Latest Breaking News
In reply to the discussion: Trump aide mocks election challenge [View all]Mc Mike
(9,106 posts)Last edited Sat Nov 26, 2016, 11:34 AM - Edit history (1)
This repug strategy described in the o.p. matches another one they pulled this election. On the stump, dRumpf and his flunky mouthpieces kept saying, over and over again, that there was top secret info in Sec Clinton's e-mail, which she endangered by using an unsecured server to transmit and store the info with. They kept screaming and crying that she had irresponsibly risked our enemies getting ahold of all these "important national security secrets".
Then, the orange nazi made a campaign pronouncement to mass media that he wanted our most dangerous foreign enemies to hack into her e-mail server, to get the "important national security secrets and publish them openly in media". Non-repug Americans were prompted to say "the 'loyal' opposition repug party candidate is calling for an enemy foreign government to commit felony crimes against the US."
Then, the dRumpf repugs screamed triumphantly "A HA! There ARE national security secrets! We just got you to admit it! Or else why are you criticizing our tubby bald hitler for making that statement?"
It was a supremely stupid and lying attempt to reframe the issue, but they got some mileage out of it anyway, and publicly acted like they won some great victory. Nobody who's dwells in reality believed there are national security-endangering secrets on that server that could be revealed, after the umpteen repug investigations came up empty. But based on constantly screaming lie number 1 for months, they pretended that everyone had acknowledged that lie was 'true'.
Then they had their candidate tell the world "Based on the idea that the first lie I've been repeatedly bellowing is true, I invite a dangerous threatening enemy government to commit felonies and espionage, and interfere in our nation's elections electronically, so they can prove my lie is 'true' and benefit me." And when they pretended that we were upset about that blatant, broadcast treason because we 'all believed lie # 1', they were stating lie # 2.
Of course, it's a given that the repugs are going to lie all the time, over and over again, and be given free reign to do so in repug-plutocrat-owned mass media (though the public 'owns' the public airwaves, that's why the FCC exists, and the public paid for all cable t.v. connectivity. I'm unsure, but I'd guess that the public paid to launch the satellites used by satellite t.v.). It's a given that the repugs are going to scream lies at the top of their lungs, all the time, because that's all they have to run on. Reality is very unfriendly to their policy positions and "oh so deeply held" belief systems.
And of course, it's also a given that their zealous brain damaged followers will uncritically accept and believe any and every one of the lies that their leaders state to demonize their political opposition. But what they did with this one-two lie punch was catch some people on our side flat-footed, or make those people have to engage in a long winded nuance filled discussion of the overall crazy lying situation they set up.
As soon as we do nuance, we tilt the playing field in their favor, because the media wants to limit statements by political people to very quick punchy soundbites spoken with righteous aggressive apparent conviction, whether they're true or not. (But we'll get to hear our area's NFL coach explain winning or losing strategies for 2 minutes on the same newscast. Go figure.)
It wasn't easy to address the false framing that mass media let the repugs make on the issue, in a simple way. A few people tried to do so by saying "If we are to accept the premise that you believe your lie number one is 'true', then having your candidate invite a dangerous enemy to get our top secrets is a treasonous action.", while avoiding a more direct and confrontational statement like "There are no secrets, and it's treasonous to ask the Russians to get our secrets with felony hacks and publish them, even though there are no secrets to get."
They used their framing to try to put us into a no-win situation, to pretend that we were so desperate to point out and hold onto the idea that drumpf was committing treason that we therefore "had to concede" that lie # 1 "was true". They pretended it could only be treasonous to ask the Russians to hack our elections if lie # 1 was true. Lie # 2 is that we conceded that we believed their first lie. Lie # 3 is that we "hypocritically contradicted ourselves", that there could be "no dRumpf treason" without lie # 2 being true.
The simplest way of stating and framing our case would be to say "They're horribly foul and treasonous liars, and they told 3 different lies on this issue. It's easy to prove what complete liars the repugs are."
