Disinformation is very powerful, Neo. Unfortunately, the Republicans have no talent or interest in it.
Disinformation is highly overrated.
Since 1968 it has secured a second term once and only 3 out of the last 10 elections. When you consider that Carter almost lost even with Nixon’s disgrace to bolster him…it leaves Clinton as the only successful democratic President since FDR (Truman barely won) and the highest vote percentage Clinton ever got was 43%
I suspect your perception of disinformation’s power is unduly influenced by the ‘infrastructure’ of this particular election.
Much of Obama’s appeal is the ‘change’ mantra and the prospect of finally getting the ‘monkey’ of white guilt off the public’s back.
But Obama is NOT a President ‘Palmer’ (the show 24, who projects great dignity, or Presidential gravitas) and on some level the public senses it. That is why despite his oratorical gifts, ‘he cannot close the deal’.
Palin is the public’s ‘safety’ valve. Simply because she’s a likable female who exudes confidence AND the ‘right’ kind of toughness.
What men have been waiting for (in this country) is an American ‘Margaret Thatcher’. A strong woman who likes men and can be depended upon when the tough decisions need to be made. One who won’t wimp out and if necessary, will send people to their death should principle and circumstance demand it.
The left senses this and that is why they are panicking. Their panic will increase when they realize they’ve grabbed a Grizzly Bear by the tail…
“In a fight, there’s no stopping a woman/man who speaks truth and keeps on a comin'”
In my office today some “character” (who is an age 63, professional engineer) was blathering about how Palin’s daughter was “both” the real mother of Palin’s latest infant child, and was illicitly pregnant again as well… It says two things, one about the ineptness, actually idiocy of this gentleman in terms of his being well informed, as well as his inability to question the most absurd sound bites; Secondly it is a commentary about the success of the left’s sleaze campaign with a large portion of the intellectually lazy public… Disinformation is indeed very powerful, fortunately, the Republicans have no talent or interest in it. Disinformation will prove to be a big time loser…
There should be an element of shame in telling a lie. Just what exactly has happened to the average democrat that seems devoid of any shame whatsoever in spewing one after another to get their way?
How shallow of a person do you have to be to enjoy an ill gotten victory as though it were achieved in an honest way.
I just don’t get these strange democrat hominids.
– a 44 yr. old who holds high approval ratings as Governor of a large state with massive energy reserves, having raised a family and become a mayor and chaired an energy commission, and from seemingly out of the blue, she is on the Ticket for 2cd chair. I think the Dems are seriously underestimating her, making her some kind of motherly token of pro-life with a pretty face. I for one would not want to tangle with her!
I liked Orr’s article, particularly in contrast to the other TNR titles listed. He does not seem to be an especial fan of hers, but he is respectful. “Words” people often do a poor job of evaluating “action” people. I admit that I am hopeful Gov Palin would be a good president – a doer, not a talker – but acknowledge that as a “words” person myself, I don’t have an intuitive ability to tell a good action person from a poor one. I can sense with my nose that Obama is an empty suit, that Biden is a blowhard, that McCain is not self-reflective. I can’t do that with Palin. I like what little I know.
As to disinformation, you’re all correct, as Tevye might say. There is a significant portion of the electorate that falls for ridiculous stuff, and managing intellectual fashion is something the Democrats have done well at. But their manipulable are not a majority of the electorate – there are also those who can be manipulated from the Republican side, and enough people who do at least some thinking on their own to keep the republic afloat. The estimate from the last election that the MSM can move the dial 10-15 points in an oversimplification. What they can do is move the dial up to 20 points over time on some issues. They put forward their opinions, remarkably similar to the Democrats’ opinions, and have some effect on each issue or popular opinion. Sometimes that effect is only a few points; on others, they slowly move the nation over time. But it is hard to see in advance which opinions they will be most successful at embedding. They don’t know themselves.
For example, they have been very unsuccessful at painting the military as uncontrolled yahoos, though they have tried. The people who believed that before still believe it, but no one else. The Democrats and MSM have been more successful at making President Bush unpopular.
A lot of people live in a world of disinformation. They prefer it to a reality that constantly fails to conform to their beliefs. They’re like conspiracy theorists, only mainstream.
Quote from an enlightened progressive at Democratic Underground: It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. RUMOR IS TRUTH. The modern laws of media hype and political warfare have a useful tenet: Repeat ANYTHING or raise false concern over ANYTHING and it is likely to be planted in the conscious/subconscious of many voters. If people start to think that there might be something fishy with Palin’s last kid (if hers), then that’s FINE. One more doubt (whether tied to reality or not) is another hesitation at the ballot box.
GET WITH THE PROGRAM PEOPLE. The “rising above it” bullshit has served us so well in the past, hasn’t it?
If you have problems with the story, then STFU and get out of the way of Dems who are engaged in MODERN POLITICAL WARFARE. Go tend your garden or some other pedestrian task, because the “concern trolls” are not helping “shape the message.”
The left is the politics of lenin, stalin, hitler, mao, castro, etc…
in this case that lovely person was tearing a page out of the SAs playbook from germany pre WWII.
But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success. – Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf
and
Success is the important thing. Propaganda is not a matter for average minds, but rather a matter for practitioners. It is not supposed to be lovely or theoretically correct. I do not care if I give wonderful, aesthetically elegant speeches, or speak so that women cry. The point of a political speech is to persuade people of what we think right. I speak differently in the provinces than I do in Berlin, and when I speak in Bayreuth, I say different things than I say in the Pharus Hall. That is a matter of practice, not of theory. We do not want to be a movement of a few straw brains, but rather a movement that can conquer the broad masses. Propaganda should be popular, not intellectually pleasing. It is not the task of propaganda to discover intellectual truths. – Joseph Goebbels
and just as they were willing to let the presumption of the end justify the actions of today…
from the daily kos: I am prepared to do whatever is necessary to destroy the Republican Party as it exists today as well as everything it stands for.
