How do Pubbies get away with lying about health-care disapproval?

The BBQ Pit
41

Honestly…no.

Well, I read back through the thread. If country other then the United States, Canada, and Iraq is being invoked in this discussion… news to me.

If I may, what I’ve figured out is that a blunt direct statement with some minor element of support (provided one does not look too closely) is often accepted as fact, and then used to support numerous beliefs based on that fact.

Blunt direct statement: Iraq had WMDs and an aggressive program of research and production, making them a serious and increasing threat.

Supporting evidence: Iraq had indeed used chemical weapons against a civilian population (namely, the Kurds) in 1988.

A great deal of emotional investment went into the issue of invading Iraq and ending this claimed threat, and I can understand it. The U.S. had been recently attacked and a lot of its population was happy to strike back at somebody, helped along by a president with an agenda and some vague claims about yellowcake and “Chemical Ali” and such. Someone with such an emotional investment (i.e. a firm belief that the invasion was justified) is told that that original statement was untrue or grossly exaggerated, I can understand resistance.
The notion that Montreal “safely” hosted “the 9/11 perps” is also understandable as the basis for emotional investment. I don’t know what emotional investment (if any) Elvis has in this, but I can speculate: the U.S. stands alone, and even countries claiming to be close allies are working (wittingly or unwittingly) against U.S. interests; it’s inconceivable that terrorists plotting a major attack in the U.S. could, until the day of the attack, move freely within the U.S.
For this specific issue, the idea that socialized medicine would deprive citizens of control of their own health is a statement, comparable to “Iraq has WMDs” or “the 9/11 perps were safely based in Montreal” in that they should be fairly easy to prove or disprove, if one wants to invest the effort. Instead, these statements are not being explored by the people who’ve built whole attitudes based on them, and they have no incentive to do so. After all, what can they possibly gain?

So, yes, the Republicans can lie. The statements they make are eagerly embraced by people who are already inclined to dislike governments. The Republicans get away with it because they can, because the people who believe the lies resist being told otherwise, and the person making the challenge isn’t to argued with, but ridiculed and marginalized as much as possible. Hence teabaggers who chant slogans, and Elvis calling me “junior”. It’s not defending the lie; it simply seeks to avoid examination of the lie.

42

IOW, “Not yet and not ever”.

You’ve been dismissed.

43

Well, I guess being cryptic is a tactic, too. Just keeping saying “you don’t get it”, without ever saying what “it” is, and then declare victory.

If anyone else has an idea what Elvis’s point is, please explain to me if he won’t, because that “right country” thing kinda baffled me.

44

I remember it quite well, remember how hopping mad I was that it didn’t even get a hearing. Now, in the crystalline clarity of hindsight…it had no chance, no whatsoever, any effort expended would have been effort wasted. We just barely got this watered down piece of shit passed against the awesome power of Money.

I like to use nostalgic lefty slogans as a bit of fun, like “running dog jackals of Wall Street.” In this instance, it totally fits: it was the people against the money. That the people won anything at all is nearly a miracle. That’s the way it is, and that’s the way it will stay until we do something about it.

When the people lead, the leaders will follow.

45

Well, you might think so but, sadly, I don’t share your enthusiasm.

Came across this thru my subscription to Information Clearing House, here condensed because it will probably spoil your day, at least.

[spoiler]"What no one seemed to notice was the ever widening gap between the government and the people. And it became always wider…the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting, it provided an excuse not to think…for people who did not want to think anyway gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about…and kept us so busy with continuous changes and ‘crises’ and so fascinated…by the machinations of the ‘national enemies,’ without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us…

"Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’…must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing…Each act is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next.

"You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone…you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes.

"That’s the difficulty. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves, when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed.

“You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things your father…could never have imagined.”

Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free, The Germans, 1938-45 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955)[/spoiler]I like (well, hate) this cite which you will also find daily at ICH.

46

Bite me, Elvis.

47

Please take this to the back of the bus.