----------------------------------
In the issue this o.p. is discussing, lie # 1 is that the elections are being rigged, against dRumpf. Lie # 2 is that any Dem partisan said that the elections are un-riggable, completely on the up and up, because we said his claims the elections were rigged against him were ridiculous obvious lies. Lie # 3 comes from that fanged repuglinazi scag, that "Dems are contradicting themselves", we said the elections couldn't possibly be rigged, now we lost and are saying they were rigged. "Dems are sore losers! They're laughably ridiculous!"
This triple lie follows the exact same pattern as the "unsecure server -- invitation to russian hack -- Dems contradict themselves and got caught lying" campaign moves by the repugs.
Political observers have often stated that dRumpf and repugs constantly engage in projection. When they scream accusations about some crime their enemies are pulling against the poor repugs, they're actually talking about some crime the repugs are themselves pulling against the same "enemies" they're accusing.
The nuanced position about his projective "rigged" accusations was best stated by Prez O: that dRumpf was behind in all the polls, that the election contest hadn't even been held yet, and he was crying that he already lost. And he predicted that it was by future cheating that the theft was going to happen, with no evidence to support his charge.
Media let him make that evidence free accusation. As long as media let him say those lies without pushback, it created a "he said she said" situation, where both versions of "reality" were "equally valid", the media reported the controversy to let the American people decide.
Mass media assisted dRumpf when they asked all the candidates whether they would peacefully accept the results, since orange hitler had continually mouthed off that there would be no peaceful transition of power if his deranged violent stupid armed alt-reality-dwelling alt-right followers were unhappy with the results. Which just meant they wouldn't accept any result that didn't show they won.
No election ever saw our media asking our politicians and their backers whether they'd abide by our Constitution and Democracy if they didn't like the results, but we got to see that this election.
And it was all based on the continually, repeatedly screamed lies of "everything's rigged against poor dRumpfenfuhrer!" that the repugs got free airtime to broadcast, over and over again, in mass media. Lies that were made up and stated with zero evidence offered (or asked) to substantiate them. Simplistic lies that could be stated loudly, aggressively, with fake angry conviction, in a 30 second sound byte, without nuance.
There was never any committment given by any candidate, never any question put to any candidate, that said "If it is blatantly obvious that there were illegalities committed against you, which result you winning the election but official pronouncements being made that you lost anyway, will you knuckle under and crawl away?" The question wasn't asked that way because corporate mass media doesn't do nuance, either.
The elections always could have been (and were) rigged by repugs against the American voting public, in a million ways. A ton of Dem activists and political reporters pointed out all those different ways -- VRA dismantled, dozens of new anti-voter laws made by repugs after the repugs gutted the VRA, Citi United's unleashing of unlimited dark money spending, multitudes of disenfranchisment actions against Dem voters by repug officials in charge of elections, slanted corporate media pushing pro-repug lies, FBI public interference in the election against Dems while FBI ignored blatant chargeable offenses committed by dRumpf, obviously mis-sampled slanted polls reported as gospel by media, US intel uncovering foreign hacks into state elections databases, repugs mobilizing a bunch of wingnuts to threaten anti-dRumpf voters at polling places, tons of vulnerabilities in the unsecured repug owned electronic means of recording the ballots, ETC -- all that rigging blatantly occurred while repugs screamed ridiculous and unsubstantiated accusations of it being rigged against them, pointing the accusation at their opponents, blowing a huge smokescreen to obscure all those well documented repug rigging moves. And a billion dollars of free media coverage was given to the repug while he and his flunkies screamed constantly, on the media, about how the media was rigging it against him.
The elections were rigged. People on our side always said it looked dangerously like they were being rigged. And we never said we'd accept the results no matter how much evidence existed that they were rigged to put the orange supremacist in charge of our country.
That pretty much answers orange hitler and his fanged sidekick's 3 lies on this issue.