Right-wing Propaganda Still Threatens Democracy

Neo-cons have been exposed for their total dismissal of democracy’s needs. The propaganda that supports their plutocratic agenda and which was devised through their moneyed think tanks, continues to take its toll on decisions that promote the general welfare.

Right-wing think tanks have molded public opinion through a myriad of propaganda sources: sleazy emails on the internet, attack books by radical authors like Ann Coulter, and a right-wing media like Fox Network. All are driven by constant repetition and dissemination of conservative policy ideas. 

Its engineering of public opinion has provided a philosophical underpinning for most of the important fiscal and social policies developed and implemented over the past two decades. Through their mind-games, neo-cons have succeeded in making positive government action in social welfare and economic development policy seem off limits and inappropriate.

As a result, progressive politicians are still reluctant to promote universal health care, provide social investment needs, and even rescind past income tax cuts for the super rich. Not only is the self-serving neo-con propaganda still strong but the influential rich have a lot of clout and a lot to lose.

Over the last several decades, a relentless propaganda attack against government has been the neo-con strategy to pare down social spending while increasing military buildup. And military spending has been stoked by fear campaigns.

Thus investment in people and in infrastructure has suffered mightily under the Reagan and the two Bush administrations, and has even suffered under the beleaguered Clinton administration.

The Reagan “welfare queen” subtly provided the image of lazy blacks receiving entitlement payments. The “states rights” chant was a subtle form of the racist southern strategy of the Republicans which tended to subvert civil rights.

Drug companies and health organizations unleashed a mighty campaign to denigrate what they characterized as “big government” during the Clinton effort to institute universal health care coverage. In addition, the clamor raised by Republicans regarding welfare prompted the Clinton support and passage of a workfare program.

The drug industry and the healthcare industry have such a vise on a dysfunctional and inefficient health care system that the Democrats are afraid to propose a government single-payer health care system, even though it is the best solution. The socialized medicine bogeyman is a form of propaganda that is still somewhat effective, in spite of an obviously broken health care system.

A conscious, unified campaign was planned and orchestrated by neo-conservative policy and position promotion (PPP) think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and Project for the New American Century. The top 20 spent nearly a billion dollars in the last decade in an effort to support Republican ideology, with even Bush government agencies using our money for partisan messages. 

In fact, with the Bush regime, the functional incompetence of Bush-appointed leadership has outrageously been morphed into evidence of government bureaucratic inefficiency, this to explain the ineptness of FEMA leadership in reacting to Hurricane Katrina. In addition, false cries of success justify the Iraqi quagmire.

Another area of pervasive propaganda relates to taxation. Right-wing spokespeople – in the media and in politics -- still spread anti-tax ideology intending to debunk ideas of new taxation, especially more progressive income taxes, and foster still more supply-side filter-down economics. 

They intimidate members of the middle class into believing they are deadbeats if they want to raise taxes on the rich, braying that taxes discourage entrepreneur activities. Hackneyed “tax and spend” slogans are drilled into the sound-waves of interviews and neo-con sound-bites to label the progressives who want relief for the poor and the vulnerable.

Meanwhile Henry Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs, is spending billions of our tax dollars to prop up failed leaders and their banks, money they use to fill the holes in their Tier 1 capital ratios, not to loan to the people. The media spreads fear of financial Armageddon to support Paulson’s power play.

Neo-conservative forces still have resources to flood the media with hundreds of opinion editorials. Their top staff appear as political pundits and policy experts on dozens of television and radio shows across the country. Their lobbyists work the legislative arenas, distributing policy proposals, briefing papers and position statements.

As the Bush plague leaves, real causes of democracy must begin – tax reform, infrastructure spending, and universal health care.

Accordingly, the light of democracy must overcome the self-serving propaganda of the right and finally do what is best for the people and the country.