Political observers don’t have an answer about why the MAGA crowd says the U.S. is disintegrating, riddled by crime, Deep State conspiracies, criminal immigrants, and U.S. involvement in non-existent overseas wars.

Political observers call this MAGA vision “a parallel universe” to what most Americans experience every day, where there is no Chicken Little panic and life continues.

My observation is that there are two reasons why the MAGA crowd believes the nation is faltering.

• One is their failure to accept modernity.
• The second is that they don’t understand the rapid changes happening in the country and their everyday lives.

First, the MAGA crowd is afraid of changes from social and demographic forces they cannot control, such as:

• Environmental issues have emerged globally, including climate change and ecological destruction, energy, water, and resources shortages, rapid urbanization, population aging, and various social problems.
• Advanced technology that is more commonplace. Self-driving cars, cryptocurrencies, business practices built on analyzing real-time data and forecasts, artificial intelligence, faster computers, electric vehicles, and LED lightbulbs have changed everyday life. In almost all of these cases, conservative and reactionary forces have ridiculed, protested, and bemoaned these advances as attacks on everyday living. This technology is coming faster into everyday life, transforming business models into ways of doing business in which one can proactively respond to rapid change and uncertainty.
• Globalization, including imports from China, Korea, Taiwan, and South America, is considered an attack on U.S. manufacturing, even though the U.S. abandoned and phased out heavy production decades ago.
• Engineered distrust and skepticism about the viability of American institutions, such as the media, the courts, and business practices. This distrust comes from right-wing media, as well as other nations.

The psychotic MAGA nostalgia is to make” America Made Great Again,” but they don’t specify which decade they want to revisit.

• Was it 1940, when corporate taxes were 33%, the average American income was $1,368, and the average unemployment rate in the 1930s was 18%?

  

• Was it during World War II when the corporate tax was 53%? Or, in the 1950s, when a house cost $7,354 and the average cost of a new car was $1,510.00? There were price increases even then: by 1959, a vehicle was $2,200.
• Or, how about 1970, when a house cost $27,000, which is $213,457.27 adjusted for 2024 inflation, according to Federal Reserve Economic Data.
• Or was it pre-World War I when there was no personal income tax (it began in 1913) and an original Model T cost $850, but by 1924, the price was reduced to $260, thanks to mass production?

“I Don’t Understand What’s Happening”

Rap stars, social influencers, and athletes becoming multi-millionaires; the impact of TickTok; new immigrants at work; gender challenges; changes in everyday life from technology; and media overload have all raised the anxiety level of Americans.  The changes seem disconnected, so a demagogue like Trump tries to connect these events through the lowest common denominator possible: hate and how these changes are threatening your way of life.

These imminent changes are: Christians cannot celebrate Christmas.  Immigrants are coming for your jobs. The government is taking away your guns. The nation is facing an invasion from Muslims, criminals, and undesirables.

Trump’s messages and rallies harp on these fears. All changes are threats.  The only way to combat these threats is to go back in time. America was great in the past, and these threats did not exist, so we must go back to the past.  Make America Great Again, but “Again,” is a return to the past.

But we all know that you can’t go forward by looking backward.  That’s the fundamental disconnect between Trump followers and the rest of the nation.  Biden’s vision, and the leader of any good leader in a democracy in the global world of 2024, is to look forward and accept the current world as it is.  And then work to change it.

The Danger of Living in the Past

The MAGA crowd loves comparing told scenarios because they have one foot in the past and the other foot planted in fear of the future.

The MAGA crowd is silent on when “America was great” for a good reason: Their recent memories have faded.

Today, the economy under Biden is better than it was under Trump by almost all measures: the stock market, unemployment, wage growth, the national debt, and minority employment.

But the lousy memories of MAGA people are contorted by propaganda and their wish that they were young again. The past always seems better than the present when Trump is calling for the end of the world, street riots if he loses, perpetual government waste, the flood of foreign invaders, and criminals climbing on your roof.

The MAGA crowd opposes globalization and equal rights for all minorities because Trump sees them as threats, not to the U.S., but because these people would vote against him.

The global U.S. today is a partner in a world where our domestic society extends beyond the U.S. itself and is dependent on other nations as part of an entire value chain, including politics, diplomacy, military relationships, and businesses worldwide. All of this is not part of the MAGA world outlook.

All of these partly explain why the MAGA crowd lives in a non-factual, parallel universe where the U.S. is the epicenter of the world and American greatness is rock-solid and never dependent on other nations. To the MAGA crowd, this is their reality. They are afraid to accept the present and deathly scared of the future.

