Right-wing propaganda

The “Big Lie” at the core of Republicanism is that the stagnation, crippling debt, crumbling infrastructure, pervasive inequity, declining life expectancy and dwindling hope resulting from 40 years of trickle-down tax policy is always the fault of some powerless segment of the population, and that the remedy is always a combination of punishing those people, reducing Americans’ mutual support (called “communism”) and mutual defenses against economic predators (called “burdensome regulation”), and more deficit-financed tax cuts for the wealthy (called “middle-class tax cuts”).

For the past few years the bogeyman has been immigrants and refugees, despite steadily declining illegal immigration. Lately, as more Americans begin to realize the “immigration crisis” is fictitious and are appalled at the atrocities perpetrated in our name, the GOP propaganda apparatus is floating the idea that the new culprit could be women who don’t know their (subservient) place. If this ploy could be fine-tuned to apply only to non-white women, it might have a good chance of gaining traction. I don’t think it’s mere coincidence that this change of tack by the reactionary propaganda apparatus is occurring at the same time women are energizing the Democratic Party.

Robert Maurice

Spokane