Trump’s voter-fraud commission wants to know voting history, party ID and address of every voter in the U.S.

Why we should be very afraid of Trump’s vote suppression commission

Remember the 2012 campaign? Long before Trump, a Romney campaign ad appeared where a filmed Obama speech was skillfully edited so that a key clause in one of his sentences was deliberately snipped out. It changed the entire meaning of the statement–180 out, so it sounded like he was saying something completely different.

When it was pointed out, and the full, unedited clip shown, the Romney campaign quickly backpedaled, claiming it was not a Romney ad, but produced by an independent 3rd party outside the campaign’s control. Maybe so, but when pressed on it, Romney went on to say that it was really irrelevant, because “that’s what Obama probably meant anyway.” The Right has decided that all’s fair if it stops the Liberals. And Romney was no Trump.

God, I hope you’re right. But I have a very bad feeling about this.

I just had our passports renewed. My Rubicon will be the day Saturday Night Live is unexpectedly taken off the air. When it goes, I’m outta here.

A fairly pure example of the struggle we’re in is shown by the ease with which the propagandists on the Right destroyed the utility of “fake news” to counter their lies, by simply coopting it as a label to dismiss any disagreeable news.

I believe pretty strongly that part of the stand we must take is to call out lies as lies, without weakening equivocation. The term “lie” is going to be a harder nut for the propagandists to crack, I hope.

If they do crack the nut, and “lie” comes to mean “true”, then they’ll have achieved the Platonic ideal of Orwellian.

I plan to resist.

When Trump says he only lost the popular vote because of illegal voters, what he’s doing is reassuring his followers WHY he lost the popular vote (which even he must concede to be true). The reassuring lie is that there are millions of Mexicans and other illegals out there who have been organized by the Democrats into a massive fraud. That preserves the phenomenon and fits in with the official version: The Trump voter is vast prepondereance of the American electorate, not just a minority clinging to a few rural enclaves in the flyover.

His followers are not about to be tempted into studying the American election infrastructure and all the reporting and scholarship that describes it. They are presented instead with a convenient alternate fact that quickly dismisses their initial fear (that Donald is not supported by the majority of Americans) and replaces it with the comforting fiction that crooked liberals are constantly working behind the scenes to allow evil to triumph. And anything we say to contradict this is easily dismissed as over-intellectualization and navel gazing, or skillful lies meant to cover up WHAT OBVIOUSLY MUST BE TRUE. For them, that’s the role of the mainstream media, to cover up the real truth they, the real Americans, know must be true. This is why they not only need a foreign “other”, they also need a domestic “traitor” who works with them. Communists and Jews.

Of course, not all Conservatives believe this. But the smart ones justify it because it strengthens those attitudes and conceptions that really matter, namely, that services, taxes and regulations must be cut because the well-to-do are so abused and the greedy workers need to be kicked in the ass so they’ll pull their own weight for a change.

You cannot reason with fascism. Facts won’t stop these people because they are being manipulated, and they respond, on a purely emotional level. And when you use emotional means to reach them, such as entertainment, particularly music and movies, TV, etc, not only can they be reached, but the fascists will quickly recognize what is going on.

That’s why they hate the Hollywood elite, and the music industry, and the literati, and in fact all the arts and artists and scriveners, the intellectuals and the journalists, the Kollege Perfessers. They don’t have anything like that, and they can’t compete with it. They have to discredit this “liberal-controlled” communications complex, and do their best to establish one of their own.

This is all right out of Goebbels.

It’s analogous to the “drizzle” technique in astrophotography: The more lies they tell, the higher resolution the truth we build up.

Keep lying, Donny. You’ll reach the threshold some day.

They are excuses for what they plan to do next. They are words they can utter to make themselves feel better when they systematically gut voting rights.

There was no voter fraud, and voter fraud isn’t a real issue.They know it is all a lie, and they know that you know it is a lie.

They plan to gut voting access and rights, they know that is a vile un-American thing to do, so the reason they tell the lie is that they are hoping that we will believe that THEY really believe it while they are doing it.

That way, when they gut voting rights, they can at least PRETEND they are doing it because they are concerned patriots… they have that lie they pretend to believe.

Same with the lies about Mexicans and muslims… when they start doing terrible things to the Mexicans, the fascists will swear they aren’t evil bigoted fascists that enjoy causing Mexicans to suffer… no, they will swear up and down they are doing these terrible things because they honestly believe the lies they are telling about mexicans.

These aren’t so much lies as they are announcements of what they plan to do next.

The more blatant the lie is, the more terrible and indefensible their plans are.

The real truth lies in their lies.

The unemployment numbers start going up like a rocket. An aircraft carrier is sunk in the South China Sea. The N Koreans invade one of their neighbors. Double digit inflation wracks the economy. Trade war breaks out in Asia. An airborne division is surrounded, surrenders and is captured in Syria. The stock market crashes again and this time it takes pension plans with it. Too big to fail banks start failing, bigly. Iran repudiates the treaty and announces their nuke program is back on line. The Pakis and the Indians start nuking it out. The Chamber of Commerce refuses his orders about bringing the jobs home. Fascist Putsches break out all over Europe. Medical costs and deaths go through the roof. Putin invades the Baltic States. The Wall fails to stop the illegals, and construction delays are pegged to contractor corruption–and illegal immigrant labor! What happens when the EPA is dismantled and the Coal Jobs STILL don’t come back? And what happens when there is blue water at the North Pole in mid-September? Mid-June? Sure, any of these things might happen under any administration, but if he can’t find a way to blame it on someone else do you think we will ever know the full story?

I could go on. When really bad things start happening, do you really think the lies will stop? Or if the truth gets out anyway, will it be blamed on so-called judges, the lying media, or Hillary and Obama? And is there any doubt the rest of the GOP will join in the lies to cover up their own collusion and complicity?

“He says what he means and he means what he says.” But mostly, he says what so many desperately want to hear.