If health insurance for all, an end to the Iraq War, an end to torture and illegal wiretapping, and a sane energy policy can be obtained at the price of destroying one teenage girl, her family, and the surrendering our self-respect I see that as a cheap trade.
such pragmatism made it ok to starve millions if it gave them the outcome they wanted. they dont care that their methods short merit, and so will put up a leader who has little merit for the things they actually want for themselves.
another kos: This is about Power … How it is obtained – and how it is wielded in ways that affects all of us.
Are you telling me that you would not use character-destroying lies to ensure a war against Iran does not occur?
Are you telling me you would not spread lies about a man’s integrity, even if it defeated a candidate who take away the right to choose?
Are you telling me you would not destroy the love a family holds for one another, even if it meant letting someone who would destroy the constitution become president?
None of use would use these tactics in a perfect world. It is not a perfect world. It is a fallen world. We have to judge costs and benefits, not moral absolutes. I know this is the way to fanaticism and destruction – believe me I do. But, when we face opponents such as the ones we face … what else is there for us to do?
What choice do we have? When faced with monsters, we have to be monstrous ourselves.
this is pragmatism. this is what the russians turned into an art so as to divide and conquer. these people would be loyal fighters for freedom, except that they dont know that they are on the wrong side, the side against freedom.
in essence, the deeper the hole they see, the more they dig to get rid of the hole. which gets deeper, and so they dig faster.
Despite such fiascos, Soviet rulers have shown no disposition to abandon organized deception as an instrument of national policy. The practice is another legacy of Lenin embedded in Soviet custom. Just as Lenin admired terror, he extolled the ‘poisoned weapons’ of deceit, duplicity, and slander. He wrote:
‘The communists must be prepared to make every sacrifice and, if necessary, even resort to all sorts of cunning schemes and stratagems, to employ illegal methods, to evade and conceal the truth…
The practical part of communist policy is to incite one [enemy] against another…
We communists must use one country against another.. My words were calculated to evoke hatred, aversion, and contempt… not to convince but to break up the ranks of the opponent, not to correct an opponent’s mistake but to destroy him, to wipe his organization off the face of the earth. This formulation is indeed of such a nature as to evoke the worst thoughts, the worst suspicions about the opponent.’
i guess they are true to their roots, and yet are ignorant or delusional as to where those roots will eventually take them.
while this is directed towards soviet union, the tactics that are adopted are the same. one just needs to realize that without the word soviet, they are describing the missives of the leftists above.
The Russians define disinformation as ‘the dissemination of false and provocative information.’ As practised by the KGB, disinformation is far more complex than the definition implies. It entails the distribution of forged or fabricated documents, letters, manuscripts, and photographs; the propagation of misleading or malicious rumours and erroneous intelligence by agents; the duping of visitors to the Soviet Union; and physical acts committed for psychological effect. These techniques are used variously to influence policies of foreign governments, disrupt relations among other nations, undermine the confidence of foreign populations in their leaders and institutions, discredit individuals and groups opposed to Soviet policies, deceive foreigners about Soviet intentions and conditions within the Soviet Union, and, at times, simply to obscure depredations and blunders of the KGB itself.
you can see the campaigns in the begnining if you watch for them. when an incident happens, you will see that withing minutes to an hour or two (and sometimes before its known publicly), articles will appear in certain press or organizations.
they practice the concepts of having to make a statemetn as to issues that happen. even if those issues are not necessarily relevent, or even if they take the opposite position that their organization would be presumed to have gicven how they describe themselves.
a CLASSIC example is the quick and dirty rumor that palins child is actually her daughters. and tons of variations. the web makes it possible that you can search for the earliest mentions. and you can see that within hours of those key direction articles, bloggers, lesser papers, magazines, etc… all pick up the issue and promote it.
in this way, truth, as the first quote points out, becomes what can be said first, and said most often. in this way, people beleive that georgians moved old women and children into a church and killed them, and now ignore anything that would show that those first reports were false.
even worse, an attempt to correct the false inforation refresshes it in the mind and makes it more prevalent. so in essence the cure substantiates the poison more.
intellit.muskingum.edu/russia_folder/pcw_era/sect_08b.htm the Soviets view ideologies as pseudo-scientific constructs based on carefully selected portions of social theories, which the party elite uses in order to achieve its goals. Novikov states, “it should be stressed that an ideology is not a theory, but the party elite’s self-interest translated into theoretical terms.”
so abortion is a soft eugenics program, but is sold to us as ideologically or morally more correct than what religion tells us, and in so doing, reflects the party elites goal of a smaller population that is easier to control, and the removal of potential competition that would arize naturally if capitalism is allowed.
it has little to do with real morals, and a lot to do with what would give the elite more money, power, and control over those that they are working on.
“New thinking” was a mind-boggling innovation: a totally new, supra-Marxist Soviet ideology. Instead of relying solely on Marxist theory, the “new thinkers” used all of human thought as “raw material” for constructing a new Soviet ideology, including cherished Western concepts about human rights, democracy, and freedom of choice, as well as universal human concerns about the dangers of nuclear war and irreparable damage to the environment. The idea animating the “new thinkers” was to construct an ideology that would be more effective than communist ideology in enabling Soviet leaders to design manipulative propaganda campaigns that could be turned to Soviet advantage. As Yuri Krasin, then head of the CPSU Central Committee’s Institute of Social Sciences, told a group of fellow Marxists in 1988:
concern was voiced here that the raising of the issue of universal human values implied a rejection of the class-based approach. I am convinced this is not so: the Communists are assessing and analyzing these values from Marxist positions. …Do we really need to talk to people using political terminology only? After all, there are simple words clear to everyone, such as life, freedom, or justice. They reflect concepts which we interpret from our own Marxist perspective. (World Marxist Review, March 1988, p. 116)
The principles developed in the mid-1980s by the “new thinkers,” which they viewed from their own “Marxist perspective,” had enormous worldwide appeal. They included such concepts as the Common European Home, the primacy of universal human values, a non-offensive military doctrine, reasonable sufficiency in military armament, defense conversion, the demilitarization of international relations, a non-nuclear world, disarmament for development, ecological security, the democratization of international relations, the rule of law, a new international order, a new security system in Europe, a heightened role for the United Nations and other multilateral institutions, collective security, the settlement of regional conflicts, a balance of interests among states, the de-ideologization of state-to-state relations, eliminating the “enemy image” and moving to the notion of “partnership,” worldwide cooperation in the fight against terrorism and drugs, integrating the Soviet economy into the world economy, humanizing international relations, non-violence, the inadmissibility of using force or the threat of force to attain political objectives, respect for the principle of freedom of choice, respect for the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of other countries, and a comprehensive and all-embracing system of international security.
