“You know keepaway? One of the oldest games in humankind, where …”

A very clear outline of the GOP fall strategy is beginning to take shape:

Obama Goes on Meet the Press, Reality Fails to Intrude
John Hinderaker* / Power Line*
[* Seemingly, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch Industries.]

President Obama appeared on Meet the Press this morning with new host Chuck Todd.  The conversation focused primarily on ISIS, Iraq and Syria.  Much could be said about Obama’s comments, but what struck me most was how disassociated …

The ‘upholstered’ 1971 yearbook

Let me tell you a story and then we’ll talk about cults and reality:

Back when I was in high school, the Lucas Demons were playing in the opening rounds of the Kansas state A tournament in the recently-built and more-than-spacious Wilson High Scho0l gym (Wilson was AA. In Kansas at the time, it went all the way to AAAAA).

We B-teamers had concluded our season, but were along for the experience and cheering section. After all,  with classes 0f 13, 15, 22* and 11 in (respectively) the freshman, sophomore, junior and senior classes, you need all the cheering you can get. And in that AA gym, the A teams and their supporters looked sort of small.

[* Korean War baby boom]

And the team we were playing was the worst team in the league. And, as have all worst coaches in tournaments until the introduction of the shot clock — and still in those jurisdictions that haven’t so introduced — the team decided to play the “delay” game. Essentially a long, doomed game of keepaway.

You know keepaway? One of the oldest games in humankind, where two naked killer apes toss a valued object back and forth with one in the middle desperately trying to get the valued object. You can add as many other naked killer apes to the admixture as you like.

A form of “reverse keepaway” popular in political circles

Following the initial jump ball and tip-off (remember them?) in which the Lucas Demons scored a quick layup, the other team came out and passed the ball until the end of the quarter when they took a shot (that missed) and because they took it a little early (they weren’t, obviously, a great team to begin with), another layup by the Demons. 4-0. Ditto the next quarter and the next quarter and the final thrilling quarter. I think the final score was something awful like 12-0.

A generic team for a generic illustration to a generic story

It was excruciating, a painful game to watch, a literal PUNISHMENT meted out to the audience at the tournament. But there was nothing you could do except to watch the seconds tick painfully away, as it was tinker to evers to chance to evers to tinker to evers to chance in The World’s Most Boring Game of Keepaway throughout an excruciating 48 minutes of sheerest ennui.

They did not play basketball. Remain focused.

The strategy is to keep the game close enough that you can sink a couple quick baskets at the end and win against a superior team, even though the strategy almost never works, and has been banned in sane jurisdictions.

And that is what the GOPs are doing for this election, via their media machine.

IRS to BENGHAZI to WEAK PRESIDENT (AND tyrant, note).

With a draft pick to be named later.

And I can well understand why.

Running on “We were SOOOOO mad that we got our asses kicked in 2012 that we literally SHUT DOWN THE GOVERNMENT and didn’t allow anything to happen or anyone to be appointed in the most pathetic, disgraceful and DO NOTHING Congress in the history of the American Republic” would really suck.

Or, worse: “We not only attempted to pass law after law regulating women’s bodies, but we even held hearings all of which featured nearly exclusively MALE faces, but hey, little darlin’s, this notion of a “War on Women” is just RIDICULOUS!  Vote for our mostly White Male or Angry White Female faces!” 

Or,  “We are so ideologically opposed to the notion of mandatory universal health insurance that we SHUT DOWN THE GOVERNMENT after voting to overturn the ACA FIFTY TIMES! And even though the bipartisan Senate Immigration Reform bill has enough votes to pass in the House, the Speaker won’t let it come up for a vote. But vote for us anyway!”

Or: “We haven’t ever apologized for leading the charge to war, to Patriot Acts and mass surveillance, and still won’t even admit that we tortured people in a vile extra-legal prison called “Guantanimo Bay” along with SECRET PRISONS all over the world, but we’re the ones to save you from the Surveillance State that we’ve been creating since Richard Nixon. Vote for us!”

 Or: “America realizes that the Republican ‘War On Drugs’ has been a monumental failure, has been used to create a new ‘Jim Crow’ reality and was the groundwork for the NSA Surveillance State, but we’re the ones for liberty and free enterprise now that the whole mess begins to seem as insane as Prohibition ended up as being seen. But vote for us, because the lessons of history are lost on us.”

Or: “Our Minority Leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell just said, in essence, ‘You have the keys to the Cadillac, Koch Brothers and fellow investors. The GOP now belongs to you and your campaign contributions.

The ballots have arrived

“He was taped at the secret biannual Koch political retreats with some of the richest people in America and the top politicians in America at Dana Point, California on June 15th, 2014, but vote for us to help fix the terrible income inequality that is destroying the consumer economy of the United States — which has nearly always operated as the world’s first consumer economy.

“(Oh, and forget about the Executive of the Republican Governors’ Association saying more or less the same thing at the same get together.)”

