This quote from an article I read the other day caught my eye.
In health care debate, ‘real people’ stories clash with reality
“But Republicans have made publicizing horror stories from the health care reform an organized effort, instructing House members to collect, collate and disseminate constituent complaints broadly. Democrats say the aim is to poison the atmosphere, scare constituents away from the health care exchanges and sabotage the law’s implementation.”
This same process from the GOP began with Political Correctness in the 80’s just around the time that the FAIRNESS DOCTRINE in radio was dissolved and Rush Limbaugh went into national syndication. At the time a Right-wing lackey by the name of David Horowitz – funded by billionaire William Scaife – began to run a central processing center out of California bringing any and all exaggerated cases of Political Correctness in from teams of college campus young Republicans. Horowitz would edit them, exaggerate them further and send them out to talk radio hosts and the media. It soon became the most successful political ploy of any party in American history. Moving tens of millions of voters away from Liberal Nazism into the GOP fold. David Horowitz is still at it today.
Political Correctness, which mostly concerns “multiculturalism”, “women’s issues” and minorities wanting to be called what they want to be called rather than what Rush Limbaugh wants to call them, soon became defined as WORSE THAN Marxism, Nazism, Fascism, Communism and McCarthyism. Which they successfully managed to put on the backs of liberals and Democrats. It worked beyond their wildest dreams. It is more responsible for the move from Democrat to Independent (GOP LITE) than anything ever devised.
The point being do not sell the GOP short. They know the sloganeering business. Keep it simple for the simple minded and it’s a win win for them. They can indeed sloganeer affordable health care off the map.
Oh one last thing. I chose the graphic from many such Swastika / Hammer sickle renditions of PC because Leon Trotsky was the wrong one to chose for this. After all, Trotsky was thrown out of the Communist Party, was the good, free speech, reasonable, democratic socialist who fought the totalitarianism of Joesph Stalin and suggested that the world take up arms against German fascism before it was too late. Stalin had him assassinated in Mexico for being too reasonable.
For a good read on Trotsky in Mexico, Barbara Kingsolver – who wrote the classic POISONWOOD BIBLE (the story of a crazy preacher, his wife and three girls being plopped down in the middle the Congo in 1959) – try her 2009 book, THE LACUNA. And her new book FLIGHT BEHAVIOR about the politics of butterflies is also a treat.
I also want to apologize for implying I read books. I know how unpopular, elitist and haughty it is to most people when someone drops book reading into a conversation. Well other than books by Ann Coulter, Bill OReilly or JK Rowling.