It would be hard to find a more appealing and hopeful set of principles for guiding international relations. But it is important to remember that these principles were embraced by the Soviets not for their intrinsic value as Westerners understand them, but in order to achieve traditional Soviet goals by conciliatory rather than confrontational, and political rather than military means. The Soviets have spoken quite openly about this. As senior Gorbachev adviser and prominent “new thinker” Vadim Zagladin stated in his 1989 book To Restructure and Humanize International Relations: “our course towards peace, towards peaceful coexistence and competition between the two systems does not at all imply abandonment of our revolutionary goals.” (p. 87)
and so comes the lefts political agenda translated into disinformation, slander, and other acts which all serve to rot out the insides. the fellow travelers dictate the items to repeat and push, through things like kos… they are agent provacatuers sowing agitprop…
and the useful idiots all in for the cause, copies it and disemmionates it and abused the social network which in the past was only for valid information (which meant that invalid info tended to fall off unless refresshed).
its real interesting to read archive documents and other things from places like the CPSU and then see them actually pan out over time. the classic exxample was the twists they took in light of hitler stalin pact. another is the campaign that aids was created in a US military hospital and released by accident (as wright still promotes this disinformation among africans in a version which pegs white men as delivering it to the black races). there are tons of them and its interesting if you know and listen to people arguing and not aware of where their ideas on a subject came from, how they are piping the party line and yet dont know that it was injected into them cleverly.
right now we have others feeding lines to some on top, who are then copied and thats how things get to be social truth now. through the manipulation of the network.
the literature on this stuff is HUGE… and i am in enough hot water for not condensing it to a few paragraphs… heck, the quotes are larger than a few paragraphs. and i would appreciate help in how i could cut this down, and still make the point about our beliefs…
its a perfect example of the disinformation in action between two people, and how one is ‘informed’.
=========
i will keep the posts short from now on and restrict their content to only main stream media information. the propaganda mechanisms are too strong to oppose. it only takes short lines to spout, but pages to refute, and since pages for refutation are not allowed, the propaganda wins, merit loses.
if i am to attempt to go against it, the posts get large since they have to teach a history that is completely unknown in the main stream or revisioned at best. [as the people discussing arent mentioning things that are salient – like the sources of the actions as political techniques and not natural behavior]
to create my own comments in my own blog and link to them causes the complainers to then complain that i am trying to hijack neos readers to my blog by constantly linking from her posts to my additions.
the disatisfied are only satisfied being disatisfied – those wishing to read other things by me can find my articles at blogwonks (i do publish other things in other places)
here is someone that used to read me at a site that i left for similar reasons in that there was no way to make the soundbites people happy at the same time make the more meaty facts people happy (as could be seen in that they start to argue with each other – with the sound bites people refusing to scroll past or refusing to not read lnog things, but instead washing them out so that they are never subjectted to them).
— I’m so glad I found your blog! I miss you on . Even though I didn’t always have the time or energy to read your long posts, I enjoyed having you around; you added a depth and perspective that is lacking over there now. I’m sorry you’re no longer part of . I don’t know what happened.
].
part of the problem is the subject matter. whole books have been written on just tiny facets of the subject. to reference any of it, is to ask for quotes larger than posts.
right now there is a disinformation campaign going on, as noted by the comments as to the content of rumors, and yet, discussing the whole left/socialist/communist thing is a no no.
how do i show that the left of today in this are doing exactly the same as the left of the past that created some of the most heinious crimes against mankind? that they are taking us in the same direction?
i cant if i cant share the facts. it then gets reduced to them yelling bush is a fascist, and me yelling they are communist. neither presents any facts, or understanding, as the crowd can only accept soundbites.
short “slides” on subjects that reflect the party lines they are comfortable with.
i am fron the old school. long attention spans, nuanced use of language, wide use of words, and open debate.
the new school has short attention spans, black and white use of language in short sound bites, a clipped vocabulary down to 5th grade, and closed debates where they generally affirm each other.
we dont even realize we are towing the party line by forbidding erudite discussion in which facts can get out.
refutation is always longer than assertion
there is a whole series of books “everything you know is wrong”, and each is near 400 pages, and they have many of them covering sex, drugs, terrorism, ancient civilizations, and more and more.
in the interest of brevity, i will no longer add in evidence to back my assertions, and everyone will just accept them as truth, so that evidence is no longer needed.
in this way, the words said most, loudest, and such become truth…
but isnt that the bad example i was writing about? that truth becomes reletive if we dont provide the stage for refutation?
meanwhile, i wanted to hear more of what people know about disinformation……
This sure looks like the work of the dastardly right-wing anti-gay attack machine, doesn’t it?
But look who’s really behind this.
In the Linux console, if you enter the following commands, you can learn the secrets of a political dirty trick. First, look up the host of ‘sarahpalingayrights.com’ to get the site’s IP address.
host sarahpalingayrights.com
sarahpalingayrights.com has address 74.208.74.232
Then use the same command to look up the domain name pointer of that IP address.
host 74.208.74.232
232.74.208.74.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer obamadefense.com
Well, well. “Obamadefense.com,” eh?
