This post’s title says nothing new; it’s but a repeat of Republicans' chronic repetitions of reality molestation, which, while sickening, is also risible. Herr Goebbels’ Ministry of Propaganda had nothing on these guys, who, in turn, have conspicuously sat at the deformed foot and similarly disfigured mind of the failed literatus.
Nevertheless, this latest, run-of-the-mill Republican assault on reality is instructive and thus in need of further dissemination. The assault comes in video advertising form, which, says National Republican Congressional Campaign Chairman Tom Emmer, reveals that “Democrats' weak leadership and socialist agenda have led to chaos at home and abroad.”
Hence perhaps you would expect the NRCC ad to show Democrats’ chaotic, weak leadership. But you would be disappointed. Several of the ad’s clips instead show instances of chaos and leadership weakness that took place during our recent bondage under The Hapless Orange Reign. The chronologically confused video aired on Fox News, Newsmax, One America News Network and social media.
The Molotov cocktail clip is in fact from 2020; the red-smoke/fireworks segment is also from 2020; and the "Black Lives Matter” sign surrounded by flames is, as the Washington Post's Dave Weigel noted yesterday, from 2020 as well. CNN says it has "independently confirmed the 2020 context for the images of the Molotov cocktail toss and the smoke-and-fireworks scene.”
Naturally, an NRCC spokesman was “unapologetic” to CNN about the video's magical 2020-was-actually-2021 conversion, since, as everyone knows, the Democratic Party at large avidly supports Molotov-cocktail hurling and the like. Seeking promotion and neofascistic fame, the spokesman also aped Immanuel Kant’s adage that "from such crooked timber ... nothing entirely straight can be made” by adding that President Biden "actively encouraged the protests.”
I mean, why not? Who among the profoundly unsound minds of Fox News/OAN viewers and far-right social-media buffs would question that the sinister Joe Biden would actively encourage violent protests? When, that is, he is taking a restful break from hosting Satanic black masses in the service of cold pizza and pedophilia rings.
I wrote my dissertation in American political history in 2002. Its thesis was that American demagoguery, once practiced personally by Democrats and Republicans alike, has, since the advent of Goldwaterism, become a Republican partywide routine. Beginning in the mid-1960s and “New Right” '70s, I wrote, the GOP began speaking with one unified voice, uttering reams of bullshit aimed at the fleeceable masses. (My scribblings, in formal presentation, were a bit more sophisticated than that.)
In 2002, little could I have known, as they say, just how godawfully wretched the entire Republican Party would be by 2016-2021. In a mere 14 years, its demagogic bullshit would tighten and exponentially zoom into unmistakable Goebbelsesque territory. The transatlantic circle and historical arc are now complete.