PAUL KRUGMAN: Sweet Little Lies

[kevinmc]

Four years into a war fought to eliminate a nonexistent threat, we all have renewed appreciation for the power of the Big Lie: people tend to believe false official claims about big issues, because they can’t picture their leaders being dishonest about such things.

But there’s another political lesson I don’t think has sunk in: the power of the Little Lie — the small accusation invented out of thin air, followed by another, and another, and another. Little Lies aren’t meant to have staying power. Instead, they create a sort of background hum, a sense that the person facing all these accusations must have done something wrong.

For a long time, basically from 9/11 until the last remnants of President Bush’s credibility drowned in New Orleans, the Bush administration was able to go big on its deceptions. Most people found it inconceivable that an American president would, for example, assert without evidence that Saddam and Al Qaeda were allies. Mr. Bush won the 2004 election because a quorum of voters still couldn’t believe he would grossly mislead them on matters of national security.

Before 9/11, however, the right-wing noise machine mainly relied on little lies. And now it has returned to its roots.

The Clinton years were a parade of fake scandals: Whitewater, Troopergate, Travelgate, Filegate, Christmas-card-gate. At the end, there were false claims that Clinton staff members trashed the White House on their way out...........

http://freedemocracy.blogspot.com/2007/04/paul-krugman-sweet-little-lies.html

[John Q. Citizen]

1. Well worth the read, thanks for posting it. n/t

[ninkasi]

2. Thanks, Krugman's always a good read

I don't think any conservative can speak without lying. It must be something programmed at birth. The right-wing lies concerning Bush's brand of destructive politics defies common sense, and reason.

[Ignacio Upton]

3. The crap they're pulling on Pelosi reminds me of Troopergate

and Travelgate, and all those other non-stories against the Clintons in the '90s. They're also trying the same shit with Harry Reid, with most of the false reports coming from the same person: John Solomon of the AP (and now, the Washington Post.)

[rwenos]

5. Yes, but even more . . .

. . . . it reminds me of the nasty shit they pulled on John McCain in South Carolina in the Republican primary there in 2000. I'm not defending McCain (he's a suckup to the RW, obviously), but that was Rove at his N A S T I E S T.

[TwilightGardener]

4. Excellent read--thanks for sharing! Krugman really puts it into words,

how so much of the media is complicit to the RW agenda.

[young_at_heart]

6. Lies and scandals......what does this say about them?

They seem to be fond of wearing the flag pin in the lapel.....I view this as a signal to be wary these days.

[petgoat]

7. Saddam and al Qaeda WERE allies.

Both were creations of the CIA.

[unblock]

8. that doesn't mean that they liked each other

[The Backlash Cometh]

9. Sometimes I think Krugman lives in my neighborhood.

Big lies, little lies. Some people are just willing to live a lie, rather than to face the truth of their own complicity.

[necso]

10. The constant

stream of unfounded neocon-attacks on their opponents (basically everyone who won't go along with whatever the neocons want, or who seeks the truth; the right way) isn't intended merely to weaken these opponents (and to make them "hear footsteps") -- it's intended to control/distract media/popular focus (both shortterm and over time; the collective attention-span tends to be short, and focus weak).

And it's just part of a much larger effort intended to distort people's perceptions (perspectives, knowledge, understandings, etc) and to sap their related abilities and skills more generally: to make them mistake baseless-assertions for evidentially-substantiated information (which is greatly assisted by many people's readiness to believe what pleases them, reinforces their beliefs, or makes them look good, etc; their unwillingness to admit error; their intellectual laziness; etc); to make confuse them good and evil, better and worse, forthright men and lying weasels (etc); to fill their heads with lies and nonsense, depriving them of any chance of constructing a framework of accurate, useful knowledge and understandings (with, in, context), and thereby fatally weakening their judgement; and to cloud the otherwise clear background, against which neocon crimes (great and small) would so vividly stand out. And these creatures are masters of such things (although principally through hirelings).

Heaven forfend that the people should ask: "What is the nature, the character, of creatures that act (continually, no less) in this way?"

And heaven forfend that the people should even have the reasoning powers to ask such a question -- or to ponder, perceive the nature of things.

Because if people could and did, then the neocons and the "conservative" movement that they have captured would be relegated for generations to the darkness where they belong.

And that would be bad for their owners.

[Uncle Joe]

11. I believe Paul Krugman to be the last journalist out there,

or at least, it seems like it, he calls the media on their B.S.

Thanks for the thread kevinmc

Kicked and recommended

[applegrove]

12. Excellent observations.

[katty]

13. love the Krugman-been observing since the start of W reign of terror