Give me your tired, your poor, your white people
Nick Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.
Opinion
Trump just uttered the most despicable lie pushed by GOP in decades
Science, it turns out, explains why this works for him.
Not the science of elections: the science of propaganda.
New findings from psychologists at universities in California and Georgia 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 Republicans for using what we today call the Big Lie around several issues. Running for re-election in 1944, he said:
“The opposition in this year has already imported into this campaign a very interesting thing, because it is foreign. They have imported the propaganda technique invented by the dictators abroad. Remember, a number of years ago, there was a book, Mein Kampf, written by Hitler himself.
“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, immigrants, and what Elon Musk is up to) are parroted daily by Republican politicians and usually echoed in the media without pushback. 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 44 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 — is constantly repeated on the political Sunday shows. Always without a single word of pushback from the show’s host.
While the Senate may be more-or-less 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, free college, 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 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 Ronald 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 44 years since Reagan 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'
In fact, immigrants — legal and undocumented — are far less likely to commit crimes than American citizens. After all, who wants to either get deported or blow up their chances of becoming a citizen of the country they’ve taken such huge and often deadly chances to reach?
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 0.1% — 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 U.S. 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 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.
Donald Trump speaks at the NRA convention in 2019. (Screenshot/YouTube)
Nonetheless, the big gun manufacturers and their Russian-supported National Rifle Association 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 one 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 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 his 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 instead of dictatorships and are particularly tough on China'
So much happened during the last Trump administration that Americans can be forgiven for forgetting that Trump, in 2019, promised Chinese President Xi Jinping that he wouldn’t object if Xi brutally crushed the Hong Kong independence movement.
Trump was working on getting Chinese trademarks 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 thanks to Trump.
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.
And now Trump has rolled out a new Big Lie that the media is obediently repeating: surrendering Ukraine to Russia will bring about “peace.” It’s probably the most despicable lie he’s promoted in decades.
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.
This single Trump order is the one that should scare the hell out of you
Before continuing, I ask you have a look at this image I chose to accompany today’s piece:
When the White House isn’t trolling us with pictures of the America-attacking Trump posing as the Pope, it is busy hanging on its taxpayer-funded website lethal Executive Orders (EO) that could have very easily been written by Adolph Hitler in 1939.
Strengthening and unleashing …
Of course, the use of the word “unleashing” is very intentional here because the literal definition of the word is “to suddenly release a violent force that cannot be controlled.”
I am ashamed I didn't make more out of this EO when it was released, because for some reason I thought our mess of a media would have properly sounded the hair-raising alarms that fascism had officially parked itself just off our coast and was ready to be unleashed to storm ashore at any moment.
Because when, not if, that moment arrives, it might already be too late.
I warned you just days before the inauguration the America-attacking Trump was coming for our military, and then US ... It was not matter of if Trump would use our military and law enforcement officers against us, it was just a matter of when.
Well when looks to be in the next couple of months or so, because stuffed in this grotesque EO is this:
“Within 60 days of the date of this order, the Attorney General shall review all ongoing Federal consent decrees, out-of-court agreements, and post-judgment orders to which a State or local law enforcement agency is a party and modify, rescind, or move to conclude such measures that unduly impede the performance of law enforcement functions.”
Basically what this is saying through all the lawyered bulls--t is that the America-attacker is weaponizing the Justice Department — which by the way is supposed to work for US, not him — to infiltrate local law enforcement shops and give them all sorts of ungodly powers bestowed by King Crud to wreck the lives of whomever they want, whenever they want.
So the same party that falsely claims to believe in states’ rights where things like abortion and voting rights are concerned is now telling us loudly and clearly that when it comes to law and order the felon in the White House will make the first and final call.
In others words, you just can’t believe a word that comes out of their dirty mouths. They will do what they want when they want, and justify it as the king’s consent. If you don’t like it, you can either go to hell, or to jail.
As usual The Nation’s Elie Mystal lays out the ramifications of this better than just about anybody, so I am going to borrow from the tremendous piece he penned a week ago on this sinister EO to give you a graphic illustration of what we are literally staring down the barrel at in the coming days and weeks:
“I cannot help but understand this order through its potential impacts on my lived experience. Let’s say a cop pulls me over for driving-while-Black. After he hops out of his M1-Abrams tank, he uses a military grade stun-gun on me because I gave him the side-eye while searching for my vehicle registration. I “resist” by saying things such as “Ow!” or “What the hell!” and he proceeds to beat me to within an inch of my life.
