy the waters and blunt the issue's effect on RomneyRyan.  So far the polls don't show this but they've just started to tell it.  The welfare lie is designed to increase RRs white male vote, to compensate for all the voters in other categories they are losing big time.

Nice white people don't want to hear that racism is a motivation for some voters, nor that nice white people like RomneyRyan might be using racism as they deny it, and accuse their accusers of it, and of fomenting hate.  But non-white people see it pretty clearly.  That could be why in the latest NBC poll, Romney Ryan is getting 0% of the African American vote.  That's way less than a third, ain't it, Joe?

This is where the Big Lie works best--to seemingly justify and further feed unacknowledged prejudices.  Those prejudices make it sound true even when everybody else agrees that it is not true.  We've seen this before.  The Big Lie works best when it exploits the unacknowledged and perhaps unconscious racism of nice people, of good Americans.