Social stress is the prelude to war. disinformation, disillusionment, apathy, and pessimistic resignation blunt the electorate’s will to participate in democracY.

A corrupt Supreme Court. 

Judges who manipulate their power to protect Trump.

Threats against the legal system, public officials, and police.

Silicon Valley’s push to force the Fed to hold crypto.

These are all preludes to events that can spread nationwide. These events are happening now, and they may catch fire before the November 2024 election.

People have a vision of war as massive armies using the most lethal weapons and machinery blasting houses, buildings, and enemy positions in the lawless world of total war.  Soldiers and civilians die in great numbers.  The waste and utter destruction are apocalyptic.  Cities and towns become desolate and reduced to rubble.

But war and the people who led them changed over time.  Dictators and elected leaders can initially become less violent to meet their objectives, but they remain violent and threats to democracies.  In the words of authors Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman in their book Spin Doctors, dictators adapt to modern times as readily as war strategies change to defeat their enemies.

Dictators and war leaders look different today than 50 years ago.  They are wealthy and come from the corporate world.  They don’t wear uniforms.  But they are still surrounded by sycophants and educated people wearing the latest fashions.  However, their intent is the same as that of warmongers from the last century.  They want total control.  The physical destruction of their enemies is a byproduct of their power.

If this sounds familiar, it should.

The current rise of Trumpism in the Republican Party includes all of these cultural characteristics, which elevated them into membership, loyalty, and personal ownership badges.

When disinformation and chaos campaigns directed at Americans are conducted by biased and propaganda-based traditional and social media, these cultural bonds are strengthened into a solid chain.

The sources of the disinformation, money, and expertise to divide Americans into different cultural groups come from inside and outside the U.S.  These soft links are challenging to find. Still, investigators know they come from Russia, China, North Korea, and other nations that will benefit from a weakened U.S.

This new form of warfare is as accurate as military weapons and can have the same impact on a democracy. This new, soft form of warfare is ideally suited for the 21st century, where social media and its accompanying advanced technology rely on psychological warfare and dirty operations campaigns perfected from the World Wars of the 20^th Century. This warfare does not destroy property or ongoing business operations. It’s focused on the intangible: the freedoms without physical form.

In many ways, social media and its allies are akin to the neutron bomb, developed in 1958 that was hailed as a revolutionary weapon that could kill life without destroying buildings. Its inventor, Sam Cohen, said, “It’s the only nuclear weapon in history that makes sense in waging war.  When the war is over, the world is still intact,” he told the New York Times.

Today, the soft weapons used to destabilize society and raise concerns about the viability of democracy and faith in social institutions are:

• Social media. Many political outlets publish right-wing, unverified information and propaganda. These include Ticktock, Facebook, LinkedIn, 4chan, 8chan, Gab, BitChute, and Parler.
• Cable TV news outlets, programs, and other right-wing outlets include FOX, Newsmax, Washington Examiner, Epoch Times, and TheBlaze.
• Cryptocurrency. Despite its popularity, crypto has not replaced the dollar as a medium of exchange.  Instead, crypto is being used to destabilize central banks, launder money, evade taxes, serve as a placeholder for the expanding world of online sports betting, and produce short-term profits for naive investors.
• QAnon. No one knows who invented QAnon and crypto, which is extraordinary in a world where its inventors could be worth billions overnight.  This leads to speculation that both crypto and QAnon were invented by enemies of the U.S., such as Russia, China, Iran, or North Korea.  QAnon is the engine behind absurd conspiracies adopted by an unsuspecting target audience.
• Maga Republicans in Congress and state positions The political goals of this group are well known and include the right-wing dictatorial takeover of the U.S., as specified in their Project 25 Report, a Mein Kampf-type blueprint for a Trump election.
• Traditional cable TV news outlets, such as CNN and MSNBC, allow lies to be broadcast unchallenged by right-wing politicians. When this happens, the news presenters do not challenge the lies in real time.  This degrades the ethics of journalism.
• Cable news turns politics into entertainment for profit; cable news has used politicians as entertainers to get cheap programming without spending money on production. Trump fits this bill perfectly.  His rallies are one step above a WrestleMania show.  As a result, profit-center cable news outlets, including everyone, have embraced this new media format.  One estimate found that Trump got $4.96 billion in “free earned media in the year leading up to the presidential election, according to data from tracking firm mediaQuant.  He received $5.6 billion throughout his campaign, more than the combined number of Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan, and Marco Rubio.” Another group, Media Matters, “estimated that Fox News alone gave Trump almost $30 million of free airtime last year.  That figure was based on Trump’s interview time on the network and the cost of buying equivalent advertising time.”

