(Promoted by Colorado Pols)
In response to my recent post, revealing another instance where Rep. Mike Coffman appears to resist criticizing Donald Trump, I received this letter:
Dear BigMedia:
The following psychological profile excerpt is a nearly one-to-one match with the qualities/behaviors that Trump supporters find attractive, in their own words:
“[N]ever allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; 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.”
And the last bits — repetition of a big lie until enough people believe it — are not things Trump’s supporters would expressly agree with, but are near indisputable, given the well-established pattern of Trump making a false insinuation followed by his supporters adopting and propagating the falsehood as truth.
Now, there is already a well-developed narrative comparing Trump’s recent escalation of rhetoric to the template used by Hitler/Goebbels, etc. What I have noticed is that the comparisons depend upon the writer’s subjective opinion about how close a comparison between the two can be justified.
And perhaps a pundit has already made this connection (and you may already have guessed as much), but the excerpt above is from a report prepared by the Office of Strategic Services in late-1943/early-1944, entitled “A Psychological Analysis of Adolph Hitler. His Life and Legend”.
This sort of punch-line feels more compelling than the high-school-essay-type position, “I believe Trump is like Hitler because…”
Because this profile was a contemporary analysis of a living Hitler/enemy-of-America, it creates a brutally effective frame for understanding how/why Trump is building his support in the manner he has.
In other words, even if folks who are on the fence about Trump don’t trust any 2015-era critics making comparisons based on 60+ year-old history, they may be more persuaded when they recognize Trump in the words written by America’s best-and-brightest intelligence officers when America regarded this sort of leader as a mortal enemy.
Sincerely,
Anonymous
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The Big, Repeated Lie is and has been Republican/NeoCon strategy for years."Both sides do it" is the easy out for the media and too many Democrats. But this out is extremely destructive because it's the common assumption of nearly everyone who pays attention to politics at this point. And "both sides do it" means Republicans can lie and Democrats can lie and the media must remain objective and impartial throughout while treating their lies as something that might be true, cuz Librul Media.
And I'll agree both sides do it, and the "Fact Checkers" prove it.
Democrats lie like this:
But, she didn't say that, but people will put that in the lie category because of the article's goal of proving both sides do it.
A couple more:
Sheesh. Devastating. I'm so glad there are fact checkers. And we can all agree there are no major media types on the left who will repeat these dastardly lies day after day, hour after hour.
So, yes, Democrats lie. And so do Republicans, who say "Obama is ruining the country", "Obama hates America", "the left is determined to destroy America", "Bernie Sanders is a communist" (a favorite from Trump), and many, many more that are far more vicious and subversive, spoken on air within the talk radio fever swamp, on thousands of channels per day by hundreds of voices with heightened rage to millions of people whose news and views come only from that fever swamp where everyone agrees that the big lie is actually true.
All true and well said, Zap..It is still beyond my understanding how so many people can be so consumed with hate they will, quite willingly, hold out their hand so they can be led blindly into a world of lies and retribution…
Christians mostly, I'm guessing……
Did you see the article denverco posted? Fox News has been nurturing this scumbag Simmons for years, presenting him as an ex-CIA agent and "terrorism expert". This is where their "19 Islamic camps inside the US" rumor originated. Ken Buck used it as his source for Iranians attacking Julesburg, Colorado.
Trump used Simmons' claims to justify watching mosques and profiling Muslims.
Simmons was not any kind of expert.
He didn't work for the CIA.
He was just arrested and will be tried for fraud on the "stolen valor" clause.
Not shockingly, he also was a violent criminal who had access to guns despite prior felony convictions.
So some of this "Big Lie" repetition by the right wing could be avoided by their just performing due diligence as journalists – if anyone had bothered to check Simmons "credentials", he wouldn't have been allowed to make fools of every Fox News pundit including O'Reilly, Hannity, Cavuto, and many others.
Here's your dose of irony for the day: Simmons, quoted on Fox News:
heh heh….