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writing for godot

BACK TO THE FUTURE: ORWELL'S 1984 IS HERE

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Written by Benjamin L. Palumbo   
Saturday, 14 January 2017 02:36

Thomas Jefferson wrote: "If a nation which expects to be ignorant and free....it expects what never was and never will be".

Since 1988, our ability as a nation to fend off ignorance has been in decline; lately, very rapid decline. What led to this? It was the 1987 decision of the Federal Communication Commission, led by its Reagan appointed Chairman, to end The Fairness Doctrine. This doctrine had required broadcasters to present both sides of political issues. The doctrine was definitively ended when Reagan vetoed legislation that would have enshrined it in law.

Following the demise of The Fairness Doctrine, conservative talk radio took off like a rocket. And, in 1989, in a malevolent coincidence, the most effective American propagandist in our history--Newt Gingrich--essentially became the de facto Republican Leader of the U.S. House by defeating the choice of the then Republican Leader, Bob Michel of Ill., for the position of Minority Whip. Gingrich understood the power and potential of talk radio, used it, and led his party to victory in the 1994 elections. He boasted in his 1995 swearing-in as Speaker that it was the first time talk radio hosts had been invited to attend that biennial ceremony. But Gingrich also knew that it was not enough to have the Rush Limbaughs and his ilk on his side. He had to discredit the objectivity of the traditional purveyors of news to the American public. He embarked on a vicious campaign whose essence is found in the old lawyer's rule: "When the law is against you, argue the facts. When the facts are against you, argue the law. When both are against you, call the other lawyer names." He developed a pejorative for the press and the TV networks: "liberal, elite media" designed to cast doubt on the objectivity of reporting. It has worked. Within a few months of assuming his role as Speaker, he announced the end of press conferences: he would communicate with the public not by facing an inquisitive press corps seeking information, but through his talk-radio team whose task was to brainwash, rather than inform the American public.

In the excellent novel, "All The Light We Cannot See", there is a quote from Joseph Goebblels, Hitler's Chief propagandist (perhaps Gingrich's inspiration?): "It would have been impossible for us to take power or to use it in the ways we have without the radio". Conservative talk radio in the US is pervasive, providing daily doses throughout the country of the propaganda spewed by the political far right. And Gingrich too has a disciple who follows that lawyer's rule: Donald Trump. First as a candidate and then as President-elect, he has displayed an obvious fear to face questions from reporters. This fear is clearly evident in his need to use vicious name calling to try to discredit the reporters who jobs require them to write the truth as best as it can be determined. But truth is a threat to Trump. And so he says with a smile: "I hate some of these people, I hate 'em" (but) "I would never kill them." As though that choice was his! How reassuring!  This from a man who is a flagrant liar, so much of a liar that he has sparked a discussion about when it is appropriate to describe his lies as lies; so much of a demagogue that many of his supporters have openly embraced the hatred he has for those whose constitutionally protected task is to keep us informed so that we can make the best judgment about the course our government is, or is not, taking. Trump's hatred was on full display during his press conference of January 11 when, after running out of evasions, he fell back on name calling. He definitely is skilled at that, which only proves that he is a coward.

Goebbels wrote; "Arguments must therefor be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to the emotions and instincts, not the intellect. Truth was unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics and psychology". It is not difficult to hear the echoes of that in Trump: He used this expression in a public speech in New Hampshire: "they can go f..k themselves". And in this in another: "knock the c..p out of them." Trump undoubtedly has taken Goebbels advice to heart. And now, to add to the importance that Goebbels ascribed to the control of what then was the new media--radio--we have Twitter and fake news, all mastered by Trump and his communications operations who use it to blare out an unending stream of falsehoods and personal attacks. Again Goebbels: "If you tell the same lie enough times people will believe; and the bigger the lie, the better".

One might ask: why is there so much right-wing talk radio and so little of the liberal variety? The answer is in the nature of broadcasting: it requires sponsors; sponsors come from the business community; businesses are not interested in sponsoring liberal points of view. Liberals seek government action to protect the environment, provide health care, enhance educational opportunity, protect the food and drug supply, ensure workers' safety, keep Wall Street and big banking from ripping off people. No, businesses do not want to sponsor talk radio which would advocate those kinds of threats to their sacred bottom-lines. They want just the opposite to be fed to the American public and they are more than willing to pay for it.

For decades America has been so propagandized that huge segments of the population are unable to ferret out the truth. We do not have a dumb population; we do have a  large segment of the population that is either uninformed or misinformed, and that is by design. It reminds one of these words from the excellent book, "The Boys In The Boat" which the author used to describe the Nazi's effort to put a kind welcoming face on the Germany that was hosting the 1936 Olympic Games while at the same time preparing for war and for the holocaust: "Joseph Goebbels had artfully accomplished what all good propagandists must: convincing the world that their version of reality was reasonable and their opponents version biased."

From the end of The Fairness Doctrine, through the rise of Gingrich's endless effort to discredit journalism, to Trump's non-stop lying, to loud exclamations that we are in a new era termed "post truth", we have come to the age described by Orwell in "1984", with our own Ministry of Truth: The Trump-Gingrich-Republican Party.

If we do not find a way out of this cacophony of lies, we will have failed to heed Jefferson's warning: we will become a nation that is indeed both ignorant and no longer free.

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