Weaponized Bullshit

In this post seven years ago, I waxed philosophical on the transition of “spin” into “outright lies.”  Naively, I thought “pants-on-fire lies” of the variety heavily peppered into the 2012 presidential contest was as bad as it was going to get.

Of course, it wasn’t.  Now, we have outright propaganda.  We have a POTUS who manipulates his faithful with daily blasts of idiocy from his Twitter fingers, whose handlers have come to understand that this tactic is so powerful that they have developed a staff of propagandists who blast right-wing talking points out through the President’s Twitter account. 

Yes.  It’s propaganda.  That is where we have taken ourselves.  Free press?  Truth in reporting?  Investigative journalism? Speaking truth to power?  Nah.  Why deal in all THAT high-brow bullshit when you can have Propaganda Wars?

Propaganda.  Weaponized bullshit. 

The Right Wing have been cultivating that for decades.  Certainly since the rise of Rush Limbaugh and his ilk.

And then, along came a presidential candidate that was the absolute personification of weaponized bullshit.

How can we be shocked that Republicans have embraced and lined up behind the vapid, egocentric, drug-addled charlatan who will give voice to ANY outer-limits slur, conspiracy theory or playground-bully taunt that will increase his ratings?

It was certainly not a great leap beyond the political “reality” they’ve been crafting for decades. 

And we were blind, naïve and really, really stupid not to see it coming.

The question now is, what are we going to do about it?