Der Große Lüge
This 4th of July was ruined for me and many folks of my age as we watched Senator McConnell demonstrate the power of Große Lüge. As rockets burst in air, we listened to him say he is trying to pass a bill to make sure Americans have access to health care, when in truth the bill will raise hell with health care, America’s doctors, hospitals, and advocates for disabled, elderly and poor all agree.
McConnell knows all this very well and he knows it is futile to try and win that argument, instead he turns to the big lie. That is why the bill must be rushed through. That is why no public hearings. That is why there has not been any Committee review of the bill, because that would give Democrats a chance to get their oar in. So what if the public says they want a nonpartisan solution to this problem. McConnell and his Grecian chorus chant in unison that it is the Democrats who refuse to “fix” the health care bill. An idea which has no relationship to the truth unless you use “fix” in the same way as we use it in relationship to a male cat where fix means to neuter or make impotent.
For those who grew up in the immediate aftermath of World War II, seeing an American political party embrace this concept of “communication” so foreign to the lessons our parents taught, is disturbing on the most profound level. We were taught to celebrate not just the bravery with which our fathers and mothers prosecuted World War II, but the wisdom and goodness we brought to both waging war and making peace.
Overtime, we have seen our nation fail to live up to our own standards. The USA forced the Nuremberg Trials on our fellow victors and then the defeated Axis leaders. When this example ultimately led to the World Court we begged off. We would remain beyond its jurisdiction. We had always led the effort to prevent torture as tool of warfare, but after 9-11 the old rules no longer applied. Likewise, we grew up despising the manipulation of news in Nazi Germany and extolling the virtues of our open marketplace of ideas. In our country the parties would offer different approaches to our problems and then marshal the facts and try to win the voters over to their point of view in the marketplace of ideas.
An English poet by the name of John Milton gave birth to this idea, but it was Thomas Jefferson who would argue that it was the organizing principle of our new Republic's civil discourse and democratic governance. And when we were in school and read John Stuart Mill’s description of this belief we took pride in our superiority and smugly looked down on the German people’s gullibility in falling for Joseph Goebbels' “Große Lüge”, the “big lie”.
We learned in school that Joseph Goebbels was Hitler’s propaganda chief and that he and his “fuhrer” developed and practiced the big lie theory as their means of controlling public thought and discourse. We learned that it was amazingly successful in the the captive media market inside Germany.
Less attention was spent on how successful Germany’s use of the big lie was in influencing large segments of the American public. In post war America we chose to forget that as Hitler invaded hapless neighboring countries, Goebbel’s lie machine would begin describing how that country was attacking peaceful German nationals along the border. We did not stop long to reflect on the fact that huge segments of our body politic had decided there was much truth in this version of history. “Neither side is perfect” they would conclude.
Goebbels’ principle rejects the notion that in an open market truth will wrestle lies to the ground. He maintained in the alternative that if one lie is reverberated many times then people will accept that wrong as right. Joseph Goebbels believed that the truth had no built in advantage. If you attacked the Poles without any provocation argue repeatedly that the Poles attacked you. If you make war on the Jews argue that they are making war on you. People who do not want war with Germany will be inclined to believe your absolute lie or at the very least decide both sides are exaggerating. The desire of the public to look for moral equivalency when faced with a moral decision is a cornerstone of the Big Lie.
So here is “our democracy” not looking much like the one we grew up with. Not a place where our leaders come to us honestly and argue for what they believe and try and build a majority on the strength of those arguments, but a government where laws are conceived by men lurking behind marble walls and then introducing their spawn on the back of absolute lies. Lies which they calculate will at worst be seen as the little fibs we all tell. Thus they would put health care completely out of reach for many millions of our neighbors, put real coverage in peril for millions more and finally increase the cost of health care for people over 50, people with preexisting conditions and the vast majority of people who voted for them. All to benefit a handful of our richest citizens. This is not the America our parents thought they won for us in World War II.