And what happens if you enter obamadefense.com on your browser’s address line?
Why, you’re redirected to none other than FightTheSmears.com, the official Barack Obama site that’s supposed to be defending him against smears.
Looks like they may have a second purpose: to generate a few smears of their own.
The Four Stages of Conservative Female Abuse
michellemalkin.com/2008/09/03/the-four-stages-of-conservative-female-abuse/
has some links to examples of how far they are going… and an interesting commentary (which is too long to comment on).
note the faked image of palin in a bikini toting a gun… notlarrysabato.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/09/01/sarahpalinbikinirifle.jpg
another interesting comment on the disinformation is from gateway pundit asking who is behind the smear/propaganda/disinforamtion campaign.
the last thing is the question of obamas birth certificate as also part of an assisted disinforamtion campaign. we still havent seen a valid one yet. the one from kos wasnt valid, and that was clear through detailed examination.
lots of disinformation…
and all of it intentional on one level or another.
SteveH:
“There should be an element of shame in telling a lie.”
Not if one believes that the world is at stake An interesting window into this radical worldview from an Ace of Spades HQ post (it’s a dkos commenter):
“If health insurance for all, an end to the Iraq War, an end to torture and illegal wiretapping, and a sane energy policy can be obtained at the price of destroying one teenage girl, her family, and the surrendering our self-respect I see that as a cheap trade.”
-im making it a personal mission to memorize all of Art’s posts
Wexler insinuates through smearing bucanan that palin is a crypto nazi. this disinformation being so bad, that fox discusses it newsbusters.org/static/2008/09/2008-09-02MSNBCMJ.wmv
then the obama camp picks it up and Mark Bubriski ligitimizes through the miami herald: Palin was a supporter of Pat Buchanan, a right-winger or as many Jews call him: a Nazi sympathizer.
with wexler, and bubriski, you should start seeing more of this spread out. today and yesterday it started… by the end of the week search bloggs and you will see it promoted.
its already spreading… you can find links to palin the book burner… its something that is diseminated by kos, who then the fellow travelers and useful idiots prmote.
Palin cleaned house of the last administration, and so the TIME mag article interviews the last mayor and they do a book burning hatchet job to paint her as soemthing else. meanwhile, how would someone get rid of a corrupt democratic system? leave the corrupt people who support other policies in place to oppose you?
the whole idea of TIME was to smear her as an evangelical… even though they give little support for it and get all their info from the opposition party. this when they point out that the hottest issue of her time was corruption and cronyism
the whole idea of kos is then to take that farther and paint her as a nazi, which everyone on the left knows is the same thing as an evangelical. given that cronyism and corruption was big, she got rid of people, and kos makes that out to be an abuse of power. after all, cleaning house and removing all the cronies sets back democratic/socialism/communism based social games by decades.
the kicker is that the quote that they give from 451 is one in which the book bujrning was by leftist collectivists, not the right.
We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal… A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man’s mind.
is this short enough?
What’s the story about the claim that the Palin’s are Secessionist?
here
messageboards.aol.com/aol/en_us/articles.php?boardId=566751&articleId=821427&func=6&channel=News+AOL+Managed&filterRead=false&filterHidden=true&filterUnhidden=false
the disinformation is expanded on to include a list of books and assert that she said “she would like to burn”…
as it spreads each add a bit of an embelishment, or some false fact. and so the disinformation becomes complete when there is so much of the same info over and over that someone on the left looks and thinks that that is the common knowlege and as such must all be correct.
they are manufacturing a world view by using a hairarchy and a social practice. look to the one above you, and copy them. so time writes one thing, kos irresponsibly expands it, and an army of others expands it firther.
and finally you create the false image of consensus… the concept that in the absence of truth, the weight of the number of adherents creates truth.
you can see that those that read from the third stepped on version never even question the validity of it at all.
“The Ministry of Propaganda and Elightenment wanted to ban THE SHINING ??”
another kos job on the same thing but in variation:
Time Magazine: Sarah Palin Book Burner (Updated)
dailykos.com/story/2008/9/2/112743/6059/507/583261
this one plays up the religion angle… and claims that huffington post has the smoking gun that her religion is the thing… they quote her stating a prayer, and asking the audience to pray… but the huffington post piece reveals that she was talking to the people in her church. duh. though this article has nothing as to book burning. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/02/palins-church-may-have-sh_n_123205.html
and all blog posts on the kos never question the validity of what htey are discussing (there is no one there like me to challenge the inforamtion. and at kos, if there was, i would be deleted)
you can find it now inserted here and there in comments on other articles.
So Palin’s a book-burning fascist, too. What a shock! Sure, PUMA, step right up to vote for this woman who wants to do away with every right feminists have worked for for decades, except the right of a woman to break glass ceilings in order to imprison all other women inside her rigid private morality. Smart thinking, PUMAs! Almost as smart as the Naderite idiots who elected Bush in ’00.
its amazing how it spreads
nyomythus,
The NYT blog has now retracted the claim about Gov. Palin being a secessionist. The NYT reporter who made the allegation still stands behind it. There hasn’t been time for a print retraction, if one is forthcoming (before mid Nov.).
It is amazing people are still ignorant enough to discount the disinformation success of Dan Rather, the January first election of Iraq, Diem’s assassination, WMDs, Valerie Plame, Ted Splash Kennedy, Supreme Court Justices, and numerous other examples of the success of disinformation.
Disinformation is very powerful, Neo. Unfortunately, the Republicans have no talent or interest in it.
Disinformation is highly overrated.
Since 1968 it has secured a second term once and only 3 out of the last 10 elections. When you consider that Carter almost lost even with Nixon’s disgrace to bolster him…it leaves Clinton as the only successful democratic President since FDR (Truman barely won) and the highest vote percentage Clinton ever got was 43%
I suspect your perception of disinformation’s power is unduly influenced by the ‘infrastructure’ of this particular election.