How Do We Know We Are Now at War?

Civilian and military casualties are the dismal measures of war.  Total war is the destruction of cities and towns and innocent civilians.  But 21^st-century war is different.  The civilian casualties in this modern war are broken or impaired psychologically, morally, and ethically.

This may explain why many Americans dislike the government.  It may partially explain the need for violent anti-government acts, including the denial of an elected president assuming office.  It can account for the constant verbal and physical attacks against people deemed undesirable by the political leaders who have announced they will be tyrants.

A New Kind of Warfare

The weapons for the 21st-century War are different. They indeed involve the exponential lethality of the military-industrial complex. However, that may not be needed if there is an alternative to weakening an enemy and conquering their political administration.

The impact of disinformation, disillusionment, apathy, and pessimistic resignation blunt the electorate’s will to participate in democracy, which is just as lethal as a neutron bomb.

But how do you measure the impact of this disillusionment and disorientation campaign? Through numerous surveys of the American electorate.

While there are scores of reputable national surveys to choose from, the highly-regarded Pew Research Center found the following in a 2023 survey:

• Just 4% of U.S. adults say the U.S. political system is working extremely or very well; another 23% say it works somewhat well. About six-in-ten (63%) express little or no confidence in its future.
• Favorable views of many governmental and political institutions are at historic lows. Just 16% of the public say they trust the federal government always or most of the time.  While trust has hovered near historic lows for the better part of the last 20 years, today, it stands among the lowest levels dating back nearly seven decades.  More Americans have an unfavorable than favorable opinion of the Supreme Court – the first time that has occurred in polling going back to the late 1980s.
• A growing share of the public dislikes both political parties. Nearly three-in-ten (28%) express unfavorable views of both parties, the highest share in three decades of polling.  And a comparable share of adults (25%) do not feel well-represented by either.
• Candidate choices are underwhelming. As the presidential campaign heats up, 63% of Americans say they are dissatisfied with the emerging candidates.  There also has been a downward trend in views of the quality of all political candidates.  Just 26% rate the quality of political candidates as very or somewhat good, down about 20 percentage points since 2018.

Preparing for War

According to the book Preparation for Combat (Army University Press), “To be prepared for war, the unit must be tactically competent. Executing maneuvers and formations according to doctrine determines tactical competence.”

This “tactical competence,” using the methods already described, has been fully implemented for years.

In a classic 1993 article in Foreign Affairs, Samuel P. Huntington argues that conflict will not occur between nations on ideological or economic lines but among groups with common cultural values.  This can include values shared by religion, endorsement of political philosophy, family or group traditions, racial composition, and the roles of the sexes and family structure.

Social Stress as the Prelude to War

The prelude for any modern war is to destabilize the enemy.  It’s a classic war tactic.  Enemies of the U.S. have spent hundreds of billions to do this.  The enemies, both foreign and domestic, have been working together to do this daily using cyberattacks, identity thefts of individuals, a corrosive and willing U.S. media, corrupt politicians, launching conspiracy theories, and empowering a sociopath as a figurehead to lead the nation into a dictatorship.

America gets the leadership it deserves.

If the nation cannot or will not recognize these evident threats, it will suffer severe, damaging, surprising changes in its ways of life within a few years. If Americans want to experience negative surprises in their lifetimes, they can remain complacent and do nothing. Our enemies will take care of the rest.

If you are a propagandist and want to instill fear and uncertainty into the masses, you must first create an “enemy” and then make them larger and more dangerous than they are.

That’s the case today with most groups and minorities on the Republican’s enemy list.

To gin up the hysteria, Republicans and their media accomplices have unleashed decades-long disinformation campaigns that intentionally overestimate certain minorities that are part of their efforts to make the U.S. a Christian nationalist nation governed according to their new rules. These rules are separate from the U.S. Constitution, but for the MAGA Republicans to destabilize the government, they must create a formidable enemy even when none exists.

Here are some examples of their propaganda campaign versus the facts, based on data from Today.yougov.com.

For Sexual Groups

What percent of the U.S. population is gay?

Americans say 30%

The data says 3%

What percentage of the U.S. population is transgender?

