Stating the obvious about Republicans and states' rights

[Craig234]

Propaganda. That's what a group 'spinning' an issue is in many cases. Republicans, and their big money backers/owners, have long practiced this. Creating the propaganda, and the systems to spread it, to shift public opinion in their favor.

A couple examples. When they opposed more healthcare for the American people - not for any honest reason, but to protect the profits of the wasteful corporations reaping huge amounts - they came up - from systematic marketing research - with the label "death panels" to describe it, and covered the country in the phrase to turn the public against the plans, exploiting their ignorance.

Another decades-long propaganda campaign was the phrase "law and order". That one was born IIUC from political expediency that it 'sold well' to describe Nixon and his party.

Funny thing about a phrase like that - it can be selectively applied. So 'supporting police violence against black people' was "law and order", yet from the lawless Nixon administration who used the phrase to the lawless felon trump administration who still tries to benefit from it, that law and order doesn't count. Somehow people still will give Republicans credit for "law and order" because of the brainwashing.

Similarly, we have "states' rights". When Republicans wanted to oppose Democratic federal policies, which were often to override essentially confederate states' policies often of systemic racism, Republicans needed a better slogan better than "the pro-racism party". So they invented a principle they cared oh so much about - a constitutional principle of not letting the federal government tyrannically violates states' rights.

It sounded good, and it let people oppose protecting civil rights by mouthing "state's rights" as some noble principle they were supporting.

Once again, we have had selective use of the phrase. When it was applied to oppose the government passing civil rights laws, it was that noble constitutional principle to give Republicans support for pandering to voters who liked having cover for opposing civil rights, recruiting all the voters in a backlash against them, turning the 'solid Democratic south' into Republican domination.

But when it came to actual states' rights issues, as soon as the corrupt Republican agenda demanded the federal government stomp on states, the slogan was nowhere to be seen, whether it was their serving big oil by opposing California's higher emission standard, to trump's recent claim he can order states to end voting by mail.

Somehow, irrationally, Republicans get political boosts from people applying those types of labels that are popular when there's even a hint they support it - like trump claiming 'law and order' in a lie for his Washington, DC invasion - but they just ignore the slogans when they clearly support the Democrats. It's been very effective propaganda for them as people 'support Republicans' largely for such phrases.

 

[Craig234]

Another example of the same propaganda is the corruption of the Supreme Court, where to cover their corrupt rulings, the right-wing justices have come up with the label "originalism". Similarly, propagandists for them also came up with the exploitation of the attack term "judicial activism", taken from Arthur Schlesinger, much as "woke" was taken and twisted from academics.

"Originalism" is good propaganda for the ignorant. It exploits their resentment against a sense of a modern corrupt state - much like the exploitation of the phrase "deep state" does - to imply the justices are some sort of principled actors trying to 'stay true' to the constitution and oppose 'judicial activists' trying to enact a 'liberal agenda' by ignoring the constitution. Once again, it works well.

And once again, it's selectively applies. If a corrupt ruling can remotely appeal to 'originalism', they use it. When they are clearly on the opposite side of 'originalism' for a corrupt ruling, they just ignore the 'principle'. Yet the phrase continues to have many people supporting them thinking 'they're for originalism'.

It further serves to give those people a sense they understand the issue, which covers up the actual issues and corruption.

This basic technique of propaganda labels and systems to spread them to fool masses of Americans is at the heart of the right-wing political movement for many decades. I could go on to their corollary - the attack labels that have let them demonize the Democrats to further strengthen their political support.

I'll mention just one example of that - the country's last mass movement that was effective was the environmental movement, from which we saw improvements to air quality, water quality, endangered species protection and much more. The corrupt right got a lot of mileage from painting a picture of environmentalists as "tree huggers" - weirdo hippies who were harmful and fanatical, attacking environmentalists to corruptly serve polluters.

 

[Craig234]

For the 'whataboutists', who can't wait to say 'but Democrats do it too', seems to me Democrats occasionally have some effective labels, but they're generally based more on true things, which some would say makes a difference. For example, the word "big" - big oil, big pharma, big finance, big military - is somewhat useful - but it's pretty accurate to describe the powerful interests.

Democrats also don't seem to have the selective use of the labels - there aren't massive Democratic oil and pharmaceutical companies Democrats ignore the labels for. Democrats don't really have the funding systems and propaganda machines either - just citizens who care and donate a little mostly. But the right invents them - just call the media "liberal media" and "fake news", there you go, Republican propaganda wins that too.

The history of 'liberal media' is interesting; I'm not sure of its roots, Hitler attacked the media pretty similarly apparently, but in particular, Nixon attacked the media; his later-convicted VP (while I'm at it, who Nixon was given a criminal payoff for selecting, which he used for his Watergate slush fund) famously called them "nattering nabobs of negativism" when Republican propaganda was weirder.

Democrats haven't been effective at condemning the actual "fake news", the absurd propaganda outlets - who have now been brought to the White House press conferences and allowed the first question each session, while the Associated Press was banned.

 

[Peacenik]

Democrats tend to use original thoughts. Republicans just parrot the talking points. Unfortunately for America, the talking points resound among the backward rural types, the poorly informed, and the badly misinformed.

So-called "think tanks" which are really just echo chamber originators funded by big corporations and the billionaires come up with the Republican buzzwords. It doesn't matter if they make any sense or not. What matters is if they resonate with the backward rural types, the poorly informed, and the badly misinformed.

The right wing infotainment media repeats all of the nonsense 24-7 to make it stick.

We would have a very different nation if only people thought for themselves, particularly GOP voters. But they don't, so we have a Major Asshole Gains Again nation.