“I’d want him to face criminal charges, but the prosecutor doesn’t want to take the risk. Even though I have a good case, they’re worried that if they press charges against the officer, they will face charges from the Department of Justice. Even if I can marshal considerable public pressure to get the prosecutor to file charges, the cop is now being defended, for free, by Brad Karp at Paul, Weiss or some other wealthy Biglaw attorney who has decided to be complicit with fascism. The trial proceeds, but let’s say I win (because corporate attorneys are not necessarily the best courtroom litigators). Even then, any damages I receive for being Tiananmen Square’d by the racist cop are covered by the government. The cop returns to the force soon after, because any accountability measure like a consent decree is also no longer available during the Trump administration.”
Go ahead, read that one again, because it is terrifying.
And if after reading that chilling, and all-too-realistic scenario again, you are thinking what I was: IF we are able to make it to 2028 and actually have something resembling a presidential election — something I am admittedly very dubious about — that a Democratic president will restore order. Well, Mystal very rightfully isn’t so sure:
“Like all of Trump’s executive orders, this one can be rescinded by the next president (if we are allowed to have one). But unlike some of the others, I don’t necessarily trust that a future Democratic president will go back and rescind this particular order. Democrats, at least in my lifetime, have been almost as deeply committed to brutal police practices as the Republicans. It would take a Democrat uniquely committed to criminal justice reform to go back in and take away the indemnification Trump has provided, and one can only imagine the stink the police unions will make if such a Democrat takes it away.”
And if you are saying, “not so fast our courts will have something to say about all this, I am saying I am very dubious on that front also, but more on that in a minute, because innocent people have been shipped away and/or locked up, and judges have already been arrested. There’s no reason we will not see an increase in tempo on both of these fronts, and very shortly.
On Wednesday, the great Thom Hartmann typed up a must-read titled “America’s Moral Collapse is Not Hypothetical — It’s on a Plane to Libya.”
Hartmann writes this:
“The news broke this week that the administration is preparing to send migrants to Libya on military flights as early as tomorrow. And this isn’t just another policy announcement from the daily outrage factory; it’s the latest escalation in a deliberate strategy of cruelty that began during Trump’s first term.”
I encourage you to read this piece in its entirety.
So …
… If you are rubbing your tired eyes and saying, “Hey, thanks for scaring the hell out of us, Earl, now what the hell can we do about it?” … I am saying, I’m not really sure, because I have been warning about this for years, but too many people were concerned about the price of eggs, and grousing about Joe Biden’s economy (which, by the way, was the strongest in the entire world) to pay much attention.
I will, however, offer this anecdote of hope. It’s a story I’ve told before and seems to resonate more than ever, even if I’m not sure it will make you (or me) feel any better.
In the moments after the polls closed here in Wisconsin in the 2022 midterms, I was at a gathering in Madison and our Democratic Party Chairman at the time, Ben Wikler, was hanging out, because the guy had the ability to be in 17 places at once.
I asked him what he thought were the most important races of the night.
He said without blinking, the governor races in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. The Blue Wall. At the time I took it to mean that if there was any Republican fuckery after the presidential election two years out, we'd have Democratic governors in place to stand as a bulwark against their crap.
Well, we all know how that went last November.
Democrat-backed Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Judge Susan Crawford gestures to supporters after voters elected her in April. REUTERS/Vincent Alban
That epic disappointment doesn’t change the fact that all three states still have Democratic governors and liberal Supreme Courts in place to push back against what is most assuredly coming with this latest EO.
Count on Trump to continue to test these battleground states with his fascist venom, because he knows if he can topple us, the rest of America will fall.
So now we see if the courts will hold here, and if the politicians and citizens in these battleground states and elsewhere will do whatever is necessary to hold the line, and protect our country from the anti-Democratic fascists who have announced they are coming for us.
No matter what, we are smack in the middle of a war for our survival, and even if too many of us can’t bring ourselves to actually say it, we damn well better start acting like it.
(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.)
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