Americans say 21%

The data says 0.6%

For Religious and Racial Groups

What percentage of the U.S. population is Muslim?

Americans say 27%

The data says 1%

What percentage of the U.S. population is Jewish?

Americans say 30%

The data says  2%

What percentage of the U.S. population is Native American?

Americans say 27%

The data says 1%

What percentage of the U.S. population is Asian American?

Americans say 29%

The data says 6%

What percentage of the U.S. population is African American?

Americans say 41%

The data says 12%

What percentage of Americans are Christian?

Americans say 58%

The data says 70%

What percentage of Americans have a high school degree?

Americans say 65%

The data says 89%

The Republican Message: Hate Your Neighbor

Republicans want you to hate your neighbor, so the best way to do this is to say that white Christians are under attack by (you fill in the blank.)  The problem is that these minorities are a minuscule percentage of the U.S. population of 332 million.

Suppose you listen to Republicans and the right-wing media. In that case, people are pushed to think that 0.6 percent of the U.S. population that is transgender is waging some political and psychological attack on the  99.4% of Americans who are not transgender. There is even a very high probability that the vast majority of Americans will ever meet a transgender person in their lifetime, let alone be subjugated to a political attack by this 0.6 percent of transgender individuals who has some ulterior motive.

Overestimating the “enemy” is one of the oldest propaganda tricks in the fascist toolkit. It has been used by MAGA Republicans for decades.

So, if you want to be afraid of losing your civil rights or facing a decline in your standard of living, look to the MAGA Republicans in front of your own eyes. If you remove the blinders, you will be surprised at what you see.

Note:  This article was originally published on Jan. 9, 2021, and updated on Feb. 17, 2021.

The news today that Rush Limbaugh, the acidic host of a politically-fueled, syndicated radio show has died, will set off competition to see who among right-wing talkers will now provide political fodder to his estimated 15 million listeners.

Limbaugh died Feb. 17m 2021 after being diagnosed with terminal lung cancer in 2020.

His terminal condition will spark a morbid competition among some big media followers over who will get access to his millions of followers and advertisers as Limbaugh ends his career as one of the top, right-wing media propagandists in U.S. media history.

The reason for this deathwatch is money.

At stake is a big money jackpot, derived from loyal right-wingers in the U.S. and Canada. These listeners have salivated for over 30 years listening to his anti-Democratic, anti-immigrant, racist rants, interspersed in a call-in format, credited with making up a considerable segment of the right-wing media empire.

Whatever his appeal, Limbaugh built a weekly audience of 15.5 million listeners. His syndicated show (of which he owns the majority) became the most popular radio show in the United States.

Limbaugh’s importance to the right-wing is so crucial that Trump even gave him a Congressional Medal of Freedom in February 2020 for helping to create and promote falsehoods, such as Trump’s infamous birtherism conspiracy going back to the first Obama president in 2009.

Limbaugh was one of the first to attack Obama. In 2011, he said, “Republicans should do nothing to help Obama.’ Damn right. Damn right. Helping Obama hurts the country.” It got worse from there. He has also denied climate change, LGBT rights, feminism and made controversial comments on minorities.

What lengths will Limbaugh go to attract listeners?

“Limbaugh has frequently referred to some women as ‘femenazis,’ compared an adolescent Chelsea Clinton to a dog and said feminism ‘was established to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream,’” according to CNN. He also lost advertisers when he “referred to a law student named Sandra Fluke as a ‘slut’ and a ‘prostitute’ after speaking before Congress in 2012 to advocate that birth control should be covered by health insurance at religious institutions.”

Trump built his half-baked political career on the birtherism lie and his repeated assertions that he would produce Obama’s non-US birth certificate.  Of course, it was of the first of Trump’s 20,000 lies in elected office.  Still, Limbaugh took the lie and ran with it for hundreds of hours, while associating it with other falsehoods his audience appreciated.

Limbaugh proved that consistent lying to a receptive and suspicious audience made gullible by pandering to their prejudiced works.  In an iHeart Radio interview, Limbaugh said he attracts 43 million listeners, but in radio audience analysis, he said “all 43 million don’t listen at one time. That’s over three hours. The average time spent listening to this program is like two hours and 28 minutes.” That is two-and-a-half hours to indoctrinate, entertain, and mislead people per day.  No wonder the QAnon conspiracy found a receptive audience; they just cultivated fertile ground by tapping into Limbaugh’s audience of gullible followers over the past 30 years.

