From the New York Times:
If the historical record runs counter to what powerful interests want you to believe, well, history will just have to be rewritten. And constant repetition, especially in captive media, keeps this imaginary history in circulation no matter how often it is shown to be false.
This is the Conservative way. After every Conservative debacle -- foreign or domestic, military or economic -- there is an brief period during which the story of that debacle is still molten and malleable. Without an agreed-upon fairy tale and a Liberal villain to blame, for a moment both the Beltway media and the Wingnut Hive Mind are in chaos. This is when the cogs and gears of the Mighty Wurlitzer are most in evidence: the interregnum during which you can actually watch the Right invent, test and discard various bullshit cover stories before settling on one that the Pig People will swallow:
- The Clinton's assassinated Vince Foster.
- Trayvon was a thug who had it coming.
- The ACA Website was Obama's Katrina.
- etc x 1 million
Of course, since it cost trillions of dollars and got thousands of Americans killed, George W. Bush's Iraqi Debacle required a series of series of fire-and-forget alibis --
Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden are in league together and just weeks away from leveling New York City with an A-bomb
-- each of which was utterly false --
The war will pay for itself, we will be greeted as liberators and we'll be home before Christmas.
-- each of which was embraced enthusiastically --
Dubya is the greatest Murrican preznit in history and Liberal Iraq war opponents are terrorist-loving surrender monkeys who hate Murrica. Also Murrica!
-- and then discarded unceremoniously once it was used up --
The Surge worked!
-- until, inevitably, the most transparently ridiculous placeholder of all was put in play --
Who the fuck are you calling "Republican"? I'm a Constitutional IndependentLibertarian Conservative Teabagger who has never even heard of George Bush.
-- long enough for a proper Liberal Villain could be framed for their disaster --
We won in Iraq until Obama stabbed us in the back and invented ISIS.
so that it can pass into the wingnut pantheon of perfidy where it will be remembered forever more as the Undisputed Truth...
...enabled every step along the way by our compliant Beltway media who are more than willing to hold out chair for the liars and lend their tattered credibility to the lies they tell.
Via Media Matters:
National Review's Lowry: Obama "Abandoned The War In Iraq." On the August 10 edition of NBC's Meet The Press, National Review editor Rich Lowry blamed President Obama for ISIS' uprising in Iraq and not leaving residual troops after the U.S. ended military action in the country. Lowry clamed "Obama never ended the war in Iraq as he said, he abandoned the war in Iraq." [NBC, Meet The Press, 8/10/14]
Weekly Standard's McCormack: Obama "Didn't Want To Leave Troops In Iraq." In an August 9 blog for the Weekly Standard, John McCormack argued that Obama wasn't successful at attaining a SOFA because he "wasn't seriously pushing for one":
National Review's Goldberg: "Obama Chose To Pull Troops Out Of Iraq As Quickly As Possible." National Review editor-at-large Jonah Goldberg accused Obama of presiding over the chaos in Iraq because of his decisions "directly or indirectly," which have negatively impacted the region...
Repetition is the key.
While the Left throws nickels around like manhole covers and watches one of its few, clear, national platforms slowly being gutted right before its eyes...
...the Right continues to be willing to spend whatever it takes to build the infrastructure and hire the armies necessary to buy, build, infiltrate or corrupt every major microphone in America in order to pound their square pegs into round holes on every issue that matters to them all day long, every day. for however long it takes to finally kill this country and build the unfettered capitalist theocracy of their dreams on its grave.
Crossposted at driftglass' blog