Much of Obama’s appeal is the ‘change’ mantra and the prospect of finally getting the ‘monkey’ of white guilt off the public’s back.
But Obama is NOT a President ‘Palmer’ (the show 24, who projects great dignity, or Presidential gravitas) and on some level the public senses it. That is why despite his oratorical gifts, ‘he cannot close the deal’.
Palin is the public’s ‘safety’ valve. Simply because she’s a likable female who exudes confidence AND the ‘right’ kind of toughness.
What men have been waiting for (in this country) is an American ‘Margaret Thatcher’. A strong woman who likes men and can be depended upon when the tough decisions need to be made. One who won’t wimp out and if necessary, will send people to their death should principle and circumstance demand it.
The left senses this and that is why they are panicking. Their panic will increase when they realize they’ve grabbed a Grizzly Bear by the tail…
“In a fight, there’s no stopping a woman/man who speaks truth and keeps on a comin'”
In my office today some “character” (who is an age 63, professional engineer) was blathering about how Palin’s daughter was “both” the real mother of Palin’s latest infant child, and was illicitly pregnant again as well… It says two things, one about the ineptness, actually idiocy of this gentleman in terms of his being well informed, as well as his inability to question the most absurd sound bites; Secondly it is a commentary about the success of the left’s sleaze campaign with a large portion of the intellectually lazy public… Disinformation is indeed very powerful, fortunately, the Republicans have no talent or interest in it. Disinformation will prove to be a big time loser…
There should be an element of shame in telling a lie. Just what exactly has happened to the average democrat that seems devoid of any shame whatsoever in spewing one after another to get their way?
How shallow of a person do you have to be to enjoy an ill gotten victory as though it were achieved in an honest way.
I just don’t get these strange democrat hominids.
– a 44 yr. old who holds high approval ratings as Governor of a large state with massive energy reserves, having raised a family and become a mayor and chaired an energy commission, and from seemingly out of the blue, she is on the Ticket for 2cd chair. I think the Dems are seriously underestimating her, making her some kind of motherly token of pro-life with a pretty face. I for one would not want to tangle with her!
I liked Orr’s article, particularly in contrast to the other TNR titles listed. He does not seem to be an especial fan of hers, but he is respectful. “Words” people often do a poor job of evaluating “action” people. I admit that I am hopeful Gov Palin would be a good president – a doer, not a talker – but acknowledge that as a “words” person myself, I don’t have an intuitive ability to tell a good action person from a poor one. I can sense with my nose that Obama is an empty suit, that Biden is a blowhard, that McCain is not self-reflective. I can’t do that with Palin. I like what little I know.
As to disinformation, you’re all correct, as Tevye might say. There is a significant portion of the electorate that falls for ridiculous stuff, and managing intellectual fashion is something the Democrats have done well at. But their manipulable are not a majority of the electorate – there are also those who can be manipulated from the Republican side, and enough people who do at least some thinking on their own to keep the republic afloat. The estimate from the last election that the MSM can move the dial 10-15 points in an oversimplification. What they can do is move the dial up to 20 points over time on some issues. They put forward their opinions, remarkably similar to the Democrats’ opinions, and have some effect on each issue or popular opinion. Sometimes that effect is only a few points; on others, they slowly move the nation over time. But it is hard to see in advance which opinions they will be most successful at embedding. They don’t know themselves.
For example, they have been very unsuccessful at painting the military as uncontrolled yahoos, though they have tried. The people who believed that before still believe it, but no one else. The Democrats and MSM have been more successful at making President Bush unpopular.
A lot of people live in a world of disinformation. They prefer it to a reality that constantly fails to conform to their beliefs. They’re like conspiracy theorists, only mainstream.
Quote from an enlightened progressive at Democratic Underground:
It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. RUMOR IS TRUTH. The modern laws of media hype and political warfare have a useful tenet: Repeat ANYTHING or raise false concern over ANYTHING and it is likely to be planted in the conscious/subconscious of many voters. If people start to think that there might be something fishy with Palin’s last kid (if hers), then that’s FINE. One more doubt (whether tied to reality or not) is another hesitation at the ballot box.
GET WITH THE PROGRAM PEOPLE. The “rising above it” bullshit has served us so well in the past, hasn’t it?
If you have problems with the story, then STFU and get out of the way of Dems who are engaged in MODERN POLITICAL WARFARE. Go tend your garden or some other pedestrian task, because the “concern trolls” are not helping “shape the message.”
The left is the politics of lenin, stalin, hitler, mao, castro, etc…
in this case that lovely person was tearing a page out of the SAs playbook from germany pre WWII.
But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success. – Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf
and
Success is the important thing. Propaganda is not a matter for average minds, but rather a matter for practitioners. It is not supposed to be lovely or theoretically correct. I do not care if I give wonderful, aesthetically elegant speeches, or speak so that women cry. The point of a political speech is to persuade people of what we think right. I speak differently in the provinces than I do in Berlin, and when I speak in Bayreuth, I say different things than I say in the Pharus Hall. That is a matter of practice, not of theory. We do not want to be a movement of a few straw brains, but rather a movement that can conquer the broad masses. Propaganda should be popular, not intellectually pleasing. It is not the task of propaganda to discover intellectual truths. – Joseph Goebbels
and just as they were willing to let the presumption of the end justify the actions of today…
from the daily kos:
I am prepared to do whatever is necessary to destroy the Republican Party as it exists today as well as everything it stands for.
If health insurance for all, an end to the Iraq War, an end to torture and illegal wiretapping, and a sane energy policy can be obtained at the price of destroying one teenage girl, her family, and the surrendering our self-respect I see that as a cheap trade.
such pragmatism made it ok to starve millions if it gave them the outcome they wanted. they dont care that their methods short merit, and so will put up a leader who has little merit for the things they actually want for themselves.
another kos:
This is about Power … How it is obtained – and how it is wielded in ways that affects all of us.
