PROPAGANDA

"And this is how it works, chapter and verse.  The professional liar pipes up with a bald-faced lie.  Though it is quickly and easily disproven, other professional liars pipe up to say that if we ignore the fact that the liar is a lying, the liar raises a good point.  The liars take to the op-ed pages to note that the liar is just asking the question and now the question is out there.  And they will make damn sure the question is out there for as long as it takes to get a flock of morons and dunderheads to believe that there is a conspiracy to not answer the question, even though 'the question' was a lie to begin with and no less a lie through each of the various iterations meant to sanitize it enough for the public to forget that the whole thing was a fiction from the start.

That is how Whitewater worked.  This is how cattle futures worked.  This is how the worst human shitstains in America turned 'Vince Foster' into a talking point.  This is how stupid people came to believe that Barack Obama was secretly a Muslim.  This is why the first non-white president had to publicly release his birth certificate, and why there is no 'birth certificate' that will ever be considered - by a certain crowd that includes actual American congressional representatives - authentic enough to put 'the questions' to rest.  This is how it works.

It is, of course, propaganda.  It is intended as propaganda, it is invented as propaganda, it is promoted as propaganda.  Karl Rove did not care whether Hillary Clinton was in the hospital for a few days or a month; he did not care whether Hillary Clinton was wearing sunglasses meant for 'brain injury' or the same sunglasses she has been photographed wearing dozens of times before or since.  Rich Lowry does not care that Karl Rove was lying about both those things, and is eager to write a column suggesting that the question has been raised as to whether Rove's provably false statements are somehow true anyway.  The nice mainstream news outlet is happy to publish Rich Lowry raising the question, because being a nice mainstream news outlet means studiously avoiding critiques as to whether what you are publishing is in fact fraudulent, because it is naturally newsworthy that professional liars are asking the questions.

We continue to be a nation that deals out no punishment for being a professional liar.  On the contrary, we treat them very well, better than those that do not lie, in fact, because the liars are always sure to generate all-important buzz, and we give them columns and op-eds, and write columns and op-eds about them, and there is literally nothing they say that is so provably false as to finally discredit them as peddlers of falsehoods.  There can be no such thing as an informed populace if those that would inform them steadfastly insist that lying to them is just as good; the press is not truly free if it has been captured as a tool of propagandists, and willingly submits itself to the same.

This is how it works, and this is why we are now a nation that sees the ghosts of conspiracy in every corner.  This is why there is a Bundy ranch standoff, and why Benghazi! will get more hearings than all other attacks on American diplomatic outposts combined, and why climate change will continue to be disputed even as large parts of Antarctica cave off into the rising seas.  This is why we fought a war in Iraq, and why those that peddled it have faced no professional repercussions.  Because we continue to treat truth and ideologically laced falsehood with exactly equal merit, as if they are two equally worthy opponents for our attention and our respect, and govern ourselves with notions taken just as liberally from the falsehoods as from the facts."

Full article:  https://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/05/18/1299603/-How-Karl-Rove-Rich-Lowry-and-Politico-are-damaging-America