This July 4, 2017, I loved being back in Maine with my family and friends but when the sun set and the fireworks started across the lake I found myself recalling the worry of Francis Scott Key and remembering Lincoln's worry, “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
McConnell knows all this very well and he knows it is futile to try and win that argument, instead he turns to the big lie. That is why the bill must be rushed through. That is why no public hearings. That is why there has not been any Committee review of the bill, because that would give Democrats a chance to get their oar in. So what if the public says they want a nonpartisan solution to this problem. McConnell and his Grecian chorus chant in unison that it is the Democrats who refuse to “fix” the health care bill. An idea which has no relationship to the truth unless you use “fix” in the same way as we use it in relationship to a male cat where fix means to neuter or make impotent.
For those who grew up in the immediate aftermath of World War II, seeing an American political party embrace this concept of “communication” so foreign to the lessons our parents taught, is disturbing on the most profound level. We were taught to celebrate not just the bravery with which our fathers and mothers prosecuted World War II, but the wisdom and goodness we brought to both waging war and making peace.
Overtime, we have seen our nation fail to live up to our own standards. The USA forced the Nuremberg Trials on our fellow victors and then the defeated Axis leaders. When this example ultimately led to the World Court we begged off. We would remain beyond its jurisdiction. We had always led the effort to prevent torture as tool of warfare, but after 9-11 the old rules no longer applied. Likewise, we grew up despising the manipulation of news in Nazi Germany and extolling the virtues of our open marketplace of ideas. In our country the parties would offer different approaches to our problems and then marshal the facts and try to win the voters over to their point of view in the marketplace of ideas.
An English poet by the name of John Milton gave birth to this idea, but it was Thomas Jefferson who would argue that it was the organizing principle of our new Republic's civil discourse and democratic governance. And when we were in school and read John Stuart Mill’s description of this belief we took pride in our superiority and smugly looked down on the German people’s gullibility in falling for Joseph Goebbels' “Große Lüge”, the “big lie”.
We learned in school that Joseph Goebbels was Hitler’s propaganda chief and that he and his “fuhrer” developed and practiced the big lie theory as their means of controlling public thought and discourse. We learned that it was amazingly successful in the the captive media market inside Germany.
Less attention was spent on how successful Germany’s use of the big lie was in influencing large segments of the American public. In post war America we chose to forget that as Hitler invaded hapless neighboring countries, Goebbel’s lie machine would begin describing how that country was attacking peaceful German nationals along the border. We did not stop long to reflect on the fact that huge segments of our body politic had decided there was much truth in this version of history. “Neither side is perfect” they would conclude.
Goebbels’ principle rejects the notion that in an open market truth will wrestle lies to the ground. He maintained in the alternative that if one lie is reverberated many times then people will accept that wrong as right. Joseph Goebbels believed that the truth had no built in advantage. If you attacked the Poles without any provocation argue repeatedly that the Poles attacked you. If you make war on the Jews argue that they are making war on you. People who do not want war with Germany will be inclined to believe your absolute lie or at the very least decide both sides are exaggerating. The desire of the public to look for moral equivalency when faced with a moral decision is a cornerstone of the Big Lie.
So here is “our democracy” not looking much like the one we grew up with. Not a place where our leaders come to us honestly and argue for what they believe and try and build a majority on the strength of those arguments, but a government where laws are conceived by men lurking behind marble walls and then introducing their spawn on the back of absolute lies. Lies which they calculate will at worst be seen as the little fibs we all tell. Thus they would put health care completely out of reach for many millions of our neighbors, put real coverage in peril for millions more and finally increase the cost of health care for people over 50, people with preexisting conditions and the vast majority of people who voted for them. All to benefit a handful of our richest citizens. This is not the America our parents thought they won for us in World War II.
This July 4, 2017, I loved being back in Maine with my family and friends but when the sun set and the fireworks started across the lake I found myself recalling the worry of Francis Scott Key and remembering Lincoln's worry, “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."