Comments on: And Trump continues to show how low he can go…. https://habitablezone.com/2016/02/19/and-trump-continues-to-show-how-low-he-can-go/ Fri, 10 Apr 2026 03:45:24 -0700 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: ER https://habitablezone.com/2016/02/19/and-trump-continues-to-show-how-low-he-can-go/#comment-35704 ER Sat, 20 Feb 2016 18:24:44 +0000 https://www.habitablezone.com/?p=55874#comment-35704 the Right is creating, and it is not only used to justify doctrinal positions, but to enforce ideological opinions and political action. Its basically half-truths and misinterpretations, exaggerations and even outright lies, carefully blended and retold over and over, with embellishments, so they have been repeated so often and for so long that they gradually become accepted as truth. You know, stuff like "the first thing Hitler did was to take away their guns". This stuff is broadcast continuously on the internet, and repeated on talk radio, disseminated on those viral emails you get from your wackofundo relatives, and even through official channels--like Benghazi, the global warming hoax and Obama's Kenyan birth, his phony college records, his Socialist beliefs and Muslim faith. Its all urban legend and conspiracy theory stuff. And it is fiercely defended by the True Believers. I was first exposed to that here on the Zone, right after I first posted, when I had the audacity to state that not only I was NOT spit on and NOT called "baby-killer" by the hippies after I came back from my military service, but that none of my fellow Vietnam vets were treated that way, either. In fact, I never heard of it ever happening to any Vet I knew, or any that they knew. I was essentially called a liar for not repeating and accepting the Party Line. What I remember about college was that the vets (and there were lots of them) proudly wore their old fatigues, that they looked great with their long hair, and many joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Oh sure, I don't doubt the spitting and baby-killer talk may have happened somewhere, sometime, to somebody, but it was nowhere as prevalent and as common as people now swear it is, as movies of the period portray it, as people now remember it, especially people who were not even alive when the war ended. Of course, the story has utility, and now it has legs, and no discussion or dramatic representation of the 60s is complete without its repetition, usually with a nod of sanctimonious outrage and self-righteous indignation to drive it home. Of course, when you actually question them, they never say it happened to them. It was always someone they knew, or someone had told it to them, or they saw it in the paper or on the news. Or in a movie or TV show. And of course, the new history comes in on the net, and in your email, always with an unspoken, "See, that's why we're right, and they're wrong, and anything we do to put them down is not only right, its necessary. There's the proof, there's the facts." After a while it becomes so woven into the mythology even people in public life can get away with repeating the lies, because everybody listening to them already is convinced they are true. It's one of the advantages of growing old. You start seeing things in their proper perspective--or how do they say it these days--<em>in context</em>. the Right is creating, and it is not only used to justify doctrinal positions, but to enforce ideological opinions and political action. Its basically half-truths and misinterpretations, exaggerations and even outright lies, carefully blended and retold over and over, with embellishments, so they have been repeated so often and for so long that they gradually become accepted as truth. You know, stuff like “the first thing Hitler did was to take away their guns”. This stuff is broadcast continuously on the internet, and repeated on talk radio, disseminated on those viral emails you get from your wackofundo relatives, and even through official channels–like Benghazi, the global warming hoax and Obama’s Kenyan birth, his phony college records, his Socialist beliefs and Muslim faith.

Its all urban legend and conspiracy theory stuff. And it is fiercely defended by the True Believers. I was first exposed to that here on the Zone, right after I first posted, when I had the audacity to state that not only I was NOT spit on and NOT called “baby-killer” by the hippies after I came back from my military service, but that none of my fellow Vietnam vets were treated that way, either. In fact, I never heard of it ever happening to any Vet I knew, or any that they knew. I was essentially called a liar for not repeating and accepting the Party Line. What I remember about college was that the vets (and there were lots of them) proudly wore their old fatigues, that they looked great with their long hair, and many joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

Oh sure, I don’t doubt the spitting and baby-killer talk may have happened somewhere, sometime, to somebody, but it was nowhere as prevalent and as common as people now swear it is, as movies of the period portray it, as people now remember it, especially people who were not even alive when the war ended.

Of course, the story has utility, and now it has legs, and no discussion or dramatic representation of the 60s is complete without its repetition, usually with a nod of sanctimonious outrage and self-righteous indignation to drive it home. Of course, when you actually question them, they never say it happened to them. It was always someone they knew, or someone had told it to them, or they saw it in the paper or on the news. Or in a movie or TV show.

And of course, the new history comes in on the net, and in your email, always with an unspoken, “See, that’s why we’re right, and they’re wrong, and anything we do to put them down is not only right, its necessary. There’s the proof, there’s the facts.” After a while it becomes so woven into the mythology even people in public life can get away with repeating the lies, because everybody listening to them already is convinced they are true.

It’s one of the advantages of growing old. You start seeing things in their proper perspective–or how do they say it these days–in context.

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