REPEAT SOMETHING OFTEN ENOUGH...

One of Adolph Hitler's Ministers of Propaganda operated under the theory that if you repeat something often enough it becomes the truth. It was called the Big Lie Theory. The old Soviet Union had similar theories about repeating lies over and over again. Anybody heard from the Third Reich or the Soviet Union lately? Not a peep, if you don't count Vladimir Putin's bitter nostalgia. And yet that theory on the nature of truth persists and we're bombarded with the same stories and ideas again and again, even though people know better and even if some of the ideas are really dumb. No matter how many times Sarah Palin is touted as a foreign policy expert because she can see Russia from her balcony, she's still a bonehead who's in way over her head.

By that reasoning, all of us here in New York City are skilled diplomats because the United Nations is located here and our population is so diversified. Listen to the many arguments you hear among New Yorkers and subtle tact isn't what first springs to mind. Brutal honesty is more like it, not exactly the makings of a Metternich, but a trait that serves us well when sorting out the volleys of propaganda that pass as news these days. In an era where the government decides (!) what are the talking points of the day and not the journalists, we wind up with every news outlet repeating the latest misleading phrases handed them by government press relations people.

Just the popularity of the phrase "talking points" is ridiculous and an indication that the media is just too damned lazy to work at their chosen craft. Take this whole banking mess, a debacle brought on by extreme greed and a complete lack of government oversight. The bankers and the government declared it a disaster and the media just took their word for it. Not one of them wondered out loud if it really isn't the national tragedy it is being made out to be. Rich people losing money? Who cares?

The dire threats to the great majority of Americans are so far only that, threats. Most Americans are not high end investors with millions tied up in the stocks in these banks, mortgage lenders and insurance companies that spent the past 8 unregulated years earnestly playing financial Russian roulette. Most people have more sense than that, especially having noticed that in the past year or so it seems a week doesn't pass without the announcement of one financial company or another screwing up big time.

The rush to hand over $700 billion of the tax payers' hard-earned to a bunch of greedy incompetents so they can blow it all over again is absurd. This all-out assault by Wall Street, the government and the media is designed to squash any opposition to the plan. Their only hope of success is to cause general panic and get the heist done swiftly, before we know what hit us. Then they call it "Saving America" or some variation of that theme and with those endlessly repeated phrases make it impossible to have any sane discussion of the issue. The old question-the-other-guy's-patriotism scam designed to keep our attention focused elsewhere.

It's like that whole American flag pin trivia fest, where it seemed like the entire country was worried about whether or not this candidate or that one was a "real American" over the issue of reducing our national symbol to a cheesy wardrobe accessory. That campaign was successful in stifling national debate over real issues, even though Mister Lapel Pin, Bush The Younger, has done more than any American in history to trash the American flag and the nation over which it flies. More valuable time during an important election campaign wasted over a trifle, just like now, with the magician distracting the audience's attention with some shiny object.

This week we have another oft-repeated distraction, the news that China has put men into orbit and they walked in space, the implication being that they are now a technological modern threat to the rest of the world. For what? Doing something America did forty-something years ago? Should we be alarmed if they develop Chinese disco music, or maybe a salad shooter, thus closing the technology gap to thirty-five years? The fact remains that China is still a mostly backward nation with millions of their people starving, and their powerful economy was built by a Western demand for cheap goods, not by anything the Chinese invented. The only threat they pose to us is if they stop making our iPods and Yankees caps.

Similarly, we're all supposed to fear the Muslim world because of small groups of fanatics. Last time anybody checked, the so-called "Muslim world" is so dirt poor and has their heads buried so far up their own asses, they are more of a threat to themselves than anyone else. The biggest, baddest army they had crumbled like stale crackers in the Iraqi war. The Muslim nations with the big oil have done nothing to build their nations, only took the trillions of petroleum dollars and had fun for the ruling aristocracy. They have built no new industries, have not improved their infrastructure, founded exactly zero world-class universities, invented nothing, can't even teach all their own people to read and still enslave half their own populations, the female half. And out of fear of these backwards jerk-offs we have to surrender our Bill of Rights? Says who? And for who's benefit? It sure isn't in our best interests.

So let the government and media spout off again and again on the same subjects and remember old William Shakespeare's take on that sort of thing: "They doth protest too much." The more often and louder something is repeated, the less valid it probably is. When they tell you what the latest "real" threat to America is, keep your hand on your wallet. The biggest threat to America is ourselves buying into the Big Lie theory of propaganda. Let the rich guys who blew all that dough find another patsy beside you and me, the taxpaying Americans who never did anything so idiotic as to ruin dozens of perfectly sound multi-billion dollar businesses. As we say in New York: Fuck 'em.