By David Taub
The most insightful, and catastrophically, the most successful propogandist of the modern era, Nazi chief Heinrich Himmler, said, “If you yell a lie loud enough and long enough, some people will believe you.
Profoundly deplorable to millions, more than “some people” believed him. And some still do.
The conspiracy myth that the election of Joseph Biden as President was illegitimate, because it was stolen by Democrats, is proof positive of the verity of Himmler’s successful approach to brain washing.
Ex-POTUS, aided and abetted by hundreds of his cowardly cronies, sadly including a large number of Congressional members of the kidnapped Republican party, literally yelled and screamed this falsehood as his choir.
To Himmler’s and ex-POTUS’s credit, millions believed their lies. And as a result, and to the acute disruption to our democracy, hundreds of traitors invaded the U.S. Capitol, the shrine of our democracy. I call this disgusting mythology created by ex-POTUS The Big Lie, because it is.
In virtually all societies, “belief” is reality. Students of Anthropology 101 learn that this is the first principle of culture. Belief in common values, faith, and conviction are interchangeable.
The bottom line is this: true or not, beliefs held by sufficiently large segments of a society become that society’s “truth” and, consequently, its reality. For the United States, the mythology of Black inferiority (Eugenics) is vivid testimony of that socio-cultural concept. This false belief was so universally accepted that it even convinced many Black folk to believe themselves to be inferior to Whites.
Former Texas Republican Congressman Will Hurt recently advised his GOP colleagues about truth: “If the party wants a future, the elected officials, pundits and activists who claim to be its members must stop peddling conspiracy theories and drive out those who continue to do so. Republicans must be honest and do the right thing based on conservative values …”
I believe that the strength of our democracy relies, in part, on strong two-party politics. We benefit from a GOP committed to its conservative values of merit; core principles that provide balance to the political dynamics of our unique governmental environment. Woefully, we do not have such political ecology at present.
My understanding of real conservatism in socio-economic politics are values such as the following: strong economic policy as elucidated by Adam Smith’s fair market capitalism; small government as explicated by Ronald Reagan; belief in adherence to custom, convention, continuity and tradition as expounded by Edmund Burke; a strong personal moral code as praised by Mitt Romney; and a restrained tax policy as espoused by George Will.
No “real” conservative believes that today’s GOP reflects the values of a conservative party as thusly defined. Many of those who live their conservative principles believe it is ex-POTUS who is the RINO (Republican in Name Only); many believe that the GOP is no longer a political party but rather a cult of ex-POTUS.
Late in his life as a long-serving real conservative, Republican Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater observed: “A lot of so-called conservatives today don’t know what the word means.” Were he alive today, he would surely repeat himself.
Too many of today’s faux conservatives have removed reason and logic from public debate. Rather, they reduce constructive dialogue to pure emotional reaction, fanaticism, radical loyalties and crazy conspiratorial insanity such as QAnon and the Three Percenters.
Underlying this scheme of lies is a determined stratagem to polarize our Republic. Its purpose is to discredit facts and destroy the concept of truth to prevent a collective consensus on reality.
Regrettably, these lunatics have been fairly successful lately. What shall we do as a nation to eradicate this quasi-revolutionary sedition? The sage words of Simon and Garfunkel (1964) may guide us:
“… And in the naked light I saw, 10,000 people, maybe more. People talking without speaking. People hearing without listening. People writing songs that voices never share; No one dared Disturb the sound of silence. Fools” said I, “You do not know: Silence like a cancer grows. Hear my words that I might teach you! Take my arms that I might reach you! …”
Let us not be silent. We can no longer remain quiet, populating the sidelines of a false deceitful narrative.
I believe thusly: “If you yell the TRUTH loud enough and long enough, some people will believe you.”
And surely they will. We The People, WE must yell TRUTH loudly and eternally.
In this way, the horrid mythology of The Big Lie will die an ignominious, and long overdue, death. And in so doing, we will restore health and vitality to the cherished democracy of our treasured republic.
“Well, all I know is what I read in the newspapers.” – Will Rogers.
David M. Taub was Mayor of Beaufort from 1990 through 1999 and served as a Beaufort County Magistrate from 2010 to 2015. You can reach him at david.m.taub42@gmail.com.