Are you telling me that you would not use character-destroying lies to ensure a war against Iran does not occur?
Are you telling me you would not spread lies about a man’s integrity, even if it defeated a candidate who take away the right to choose?
Are you telling me you would not destroy the love a family holds for one another, even if it meant letting someone who would destroy the constitution become president?
None of use would use these tactics in a perfect world. It is not a perfect world. It is a fallen world. We have to judge costs and benefits, not moral absolutes. I know this is the way to fanaticism and destruction – believe me I do. But, when we face opponents such as the ones we face … what else is there for us to do?
What choice do we have? When faced with monsters, we have to be monstrous ourselves.
this is pragmatism. this is what the russians turned into an art so as to divide and conquer. these people would be loyal fighters for freedom, except that they dont know that they are on the wrong side, the side against freedom.
in essence, the deeper the hole they see, the more they dig to get rid of the hole. which gets deeper, and so they dig faster.
Despite such fiascos, Soviet rulers have shown no disposition to abandon organized deception as an instrument of national policy. The practice is another legacy of Lenin embedded in Soviet custom. Just as Lenin admired terror, he extolled the ‘poisoned weapons’ of deceit, duplicity, and slander. He wrote:
‘The communists must be prepared to make every sacrifice and, if necessary, even resort to all sorts of cunning schemes and stratagems, to employ illegal methods, to evade and conceal the truth…
The practical part of communist policy is to incite one [enemy] against another…
We communists must use one country against another.. My words were calculated to evoke hatred, aversion, and contempt… not to convince but to break up the ranks of the opponent, not to correct an opponent’s mistake but to destroy him, to wipe his organization off the face of the earth. This formulation is indeed of such a nature as to evoke the worst thoughts, the worst suspicions about the opponent.’
i guess they are true to their roots, and yet are ignorant or delusional as to where those roots will eventually take them.
while this is directed towards soviet union, the tactics that are adopted are the same. one just needs to realize that without the word soviet, they are describing the missives of the leftists above.
The Russians define disinformation as ‘the dissemination of false and provocative information.’ As practised by the KGB, disinformation is far more complex than the definition implies. It entails the distribution of forged or fabricated documents, letters, manuscripts, and photographs; the propagation of misleading or malicious rumours and erroneous intelligence by agents; the duping of visitors to the Soviet Union; and physical acts committed for psychological effect. These techniques are used variously to influence policies of foreign governments, disrupt relations among other nations, undermine the confidence of foreign populations in their leaders and institutions, discredit individuals and groups opposed to Soviet policies, deceive foreigners about Soviet intentions and conditions within the Soviet Union, and, at times, simply to obscure depredations and blunders of the KGB itself.
you can see the campaigns in the begnining if you watch for them. when an incident happens, you will see that withing minutes to an hour or two (and sometimes before its known publicly), articles will appear in certain press or organizations.
they practice the concepts of having to make a statemetn as to issues that happen. even if those issues are not necessarily relevent, or even if they take the opposite position that their organization would be presumed to have gicven how they describe themselves.
a CLASSIC example is the quick and dirty rumor that palins child is actually her daughters. and tons of variations. the web makes it possible that you can search for the earliest mentions. and you can see that within hours of those key direction articles, bloggers, lesser papers, magazines, etc… all pick up the issue and promote it.
in this way, truth, as the first quote points out, becomes what can be said first, and said most often. in this way, people beleive that georgians moved old women and children into a church and killed them, and now ignore anything that would show that those first reports were false.
even worse, an attempt to correct the false inforation refresshes it in the mind and makes it more prevalent. so in essence the cure substantiates the poison more.
intellit.muskingum.edu/russia_folder/pcw_era/sect_08b.htm
the Soviets view ideologies as pseudo-scientific constructs based on carefully selected portions of social theories, which the party elite uses in order to achieve its goals. Novikov states, “it should be stressed that an ideology is not a theory, but the party elite’s self-interest translated into theoretical terms.”
so abortion is a soft eugenics program, but is sold to us as ideologically or morally more correct than what religion tells us, and in so doing, reflects the party elites goal of a smaller population that is easier to control, and the removal of potential competition that would arize naturally if capitalism is allowed.
it has little to do with real morals, and a lot to do with what would give the elite more money, power, and control over those that they are working on.
“New thinking” was a mind-boggling innovation: a totally new, supra-Marxist Soviet ideology. Instead of relying solely on Marxist theory, the “new thinkers” used all of human thought as “raw material” for constructing a new Soviet ideology, including cherished Western concepts about human rights, democracy, and freedom of choice, as well as universal human concerns about the dangers of nuclear war and irreparable damage to the environment. The idea animating the “new thinkers” was to construct an ideology that would be more effective than communist ideology in enabling Soviet leaders to design manipulative propaganda campaigns that could be turned to Soviet advantage. As Yuri Krasin, then head of the CPSU Central Committee’s Institute of Social Sciences, told a group of fellow Marxists in 1988:
concern was voiced here that the raising of the issue of universal human values implied a rejection of the class-based approach. I am convinced this is not so: the Communists are assessing and analyzing these values from Marxist positions. …Do we really need to talk to people using political terminology only? After all, there are simple words clear to everyone, such as life, freedom, or justice. They reflect concepts which we interpret from our own Marxist perspective. (World Marxist Review, March 1988, p. 116)
The principles developed in the mid-1980s by the “new thinkers,” which they viewed from their own “Marxist perspective,” had enormous worldwide appeal. They included such concepts as the Common European Home, the primacy of universal human values, a non-offensive military doctrine, reasonable sufficiency in military armament, defense conversion, the demilitarization of international relations, a non-nuclear world, disarmament for development, ecological security, the democratization of international relations, the rule of law, a new international order, a new security system in Europe, a heightened role for the United Nations and other multilateral institutions, collective security, the settlement of regional conflicts, a balance of interests among states, the de-ideologization of state-to-state relations, eliminating the “enemy image” and moving to the notion of “partnership,” worldwide cooperation in the fight against terrorism and drugs, integrating the Soviet economy into the world economy, humanizing international relations, non-violence, the inadmissibility of using force or the threat of force to attain political objectives, respect for the principle of freedom of choice, respect for the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of other countries, and a comprehensive and all-embracing system of international security.
