Journalist and author Jeff Greenfield has written, “(P)olitics is war, and in war, truth is the first casualty.” Given the state of politics today and the misinformation and disinformation that I see daily on television, hear on the radio and read in print I find Jeff Greenfield’s perspective to be spot on.
History is filled with names of those who used the BIG LIE to achieve their nefarious goals. “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” declared Nazi Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels. Goebbels recognized that “(T)ruth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy.”
Yes, that which is being reported as “news” today is in fact propaganda ginned up by the Left and their genuflecting sycophants which is all too often devoid of the truth. A perfect example of this is NBC’s Joe Scarborough who declared on his morning program: “Public defenders — in the federal courts down there in Texas — are reporting that children are being told and their parents are being told that they’re being taken off to the showers.” His allusion to Nazi gas chambers is despicable! Adding fire to this obscene remark he continued, “And they (the children) never return,” an outright lie. He ramped up his demagoguery further by charging that what is going on with immigration under President Trump “sounds like something we would be condemning coming out of North Korea.” Really? And many on the Left ate it up! Goebbels would undoubtedly be proud of you, Joe.
Joe is not wearing the brown shirt of the 1930’s Nazi storm troopers but as I see it the color of his pink shirt is slowly turning a dark shade of tan.
Then we have the darling of the intolerant loony Left, Democrat Congresswoman Maxine Waters. What is so disconcerting is the number of people who embrace her at times virulent rhetoric. Recently, the mouthy congresswoman cried out, “Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up and if you see anybody from (the Trump administration’s) Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.” Apparently addressing the President, she continued to her supporters cheers, “(Y)ou have members of your Cabinet that are being booed out of restaurants – who have protesters taking up at their house, crying out, ‘No peace, no sleep! No peace, no sleep!’” These along with a number of recent intimidating tactics by others upon those with whom these Leftists vehemently disagree are, as I see it, reminiscent of the black shirt tactics of the Fascists of the 1930s and 40s who back then cheered on Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.
At this time in our nation’s history we are facing perilous political times. There is an ongoing war of words. Words have meaning and lies and words that inflame can lead to consequences that can endanger our liberties. History is replete with examples of this.
Again, as Jeff Greenfield points out, “Nazi storm troopers Am I suggesting that those who perpetuate lies such as Joe Scarborough and others like Maxine Waters whose words promote or threaten violence be taken seriously? I do. And it needs to stop and civility in political discourse restored.
In the meantime, do I believe that the words and actions of those like Scarborough and Waters are reminiscent of those of the Nazis and Fascists of the mid twentieth century? Let me address that question this way, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck….well.
