Before you forward that email...

Today I found the draft of a post I started in May of 2012 during the presidential campaign. I believe it merits completion and publication rather than consignment to the bit-bucket. Its completion represents another small step in my quest to eliminate clutter from my pile of unfinished drafts.

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One of the things I do fairly-regularly is to reply to friends and relatives who have

1. received, but not recognized, a piece of propaganda masquerading as news,
2. fallen for the disingenuous, emotional appeal in the message, and
3. forwarded it, thinking they were sowing seeds of truth when, in fact, they were spreading fertilizer on a well-established field of flourishing lies.

I take the time to research such messages and reply for a number of reasons:

1. I want my friends to learn how to critically assess the validity of messages they are about to forward.
2. I wish to set the record straight on matters I consider important to the well-being of our nation, but which suffer neglect when the proliferation of blindly-forwarded email propaganda turns them into political hot potatoes.
3. There's also a selfish motive involved. I hope that in time I will find less SPAM in my inbox. 

The following is an example of one such post and response. The fact that it begins with my friend, Bruce, asking if the video link he has forwarded is propaganda offers a bit of hope that my efforts have not been in vain.

All, 

Is this propaganda? It scares me and I don't scare easily. 

Bruce

We all need to be aware of this This is a 4 minute clip that explains the US budget dilemma. It is not Republican, or Democrat. It is presented by an Accountant using the 2011 actual budget. I found his explanation clear and concise. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EW5IdwltaAc&feature=youtu.be>

This is the video found at the link above:

And this is the reply I sent to my friend (and all the others to whom he forwarded it, thanks to the "Reply All" button in my email program):

Bruce, ol' buddy, 

Of course it's propaganda. Those figures and projections have been around for decades. I find it most interesting, as should you, that the national debt and balancing the budget only become critical issues when the Democrats are in power. 

Under Reagan and both Bushes (three bogus, fiscal conservatives) the deficit mushroomed. It went down under Clinton (see chart below) 

Link to Source 

To be fair, the deficit has gone up under Obama, but the economy he inherited from "W" may have had a weeee bit to do with that. ;-) 

One more mark of propaganda is a non-comment in the video. The narrator laments that the US has lost its triple A rating without mentioning that S & P's downgrade was the direct result of the Republicans crying wolf about shutting down the government prior to their agreeing to raise the debt ceiling. 

That fact, of course, is what's meant by "Political Process" in the headline (see below) that was shown in the video, but left unmentioned by the narrator. 

Finally, the narrator talks about the need for "a fairer tax code that doesn't cripple the economy," and he follows with "Everyone must VOTE for representatives who will focus on FINANCIAL SOLVENCY." 

That, my friend is not tax code talk, it's coded language for "Don't raise taxes on the rich." Conveniently, of course, it leaves out the fact that the rich have both gained and maintained their wealth because our economic system is structured to benefit them at the expense of everyone else. 

Finally, you're scared because the right-wing wants you to be scared. They know that the only way they can regain the White House, and thereby another chance to rape the country as Reagan and the two Bushed did (look at the chart again) is for enough people to become scared enough to overlook his actual record both as a businessman and as governor of Massachusetts and vote for Mitt R-MONEY. 

When people are frightened, they pull back from bold action, and they wind up voting against their own best interests. 

When F.D.R. said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself!" in his first inaugural speech, he was right. It's as true now as it was back in the 1930s. 

Any time you need your head screwed on straight about this stuff, just ask. ;-)

But wait! There's more.

In the process of finishing this post, I discovered an excellent blog post that delves further into and debunks the financial chicanery presented as fact in the video. You can read it by clicking here.