It would be hard to find a more appealing and hopeful set of principles for guiding international relations. But it is important to remember that these principles were embraced by the Soviets not for their intrinsic value as Westerners understand them, but in order to achieve traditional Soviet goals by conciliatory rather than confrontational, and political rather than military means. The Soviets have spoken quite openly about this. As senior Gorbachev adviser and prominent “new thinker” Vadim Zagladin stated in his 1989 book To Restructure and Humanize International Relations: “our course towards peace, towards peaceful coexistence and competition between the two systems does not at all imply abandonment of our revolutionary goals.” (p. 87)
and so comes the lefts political agenda translated into disinformation, slander, and other acts which all serve to rot out the insides. the fellow travelers dictate the items to repeat and push, through things like kos… they are agent provacatuers sowing agitprop…
and the useful idiots all in for the cause, copies it and disemmionates it and abused the social network which in the past was only for valid information (which meant that invalid info tended to fall off unless refresshed).
its real interesting to read archive documents and other things from places like the CPSU and then see them actually pan out over time. the classic exxample was the twists they took in light of hitler stalin pact. another is the campaign that aids was created in a US military hospital and released by accident (as wright still promotes this disinformation among africans in a version which pegs white men as delivering it to the black races). there are tons of them and its interesting if you know and listen to people arguing and not aware of where their ideas on a subject came from, how they are piping the party line and yet dont know that it was injected into them cleverly.
right now we have others feeding lines to some on top, who are then copied and thats how things get to be social truth now. through the manipulation of the network.
the literature on this stuff is HUGE… and i am in enough hot water for not condensing it to a few paragraphs… heck, the quotes are larger than a few paragraphs. and i would appreciate help in how i could cut this down, and still make the point about our beliefs…
– maybe Art you should start your own blog
Cyber gang rape
the perfect example
The media scourge
http://www.bookwormroom.com/2008/09/02/the-media-scourge/
its a perfect example of the disinformation in action between two people, and how one is ‘informed’.
=========
i will keep the posts short from now on and restrict their content to only main stream media information. the propaganda mechanisms are too strong to oppose. it only takes short lines to spout, but pages to refute, and since pages for refutation are not allowed, the propaganda wins, merit loses.
if i am to attempt to go against it, the posts get large since they have to teach a history that is completely unknown in the main stream or revisioned at best. [as the people discussing arent mentioning things that are salient – like the sources of the actions as political techniques and not natural behavior]
to create my own comments in my own blog and link to them causes the complainers to then complain that i am trying to hijack neos readers to my blog by constantly linking from her posts to my additions.
the disatisfied are only satisfied being disatisfied – those wishing to read other things by me can find my articles at blogwonks (i do publish other things in other places)
here is someone that used to read me at a site that i left for similar reasons in that there was no way to make the soundbites people happy at the same time make the more meaty facts people happy (as could be seen in that they start to argue with each other – with the sound bites people refusing to scroll past or refusing to not read lnog things, but instead washing them out so that they are never subjectted to them).
— I’m so glad I found your blog! I miss you on . Even though I didn’t always have the time or energy to read your long posts, I enjoyed having you around; you added a depth and perspective that is lacking over there now. I’m sorry you’re no longer part of . I don’t know what happened.
].
part of the problem is the subject matter. whole books have been written on just tiny facets of the subject. to reference any of it, is to ask for quotes larger than posts.
right now there is a disinformation campaign going on, as noted by the comments as to the content of rumors, and yet, discussing the whole left/socialist/communist thing is a no no.
how do i show that the left of today in this are doing exactly the same as the left of the past that created some of the most heinious crimes against mankind? that they are taking us in the same direction?
i cant if i cant share the facts. it then gets reduced to them yelling bush is a fascist, and me yelling they are communist. neither presents any facts, or understanding, as the crowd can only accept soundbites.
short “slides” on subjects that reflect the party lines they are comfortable with.
i am fron the old school. long attention spans, nuanced use of language, wide use of words, and open debate.
the new school has short attention spans, black and white use of language in short sound bites, a clipped vocabulary down to 5th grade, and closed debates where they generally affirm each other.
we dont even realize we are towing the party line by forbidding erudite discussion in which facts can get out.
refutation is always longer than assertion
there is a whole series of books “everything you know is wrong”, and each is near 400 pages, and they have many of them covering sex, drugs, terrorism, ancient civilizations, and more and more.
in the interest of brevity, i will no longer add in evidence to back my assertions, and everyone will just accept them as truth, so that evidence is no longer needed.
in this way, the words said most, loudest, and such become truth…
but isnt that the bad example i was writing about? that truth becomes reletive if we dont provide the stage for refutation?
meanwhile, i wanted to hear more of what people know about disinformation……
Who’s Behind Anti-Palin Smear Site?
littlegreenfootballs.com/article/31096_Obama_Campaign_Behind_Anti-Palin_Smear_Site
[example omitted for space]
This sure looks like the work of the dastardly right-wing anti-gay attack machine, doesn’t it?
But look who’s really behind this.
In the Linux console, if you enter the following commands, you can learn the secrets of a political dirty trick. First, look up the host of ‘sarahpalingayrights.com’ to get the site’s IP address.
host sarahpalingayrights.com
sarahpalingayrights.com has address 74.208.74.232
Then use the same command to look up the domain name pointer of that IP address.
host 74.208.74.232
232.74.208.74.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer obamadefense.com
Well, well. “Obamadefense.com,” eh?
