We'd better figure it out
By Thom Hartmann for the Independent
Media Institute
 |
| Nick Anderson |
Science, it turns out, is on his
side.
Not the science of elections: the
science of propaganda.
New findings from psychologists at
universities in California and Georgia and published in
the journal Cognitive Research show that the more often a statement —
regardless of its truthfulness — is repeated, the more emphatically it’s
believed.
The researchers noted:
“Repeated information is often perceived as more truthful than new information. This finding is known as the illusory truth effect, and it is typically thought to occur because repetition increases processing fluency. Because fluency and truth are frequently correlated in the real world, people learn to use processing fluency as a marker for truthfulness.”
While modern science is affirming
this truism, it’s been in use a long time. In the past century, for example,
President Franklin D. Roosevelt called out his day’s Republicans for using what
we today call the Big Lie around several issues. Running for re-election in 1944,
he said:
“The technique was all set out in
Hitler's book - and it was copied by the aggressors of Italy and Japan.
According to that technique, you should never use a small falsehood; always a
big one, for its very fantastic nature would make it more credible - if only
you keep repeating it over and over and over again.”
Back then Republicans were lying
that Democrats had caused the Republican Great Depression (as it was called
until the 1950s) and that FDR had “failed” to adequately prepare America for
war with Germany or Japan (while Republican after Republican took to the floor
of Congress to tell us, before
the War, that “we can do business with Hitler”).
Now Trump’s lies (like about the
election) are parroted daily by Republican politicians and usually echoed in
the media without push-back. After all, Trump reportedly
slept with a collection of Hitler’s speeches by his bedside: he would be fluent
in Hitler’s Big Lie strategy.
Besides the addition of Trump’s lies, Republican lies haven’t changed a lot since FDR’s era, although they’re more focused and now repeated daily by thousands of rightwing websites, bloggers, podcasts, Fox “News,” and talk radio shows.
Over the past 40 years, Republican
billionaires have built an extraordinary nationwide media propaganda machine.
Their goal was directed towards justifying tax cuts for the morbidly rich and
the deregulation of polluting industries, but now it’s been taken over by Trump
acolytes promoting, among other lies, the idea the Democrats torture children and drink their blood.
The “useful idiots” in this scheme
have been the American corporate and billionaire-owned media, who dutifully
echo or leave unchallenged the GOP’s regular lies.
One of the Republicans most
egregious lies — that America is evenly split
50/50 between Republicans and Democrats and on the issues of the day — was most
recently repeated during the last moments of Jake Tapper’s Sunday show on
CNN this past weekend. Without a single word of push-back from the shows host.
While the Senate may be split
50/50, Democrats in the Senate represent over 40 million more Americans than do
Republicans. And on issues like tax cuts for billionaires, the right to
unionize, access to Medicare/Medicaid, climate change, the right to abortion,
privatizing Social Security, drug prices, Medicaid expansion, and the minimum
wage Americans are overwhelmingly on the side of Democrats.
So how did so many Americans end
up believing the many lies that are daily pushed by the GOP?
In a word: repetition, just like
the science shows works. Here are a few of their greatest hits, with each
followed by my rebuttal:
*”Tax cuts produce prosperity.”
In a remarkable study published in
2020 by The London School of Economics looking at 18 wealthy OECD
countries over 50 years, the researchers discovered, unambiguously:
“We find that major reforms
reducing taxes on the rich lead to higher income inequality as measured by the
top 1% share of pre-tax national income. The effect remains stable in the
medium term. In contrast, such reforms do not have any significant effect on
economic growth and unemployment.”
In other words, tax cuts for the
rich make the rich richer and throw the nation into debt, but otherwise have no
measurable effect on the economy.
Ever since Reagan, Republicans
have been assuring us that if we just give more money to the “Job Creators,”
they’ll use it to open new factories and raise wages. In fact, the morbidly
rich simply put that extra money into their offshore accounts and money bins.
In fact, in the 40 years since
Reagan first started the practice of massive Republican tax cuts for the
richest Americans, there has been a $50 trillion transfer of wealth from America’s working class into the money bins of our morbidly rich.
The idea that tax cuts for the
rich and corporations would produce prosperity was a lie from the beginning and
still is, but Republicans are still repeating it after nearly 50 years of
disastrous experience with neoliberal Reaganomics.
*”Immigrants bring crime.”
And the statistics aren’t even
close. In a massive study funded by grants from the National Science Foundation
and the National Institute of Justice, published by the University of Wisconsin
at Madison, scientists discovered
American citizens are 200% to 400% more likely to commit violent felonies
against persons, drug crimes, and felony property crimes than immigrants,
regardless of their immigration status.
But that won’t stop rightwing
media from hyping every exception-to-the-rule when an immigrant is caught
committing a crime. Lies, after all, are the coin of their realm.
*”Increasing the minimum wage
worsens inflation.”
The minimum wage was established
in 1938 and has been raised 22 times. If there had ever been— in all that time
— even a single year when inflation increases could be tied to increases in the
minimum wage every Republican in America would have the year memorized.
“You don’t want what happened in
1958 to happen ever again!” they’d warn us while wagging fingers in our faces.
Except there is not even one single example of an increase in the minimum wage
increasing inflation, which is why they never cite a single statistic or year.
When researchers decided to
seriously dig into the topic, they found that a
massive 10% increase in the minimum wage may have as much as a .1% —
one-tenth-of-one-percent, or ten cents on a $100 product — impact on inflation,
but that’s never been recorded in American history. Wages simply aren’t that
large a part of the price of most goods and even most services.
*”Union bosses are bleeding
workers dry.”
