HOAXES 101: How Structured Hoaxes Define the GOP

For decades Republicans have depended on hoaxes to power their political campaigns. Their legislative performance reflects it. They have declined into sabotage and criminal threatening. Their Libertarian and Randian fantasies and Right Wing Nut Job delusions are in play, in Washington, damaging our representative democracy.

Here is a baker's dozen of the GOP's antisocial hoaxes. Taken together these claims form a make-believe world. The GOP Dystopia:

-- Economic problems are rooted in a Lower Class of 47%er welfare state layabouts
-- Unions are criminal enterprises
-- Government operations are intrinsically incompetent (lacking profit motive which is the only honest way to do things)
-- Politicians are all crooks (especially Libruls, so voting doesn't matter)
-- Guns in homes are a sensible protection against home invasion (reflecting societal breakdown, alleged to occur 1,000,000+ times a year)
-- Government is the problem (referring to what we call Madisonian constitutional democracy; denying international competition, the 1%er redistribution, and increasing automation)
-- Global warming is an economy-killing leftist conspiracy
-- Guns in homes are our ultimate protection from tyranny
-- American Christians suffer rough and hurtful persecution
-- Science cannot be trusted (typically in argument, because scientific results can change over time. The Bible is absolute.)
-- The less government, the better; a.k.a., government-vs.-private-sector is a fixed sum game; a.k.a., taxes are theft
-- Supporters of legal abortion are "Baby Killers"
-- Media outlets are biased to Left/Liberal positions

Do a couple minutes work to research any GOP hoax. The profession versions consist of three sets of elements:

-- A psychological viewpoint, usually laid out as an advertising campaign. It trashes either a segment of society or a democratically established social process;
-- Related slogans; and
-- Dozens upon dozens of interconnected lies and ad hominem slanders

A viewpoint of a hoax succeeds where it is unopposed and its slogans can be sold to a target population. Where these viewpoints succeed, people can lose their sense of community. Personalities are altered by irrational fears.

Structured political hoaxes reach into the lives of tens of millions of Americans. These high-impact hoaxes are not to be confused with "myths" or "tales"; they are designed artifacts. The hoaxes also draw millions of Believers to the polls.

Never Underestimate Non-Rational Argument.

Exposing Americans to the GOP hoaxes looks to us like doing a group Total Immersion Baptism in a pig sty. Self-identified conservatives are cast into a Dark Side fantasia.

Tactical responses are sketched out below. Sketched, not developed in detail. This brief essay is not a Counterinsurgency Field Manual.

Take doing counterattacks one step at a time.

The narrative continues building up our inventory of GOP hoaxes. Risk patterns become apparent. For example opposition research on high-impact hoaxes let to this: "(____) Would Ban All Abortions."

This formula was applied in North Dakota and Montana in 2012. It is being applied in 2013 for Democratic Party campaigns all over the country. Where a GOP hoax veers over into authoritarianism, this form of counterattack strategy is recommended. Critical success factor: attack the hoax.

Progressives can apply these concepts to poach "Base" GOP voters in 2014 and build on that to generate a landslide result in 2016. Republicans who adhere publicly to the high-impact hoaxes can be called out and then driven from office.

We'll dig deeper going south from the orange muffin.....