Or: “Even though our policies created and have perpetuated the Great Recession, we have lifted not a finger to help the recovery and actively opposed the creation of a consumer rights bureau to police the ‘fine print’ outrages in financial documents that were a large part of the meltdown, but VOTE FOR US, because, by doing nothing, ONLY the top 5 percent have profited from the record stock market rise. Vote for us.

Or: “Vote for us, because you hate the Democrats and the ‘liberal media’ and because propaganda works and we haven’t fed you an actual news story or scandal in years, but rely instead on an almost cultlike insistence in denial of any reality that “OTHER” media represent, which is one of the warning signs of a cult, and engage in the character assassination that cults love so much.

From cultwatch’s “How Cults Work”

Those who control the information control the person. In a mind control cult any information from outside the cult is considered evil, especially if it is opposing the cult. Members are told not to read it or believe it. Only information supplied by the cult is true. One cult labels any information against it as “persecution” or “spiritual pornography”, another cult calls it “apostate literature” and will expel you from the group if you are caught with it. Cults train their members to instantly destroy any critical information given to them, and to not even entertain the thought that the information could be true.

Common sense tells us that a person who does not consider all information may make an unbalanced decision. Filtering the information available or trying to discredit it not on the basis of how true it is, but rather on the basis of how it supports the party line, is a common control method used throughout history.

Consider this bit of propaganda from Brewnt Bozell’s astroturf Media Research Center from 2012:

Click here to watch on YouTube.

Cultish? Naww.

Then again, my great-grandmother the tent preacher had a favorite aphorism:  The Truth can always stand questioning.

Now, they are going to do everything possible to change the subject from their record since (at least) 2012. And yet, as the Pat Roberts debacle of this week shows, the GOPs are running a NATIONAL campaign.

Which is why it’s so damned sad to be hit with this litany of “Woe is Me” and “The Sky is Falling” spam from Democratic Party leaders:

Dear [INSERT YOUR NAME HERE]

Believe me when I say this is important, Hart. Please take 30 seconds to read this:

We are getting badly outspent by the Kochs and their special interest allies right now. Without a big grassroots response, we’re in serious trouble.

The only way to stand up to the Kochs’ cash is for thousands of us to band together and fight back. I don’t need you to write a six-figure check — but I do need you to chip in $5 to help us in August.

If you’ve saved your payment information with ActBlue Express, your donation will go through immediately:

Express Donate: $5

Express Donate: $10

Express Donate: $25

Or donate another amount.

Republican voters — Tea Partiers in particular – are fired up for this election. They know what’s at stake, and they know that if they can catch us sleeping, they’ll win.

We can’t let that happen again. We need to run hard, every single day, from now until November 4th. And we count on supporters like you to help make that happen.

Please step up and donate $5, $10, or whatever makes sense. Without your support, this could be another bad November for Democrats.

Thank you.

Nancy

This is one of several alarmist, defeatist emails I’ve received from the various tentacles of the online money raising machine. And let me tell you, that is NO WAY to deal with esprit de corps. No: that’s idiotic.

Be scared on the one hand, and then be afraid on the other?

The Democrats STILL don’t “get” that messaging is not only critical, but NEEDS TO BE NATIONAL.

If you doubt me, take a look at the FEC records for the group “Mississippi Conservatives.” Funny, many, if not MOST of those “Conservatives” aren’t anywhere NEAR Mississippi.

click pic to enlarge. Click here for FEC page
Committee ID = C00554774
(click on ‘Itemized Individual Contributions’)

The days when the people of the various states get to decide elections without interference from outside “speech” drowning out their voices … IS OVER.

Let’s pass over the irony of these “states rights” millionaires utterly ignoring state lines in their zeal to “return power” to the states from the evil evil evil Federal Government.

The point is, if “money” is “speech” we can’t fight their “speech” with our “speech” but only with our actual SPEECH.

Propaganda works, of course, else, how is it that so many GOPs believe that Obama was born in Kenya (which STILL wouldn’t matter, BTW, since he came out of an American citizen’s birth canal), that there were WMDs in Iraq, that Saddam had something to do with 9-11, that Richard Nixon was misunderstood by the evil liberal press, and that the tooth fairy annually contests his supremacy with the Easter bunny in a gladiatorial chariot race?

Woof.

But the strategy of the GOP is as old as shysterism.

1. When the law is on your side, pound on the law.
2. When the facts are on your side, pound on the facts.
3. And when nothing is on your side, pound on the table.

Remember THIS “Freedom”?

The Democrats need to find a unified message, stop running from fake faux Fox fact faxes and flout facts for the foolish philandering farts.  (Any alliteration always accidental.)

Anyone willing to take the Pledge®?

And remember, in this great game of “keepaway,” the valued item being tossed around is the truth.

Woe betide us when we cease to question THAT.

Courage.
========================

 Mr. Williams has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog.