and the shills who make their livings off the marks.
I love stories, but what I'm talking about are made-up narratives created to advance a political agenda by obscuring and replacing the truth. Often these narratives are born as basic lies--noun, verb, adjective--repeated over and over again until they become a story, then the story. They ravage the body politic like tumors growing and metastasizing.
Some are niche, like Pizzagate or "Hillary is sick and falling down." Some are all too familiar: Obama was not born in the U.S.! The election was stolen! Joe Biden is a dictator and a criminal mastermind! Trump is the greatest deal-maker in the history of the world! They're eating the pets!!
There are obviously too many of these weaponized narratives to count, much less list. Most never have gotten much traction in my neighborhood, but they are very popular in some places and they do get a lot of attention. Which is a big part of the point.
Just because my friends and I don't believe the firehose of nonsense, that doesn't mean we don't hear it or that the lies don't work. First, the narratives give true believers confirmation of what they already suspect or believe or want to believe. Second, there may be some people persuaded that the lie is true or possibly true, especially if they hear it often enough from sources they trust. Finally, for people not really paying attention or the people in my neighborhood (who, admittedly, are paying too close attention), listening to incessant lying that doesn't comport with the reality we're living is disgusting and extremely discouraging.
And that, too, is success. The lies work. And they work their very best when picked up and disseminated by media that does get traction in my neighborhood.
Whenever a Sunday show panel host asks an official to respond to a charge leveled in bad faith (aka "a lie")
"What do you say to that?"
or a news talker reports a claim without providing crucial context
or a reporter mindlessly assigns false equivalence to things that are anything but
or an interviewer fails to hold a liar to account by being unprepared or unwilling to ask the question again
So, are we headed for a recession?
The president is the best dealmaker I've seen in my lifetime.
We're going to have to leave it there and move on.
corporate media releases these poison narratives directly into the atmosphere and makes constructive communication impossible. They act as shills for the con. These narratives have changed the world, and whether we're talking about the liars who actually develop and deal the lies or the media who ropes the marks, they are killing us.
On March 15, against the orders of Judge James E. Boasberg, Chief Judge of the District Court of DC, the Trump regime took three planeloads of prisoners and smuggled them out of the country in the middle of the night, sending them to torture prison in El Salvador. (Here's a link to the timeline of proceedings in the case so far). The regime hit the ground lying, about the flights, about what they knew, and about what they could or were required to share with the Court, and most especially about the prisoners they had deported.
One of those prisoners, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, has become a victim of both the denial of due process and the general lawlessness of this administration, and of the lying they will do to divert attention and re-set the narrative. Almost immediately the MAGA regime started lying about Abrego Garcia. They lied on teevee. They lied in front of microphones. They lied in court.
On March 24, Abrego Garcia and members of his family filed a complaint before Judge Paula Xinis of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland seeking Abrego Garcia's return. The result was a messy back-and-forth with the Government's lawyers doing everything they could to stall and stonewall.
They lost, and the case ended up before the Supreme Court (you may have heard) which issued a messy "in part in part" ruling that directed the Government to "facilitate" Abrego Garcia's release from torture prison in El Salvador and return to the U.S. The Government continues to lie about the order when not ignoring it entirely. They lie to break reality, to break the world we see around us, to break us.
They lie because they have to. They don't exist separate from the lying. Abrego Garcia was a gang member. He was a terrorist. A human trafficker. He was in the custody of El Salvador and there's nothing the U.S. can do about it. A convicted criminal and bad father. They dug up old court records and characterized Abrego Garcia as a "wife beater." And the on and on. Now they're lying about something their own lawyers filed. This was yesterday. This was today.
Those are the official statements by the regime. Of course, the right-wing propaganda machine has been doing its part to promote and amplify the disinformation. Through outlets across platforms, they reinforce the multiverse of conflicting narratives: Kilmar Abrego was deported in "error." Then, "No error! No error!" We actually won the Supreme Court case 9-0! But, the courts have no jurisdiction over this! America is GREAT AGAIN! But we're powerless against El Salvador. Immigrants should come legally. Oh, you are legal? Not anymore! Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a bad guy. Democrats love terrorists.
They have not stopped lying and they will not stop. It's the way they reshape the world, and that's how they stay alive.
They will not stop. They can only be stopped.
You know what to do.
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