And what happens if you enter obamadefense.com on your browser’s address line?
Why, you’re redirected to none other than FightTheSmears.com, the official Barack Obama site that’s supposed to be defending him against smears.
Looks like they may have a second purpose: to generate a few smears of their own.
The Four Stages of Conservative Female Abuse
michellemalkin.com/2008/09/03/the-four-stages-of-conservative-female-abuse/
has some links to examples of how far they are going… and an interesting commentary (which is too long to comment on).
note the faked image of palin in a bikini toting a gun… notlarrysabato.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/09/01/sarahpalinbikinirifle.jpg
another interesting comment on the disinformation is from gateway pundit asking who is behind the smear/propaganda/disinforamtion campaign.
Figures… Obama Camp Behind Palin Smears
gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2008/09/figures-obama-camp-behind-palin-smears.html
i would summarize but that takes too much space.
the last thing is the question of obamas birth certificate as also part of an assisted disinforamtion campaign. we still havent seen a valid one yet. the one from kos wasnt valid, and that was clear through detailed examination.
lots of disinformation…
and all of it intentional on one level or another.
SteveH:
“There should be an element of shame in telling a lie.”
Not if one believes that the world is at stake An interesting window into this radical worldview from an Ace of Spades HQ post (it’s a dkos commenter):
“If health insurance for all, an end to the Iraq War, an end to torture and illegal wiretapping, and a sane energy policy can be obtained at the price of destroying one teenage girl, her family, and the surrendering our self-respect I see that as a cheap trade.”
Ace has more quotes and a link to even more at:
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/272255.php
-im making it a personal mission to memorize all of Art’s posts
Wexler insinuates through smearing bucanan that palin is a crypto nazi. this disinformation being so bad, that fox discusses it newsbusters.org/static/2008/09/2008-09-02MSNBCMJ.wmv
then the obama camp picks it up and Mark Bubriski ligitimizes through the miami herald: Palin was a supporter of Pat Buchanan, a right-winger or as many Jews call him: a Nazi sympathizer.
with wexler, and bubriski, you should start seeing more of this spread out. today and yesterday it started… by the end of the week search bloggs and you will see it promoted.
its already spreading… you can find links to palin the book burner… its something that is diseminated by kos, who then the fellow travelers and useful idiots prmote.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/9/2/111944/3298/497/583255
Palin cleaned house of the last administration, and so the TIME mag article interviews the last mayor and they do a book burning hatchet job to paint her as soemthing else. meanwhile, how would someone get rid of a corrupt democratic system? leave the corrupt people who support other policies in place to oppose you?
the whole idea of TIME was to smear her as an evangelical… even though they give little support for it and get all their info from the opposition party. this when they point out that the hottest issue of her time was corruption and cronyism
the whole idea of kos is then to take that farther and paint her as a nazi, which everyone on the left knows is the same thing as an evangelical. given that cronyism and corruption was big, she got rid of people, and kos makes that out to be an abuse of power. after all, cleaning house and removing all the cronies sets back democratic/socialism/communism based social games by decades.
the kicker is that the quote that they give from 451 is one in which the book bujrning was by leftist collectivists, not the right.
We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal… A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man’s mind.
is this short enough?
What’s the story about the claim that the Palin’s are Secessionist?
here
messageboards.aol.com/aol/en_us/articles.php?boardId=566751&articleId=821427&func=6&channel=News+AOL+Managed&filterRead=false&filterHidden=true&filterUnhidden=false
the disinformation is expanded on to include a list of books and assert that she said “she would like to burn”…
as it spreads each add a bit of an embelishment, or some false fact. and so the disinformation becomes complete when there is so much of the same info over and over that someone on the left looks and thinks that that is the common knowlege and as such must all be correct.
they are manufacturing a world view by using a hairarchy and a social practice. look to the one above you, and copy them. so time writes one thing, kos irresponsibly expands it, and an army of others expands it firther.
and finally you create the false image of consensus… the concept that in the absence of truth, the weight of the number of adherents creates truth.
you can see that those that read from the third stepped on version never even question the validity of it at all.
“The Ministry of Propaganda and Elightenment wanted to ban THE SHINING ??”
another kos job on the same thing but in variation:
Time Magazine: Sarah Palin Book Burner (Updated)
dailykos.com/story/2008/9/2/112743/6059/507/583261
this one plays up the religion angle… and claims that huffington post has the smoking gun that her religion is the thing… they quote her stating a prayer, and asking the audience to pray… but the huffington post piece reveals that she was talking to the people in her church. duh. though this article has nothing as to book burning. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/02/palins-church-may-have-sh_n_123205.html
and all blog posts on the kos never question the validity of what htey are discussing (there is no one there like me to challenge the inforamtion. and at kos, if there was, i would be deleted)
you can find it now inserted here and there in comments on other articles.
So Palin’s a book-burning fascist, too. What a shock! Sure, PUMA, step right up to vote for this woman who wants to do away with every right feminists have worked for for decades, except the right of a woman to break glass ceilings in order to imprison all other women inside her rigid private morality. Smart thinking, PUMAs! Almost as smart as the Naderite idiots who elected Bush in ’00.
its amazing how it spreads
nyomythus,
The NYT blog has now retracted the claim about Gov. Palin being a secessionist. The NYT reporter who made the allegation still stands behind it. There hasn’t been time for a print retraction, if one is forthcoming (before mid Nov.).
It is amazing people are still ignorant enough to discount the disinformation success of Dan Rather, the January first election of Iraq, Diem’s assassination, WMDs, Valerie Plame, Ted Splash Kennedy, Supreme Court Justices, and numerous other examples of the success of disinformation.
Thanks gcotharn
Is there a link to the retraction?
Well, here’s one source: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/02/alaska-party-official-says-palin-was-not-a-member/
Yes Art, I’ll give you credit that a rolling stone gathers no moss and you do make some good points in your commentary that personally I agree with