“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” – This is an excellent definition of the “Big lie,” however, there seems to be no evidence that it was used by Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels, though it is often attributed to him.
Nowadays we are into the fourth year of a big lie that seems impossible to shut down. So long as our most recent national demogogue and his MAGAT cult following blow the lie hard, we are left to question and challenge the lie and the liars that tell it.
Think critically about Mr. Trump’s big lie speech to the RNC this past week. First he proclaimed without shame how he survived an assassination attempt five days earlier in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“You’ll never hear it from me again a second time because it’s too painful to tell,” Trump told a hushed audience. “I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of Almighty God.” The implication then is that Almighty God divereted a lethal bullet away from The Self-Appointed Choses and into the body of someone apparently less-important than the candidate. Trump kissed the firefighter’s uniform of Corey Comperatore, whom Trump’s would-be assassin killed.
Shortly the Almighty’s favorite human must have tired of thanking the Almighty. No longer an advocate of peaceful negotiation, Trump commenced his worn out march down his own rapture’s road.
To wit this partial list of blowharded buffalo chips:
“Immigrants are “coming from prisons, they’re coming from jails, they’re coming from mental institutions and insane asylums.”
False.
“Caracas, Venezuela, really dangerous place, but not anymore. Because in Venezuela, crime is down 72 percent”
False.
“El Salvador murders are down 70 percent because they’re sending their murderers to the United States of America.”
False.
“Under my presidency, we had the most secure border.”
False
Not so fast motor mouth. Illegal immigration during Trump’s administration was higher than it was during both of former President Barack Obama’s terms
The jobs that are created under Biden, “107 percent of those jobs are taken by illegal aliens.”
False. This Republican talking point used by Trump and Repub Flying Monkeys paints the Biden years as being better for foreign-born workers than native-born Americans. But it is wrong.
During my presidency, we had “the best economy in the history of our country, in the history of the world … We had no inflation, soaring incomes.”
False. One of the strongest ways to assess the economy is the unemployment rate, which fell during Trump’s presidency to levels untouched in five decades. But his successor, Joe Biden, matched or exceeded those levels.
When shoveling BS throw everything against the wall and see how much sticks. As in, The Biden administration is “the only administration that said we’re going to raise your taxes by four times what you’re paying now.”
False. Biden is proposing a tax increase of roughly 7 percent over the next decade, not 300 percent, as Trump claims. About 83 percent of the proposed Biden tax increase would be borne by the top 1 percent of taxpayers, a level that starts at just under $1 million a year in income.
“Democrats are going to destroy Social Security and Medicare, because all of these people, by the millions, they’re coming in. They’re going to be on Social Security and Medicare and other things, and you’re not able to afford it. They are destroying your Social Security and your Medicare.”
False.
Most immigrants in the U.S. illegally are ineligible for Social Security. I have known this for years as a state-employed Social Worker whose job was determining eligibility for Social Security and Medicad eligibility as well as food eligibilty for every person who applied.
Some people who entered the U.S. illegally and were granted humanitarian parole — a temporary permission to stay in the country — for more than one year, may be eligible for Social Security for up to seven years, the Congressional Research Service has declared.
“I will end the electric vehicle mandate on Day 1.”
False.
There is no electric vehicle mandate to begin with.
“They used COVID to cheat.”
False
Pants on Fire!
Suggested reading
Fact-checking Trump’s speech.
The Saga of Crooked Donald 