There is Big Money in Lying

Limbaugh’s formula also attracted unethical and morally-bankrupt advertisers who wanted potential buyers. This advertising helped make Limbaugh very rich.

Limbaugh is held in his esteem in right-wing media circles since he is a great success story for radio and cable T.V. right-wing wannabes who have no education, impressive credentials, and special talents.

Limbaugh worked to attract an audience that wore their baseball caps backward and would attend pro wrestling matches and think they were real. A 2009 Pew Research study found that 80% of those who regularly listened to Limbaugh were self-identified conservatives versus 35% of the total U.S. population. The same proportion identifies as Tea Partiers Christian Conservatives. Not surprisingly, 72% were men.  Another study found that 85% were white, with the majority over age 55.

Limbaugh used a format of entertainment, commentary, political fantasies, and the Democrats’ demonization to thrill his audience.  He skipped the traditional conservative principles of fiscal conservatism, reliance on the Constitution, and the free market. Instead, Limbaugh pushed ethnic pride, nationalism, and populism. Whatever the formula, it worked.

The Real Reason for Limbaugh’s Death Watch

Limbaugh’s most significant appeal among other right-wing radio and cable T.V. fakirs is his net worth: $600 million. That’s not bad since he only has a high school education.

This fact attracted two other Trump sycophants, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity, neither of whom graduated college but are worth $250 million and $40 million, respectively.

All three were at one time at the top of the right-wing media propaganda ladder, followed by others, such as Bill O’Reilly (remember him?), Laura Ingraham, and Anne Coulter.  Many other right-wing media hosts traded average radio show careers for the bigger paychecks available, from preaching propaganda to less educated or conspiracy-believing listeners.

Be Prepared for More Hate Speech and Incitement

So, as this significant shift in right-wing media succession plays out, watch for the attacks on the Democrats. At the top of the list will be Joe Biden; the first female person of color, Vice President Kamala Harris; elected minorities; and all of their associated policies and missteps to become top-line stories for a salivating right-wing audience.

These coordinated attacks will worsen until Limbaugh passes away as his wannabe successor audition for his role as Minister of Propaganda.  Look for input from Steve Bannon, Mark Levin, Breitbart news, Stephen Miller, and even Trump himself, as they work overtime to derail the Democratic Congress and its agenda.

All this will cover the right-wing militias, who are now active after their successful attack on the Capitol.

Trump now has about $250 million in cash from his brainwashed followers and fellow travelers. This money will mostly go to fund his family’s businesses, but some will be used to ferment more violent actions.  The beneficiaries of this in terms of generating more viewerships and listeners will be the propagandists gathering in the wings of FOX, Breitbart, and right-wing social media cesspools.

This is the Trump legacy that started with the Tea Party in an unhinged, factually inaccurate rant done by CNBC’s Rick Santelli from a Chicago trading floor.  In that screaming fit,  Santelli attacked people who could not pay their mortgages after the real estate-fraud that led to the 2008 recession. Santelli, a fixed-income expert, knew that exotic fixed income instruments, fraud, and greedy derivatives, real estate, and mortgage salespeople caused the 2008 recession. Yet, he shifted blame to the uninformed home buyers.

A long downward Republican history created the Tea Party. It was built on decades of revisionist conservative thought, so it is no surprise that 33 years after Limbaugh’s radio career began, lies have proven to be a great business.  This is the price we pay for intentional media misinformation campaigns conducted with no accountability.  Voters beware.  The worst is yet to come.

Yet despite all of the supposed sophistication among a population inundated with all forms of information and constant media access, modern propaganda is alive and well, and  thriving in the 21^st Century.

While most people think propaganda was the practice of fascist dictatorships that rose in the 1930 and 1940s, propaganda also exists in modern democracies in a variety of forms, including some of which are good and serve a valid social purpose. Think of the campaigns to use seatbelts when they were mandated during the 1960s, get a polio vaccine or the nutritional benefits of breast feeding infants, especially in the under-developed world.

Yet, propaganda, (defined by Merriam Webster as “ideas or statements that are often false or exaggerated and that are spread in order to help a cause, a political leader, a government, etc.,”) is also used for disinformation or to disparage and discredit advocates who are on the opposite side of a policy debate and to advance specific policies sponsored by corporations, special interest groups and governments.

Citizens today have been victimized by three major propaganda campaigns over the past 100 or so years designed to protect corporate profits, maintain the political and competitive status quo and derail citizen initiatives to achieve a specific goal.