This is a favorite of the
multi-billion-dollar union-busting industry to roll out in their mandatory
“reeducation” sessions with captive workers who are considering voting for
unionization. It’s a complete lie.
Unlike workers’ actual
bosses, whose compensation typically goes up with profits, union “bosses” are
simply employees of heavily regulated nonprofit organizations (unions) who work
on a salary. They earn just a small fraction of what the actual corporate
bosses take from the companies they’re trying to unionize.
When they’re successful, however,
union bosses do reduce corporate profits by forcing companies to give their
workers better pay and benefits. Which is why corporations are willing to pay
millions of dollars a day, in some cases, to bring in these high-powered law
firms to intimidate workers.
*”American elections are corrupt.”
This one depends on how you define
“corrupt.” If you mean that dead people are voting or people are voting
multiple times in multiple states, that’s so rare as to compete with the Loch
Ness Monster for headlines.
After all, with millions of
dollars and over a hundred lawyers and lawmakers, Republicans tried in 60
courtrooms (including the Supreme Court) to prove even a single case of
election fraud that may have affected the outcome of the 2020 election: they
failed every time.
On the other hand, if you define
“corrupt” as Republican elections officials purging millions of voters — most
people of color, students, city-dwellers, and the working poor — from the
voting rolls, then maybe there’s some truth to it. But that’s not the line
Republicans are selling.
*”Guns will keep your home safe.”
This is one of the deadliest lies
Republicans promote. A massive 2014 study published in The Annals of
Internal Medicine found that having a gun in the home doubles the risk of
residents of that home being victims of homicide and triples the risk of
successful suicide.
Nonetheless, the big gun
manufacturers and their Russian-supported NRA shower millions on Republican
politicians all across America, so now guns have become the top cause of death
among children here, something that’s never happened in any developed country,
anytime in history, anywhere else in the world.
America now has about 120 guns per
100 people, while in most other developed countries the ratio is around 20 guns
per 100 people. In many countries — Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, for example
— it’s fewer than 1 gun per 100 people.
We are awash in blood and gun
violence because of this Republican lie.
*”America is a Christian nation as
the Founders intended.”
This lie is vigorously promoted by
the Christian nationalist movement, led by multi-millionaire preachers and
televangelists who are not only profiting from it but also have acquired
considerable political power through it.
America, in fact, was the first
democracy in the world that was founded in an entirely and explicitly secular
fashion. The only prominent Founder who promoted the idea of America as a
Christian nation was “Give me liberty or give me death” Patrick Henry, who was
both Virginia’s largest slaveholder and refused to sign the Constitution when
it was finished in the fall of 1787.
Jefferson, Franklin, Rush,
Washington and numerous others among the Founders didn’t even consider
themselves Christians, and those who did — most notably John Adams and James
Madison — were outspoken about the dangers of mixing religion and politics.
President Madison’s first veto, in
fact, was to strike down a law that gave a DC church money to run a poorhouse;
he said in this veto message that it would strike a bad precedent for the
American government to give any money whatsoever to any church for a
function that government should run itself.
Madison, who was a regular
churchgoer (Jefferson attended, too, because until the Revolution the law in
Virginia required church membership and attendance as a prerequisite for
running for political office), was concerned that government money would
corrupt the religion he loved; Jefferson was worried that if “priests” ever
became politicians it would lead to the ruin of the republic.
The two debated the issue of which
was the greatest danger to America regularly: it turns out both were
right.
*”Global warming is junk science
and CO2 is good for plants so we need more of it.”
This is so facially absurd it
shouldn’t even require mentioning, but there is literally not a single elected
Republican at the federal level (at least that I know of) who will contradict
it.
Like with the gun industry, the
fossil fuel industry pays their politicians very well, and, since the Supreme
Court legalized political bribery with their Citizens United decision
and its predecessors, that money has worked to hold the GOP in the
blood-stained clutches of the industry.
And now these Republican lies
about climate change threaten all life on Earth.
*”Republicans favor democracy
around the world instead of dictatorships and are particularly tough on China.”
So much happened during the Trump
administration that Americans can be forgiven for forgetting that Trump, in
2019, promised Chinese President Xi that he wouldn’t object if Xi brutally
crushed the Hong Kong independence movement.
Trump was working on getting
Chinese patents for his daughter Ivanka’s fashion line and other Ivanka-branded
items (including coffins, voting machines, and almost any other category
available) so, as CNN reported on
October 4, 2019:
“The remarkable pledge to the
Chinese leader is a dramatic departure from decades of US support for human
rights in China and shows just how eager Trump is to strike a deal with
Beijing…”
Trump’s so-called “trade war” with
China was a joke; he imposed a few cosmetic tariffs that backfired and the
Chinese didn’t take seriously because they were done by executive order rather
than an act of Congress.
After hubby Jared got $2 billion
for selling America out to Saudi Arabia, Ivanka seems to have lost interest in
her business dealings in China. But in the meantime, the democracy movement in
Hong Kong was completely crushed and its advocates are now dead or in prison.
Every one of these lies, among
others, are vigorously promoted by GOP-aligned media.
Their constant repetition has led
average Republicans to fervently believe them, to the detriment of both the
United States and, particularly with climate change, the future of life on
Earth.
FDR was right to call out the
Republican Party for their Big Lie strategy back in the day. Tragically, he was
80 years too early for today’s Americans to realize the long, deep roots of the
modern GOP’s propaganda strategy.
Over the past 40 years, our media
has been largely complicit, echoing these Republican Big Lies. It’s well past
time for American media to take its responsibility to present the truth
seriously.
Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and
the author of The
Hidden History of Neoliberalism and more
than 30+ other books in
print. He is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute and his writings are archived at hartmannreport.com.
This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent
Media Institute.
