Propaganda has as its purpose the creation of conditioned reflexes. If I say jump, you say how high. If I say hate, you hate. If I say love, you love. As Jacques Ellul pointed out, broadly speaking it is intended either to get you do something, or accept something. He called the former agitation propaganda, and the latter integration propaganda.
In Communist societies–Internationalistic Fascism–and in Nationalistic Fascist systems, you agitate against the status quo until you get your way; and then you tell everyone how wonderful and perfect and lovingly kind and well tempered, wise, and thoughtful the leaders are.
Our nation, and the world generally, has been exposed to effective propaganda for over a century. Many have been “taught” that wealth is theft, that stable moral systems are anachronistic, that government can play the role of ersatz parent and community, and that “rightists” lie.
Given this last theme, meme, it becomes easy to invoke the conditioned response of hate. The creation of on-demand hatred for any group whose existence is imcompatible with generalized tyranny and oppression of the society by an oligarchic elite is very valuable. For example, the Tea Party instantly, and with no evidence, became synonymous with racism. Racism is bad, therefore they are bad, therefore all correct thinking people will consider them bad, and hate them to the extent they want to consider themselves moral. The more hate they feel, the better they are as people and as group members.
The issue with the birth certificate–which does not seem to exist–is that to my mind it represents the triumph of a political discourse in which up is turned to down, right to wrong, and righteous indignation to vitriolic wickedness.
I used to get carded at bars. I had to provide my birth certificate to get that driver’s license. I have to show it every time I fly somewhere. I have to show it when I get pulled over by a cop. If I want to work for even a mediocre security company, I have to get finger printed, my record checked, references checked. To get hired anywhere you have to provide two forms of identification: normally a drivers license and a social security card.
Asking for verification of someone’s identity is, in short, not rare. And these routine investigations are a fraction of the scrutiny anyone who gets a security clearance faces. Investigators go back and interview your friends in high school–I know people who have gone through this process. They interview family members. They talk to employers. Nowadays, they would scrutinize your posting on the internet and twitter. They look at where you have traveled and when. For very sensitive positions, you get regular polygraphs.
Obama is in charge of all these people, and has access to things no single one of them–or very few of them–has access to in full. He is the head guy. He makes the decisions, in large measure.
Our Founding Fathers had a very simple reason for demanding the President be natural born: they had invested that position with a lot of power–power which has increased exponentially since their time–and it seemed that in a nation our size, it should not be overly challenging to find someone born here of American parents. Plainly, the concern was divided loyalties, like you might find, for example, in someone born in Kenya, with a Kenyan national father (and mother who would soon abandon American permanently).
When you are fighting a war–and we are in a war for our national soul on many levels–you do not win by letting your opponents dictate the time and place of battle. You win by boldness, creativity, and speed. You strike like lightning where they can’t find you or see you. A long, drawn-out battle is usually the sign of incompetence.
Traditional Liberals–Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill Liberals–are right. Our opponents–who can be equally well described as monarchists, since they want a return to an older way of living–are wrong. Why then have Liberals been losing for the better part of a century?
They are cowed by intellectual cupidity of the Leftists, who want to own all minds, all thoughts, all public speech, and who have developed effective tools for doing so.
They are afraid of being called names. They are afraid of public mockery. They believe, in short, that some part of the Leftists project must be worthy, and that these people cannot be as awful as they seem. Reality: they are. They are ruining our country and our world. They bring poverty, hate, discrimation, torture and murder wherever they go. They hoped openly for a civil war in Iraq, just so they could score political points. They wear T-shirts of a man who apparently got sexual excitement from murder (and of course rape), and who wanted to nuke New York and as much of the East Coast as he could. According to plausible accounts, the real reason Krushchev removed the missiles was that he was afraid the nuts running the place would use them, and start a war involving the Soviet Union.
What does the term Birther signify, in reality? Someone who is dissatisfied with a political establishment that is willing to open the vault to our national security apparatus without so much as a phone call to check references. We don’t have the faintest idea who Obama is, and the birth certificate is the clearest symbol of this. WE LITERALLY DON’T KNOW WHEN OR WHERE HE WAS BORN.
Republicans lost the budget battle, in my view. They lost because they were afraid of the political points the Democrats would score. How is it going to get easier in 2012? 2013? Hopefully we can put a Republican in the White House, but the propaganda machine will still be there. They will still be telling us about the starving little old ladies, and ignore how many more starving little old ladies there will be when we file national bankruptcy.
We have to tell the truth, tell it openly, and as fully as we can.
Here is what I think Donald Trump should do: offer a $10 million reward to anyone who can furnish an authenticatable Obama birth certificate. No takers? Try $20 million. $30 million. In my view, it doesnt’ exist, and never has. This does not prove he was born in Kenya, but it certainly means that he has no way of proving he was born here. It seems clear enough what the courts should do with that information. What they will do, of course, one can only guess.
Bottom line: what most Americans don’t realize is that they have been brainwashed into believing Obama was a credible candidate: that he was actually intelligent, actually principled, and actually capable of leading anyone anywhere. He is none of those things, and people have failed to realize it simply because THE MEDIA HAS COVERED FOR HIM.
Once people realize the extent of the cover-up, the extent of the failure in due diligence, they never go back to blind faith again, and that can only work to the benefit of those who are actually telling the truth, and to the detriment of the liars and partisan activists in disguise.