The best examples that have current relevance to millions of Americans are the propaganda wars against cannabis, global warming and discrediting evidence about the addictive and toxic effects of cigarette smoking.

The Propaganda War Against Climate Change

Here are some specifics:

As reported in the New Yorker (Sept. 18, 2015), the Pulitzer Prize-winning Web site, InsideClimate News reported that executives at Exxon (now known as ExxonMobil) knew as early as 1977 that oil was heating the planet based on reports from its own internal scientists. InsideClimate News published the first installment of a multi-part exposé that will be appearing over the next month. The documents and other materials obtained from retired Exxon employees and officials show that corporate management knew about the problem, yet ignored it and went on the propaganda offensive for decades “to organize the campaigns of disinformation and denial that have slowed—perhaps fatally—the planet’s response to global warming,” according to Bill McKibben of the New Yorker.

More specifically, McKibben writes that the InsideClimate News research found the smoking gun in ExxonMobil’s reactionary corporate response:

“But it turns out Exxon didn’t just “know” about climate change: it conducted some of the original research. In the nineteen-seventies and eighties, the company employed top scientists who worked side by side with university researchers and the Department of Energy, even outfitting one of the company’s tankers with special sensors and sending it on a cruise to gather CO₂ readings over the ocean.

“By 1977, an Exxon senior scientist named James Black was, according to his own notes, able to tell the company’s management committee that there was “general scientific agreement” that what was then called the greenhouse effect was most likely caused by man-made CO₂; a year later, speaking to an even wider audience inside the company, he said that research indicated that if we doubled the amount of carbon dioxide in the planet’s atmosphere, we would increase temperatures two to three degrees Celsius.

“That’s just about where the scientific consensus lies to this day. “Present thinking,” Black wrote in summary, “holds that man has a time window of five to ten years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical.”

ExxonMobil gave us oil spills and now it seems they have destroyed the truth about their own discovery. Worse, this propaganda war persists today. One report shows that while climate change is happening, “a shocking number of congressional Republicans — over 56 percent — deny or question the science,” according to Bill Moyers.

Another source, Politifact, found only eight Republicans out of 278 who believed climate change was real science. This denial is important since the Republicans are pushing for the passage of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport dirty oil sludge across the US, as well as cutting the EPA and eliminating pollution standards. In 2014, the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted against an amendment that would have stated conclusively that climate change is occurring. All 24 Republicans on the committee voted against the bill. A study found that the Republicans who voted to deny climate change had accepted about $9.3 million in career contributions from the oil, gas and coal industries, according to analysis by the CAP Action War Room.

The lesson here is that propaganda campaigns cost corporations billions and are waged over decades, but they pay off financially and politically for their beneficiaries. The public, however, always remain victims.

The Propaganda Campaign Against Marijuana

While the 1937 film, Reefer Madness, may be the most popular example of the propaganda war against marijuana, this campaign began as early as the 1920s and was then formalized when marijuana was classified as a Schedule 1 narcotic, in the same class as heroin, under the 1970 Controlled Substances Act. This misclassification, according DrugPolicy.org, put marijuana in the most restrictive class, Schedule I, reserved for drugs with a “high potential for abuse,” “no currently accepted medical use” and a “lack of accepted safety.”

While this classification may have its origins in racial discrimination, for industrial purposes (to keep hemp off the market as a rival to synthetic fibers manufactured by Du Pont, or to eliminate competition from the liquor industry), or its perceived ability to deteriorate social relationships, the propaganda war continues today as evidenced in the 2016 Republican debates.

In an incisive summary of how the topic of marijuana was treated in the most recent Republican presidential debate prepared by John Hudak of the Brookings Institute, the misinformation directed against the recreational and medicinal uses of marijuana was flowing freely in the debates. Four candidates expressed their opinions; one was in favor of its use (Rand Paul), while Jeb Bush, Chris Christy and Carly Fionina were largely against. Of the four, Christy was the most strongly opposed to its use and made the long discredited “gateway” drug argument against pot. He also said he would enforce federal law to supersede state laws and thus eliminate recreation use in any state which allows it today. Christy takes this position even though nearly 60% of New Jersey residents support legalized, regulated recreational marijuana.

The Propaganda War Against the Dangers of Smoking

This may be one of the best case studies in modern propaganda and one of the deadliest ones that affected people worldwide. Like climate change, this involved the manipulation of scientific studies that were originally conducted and subsequently covered up by the same people who sponsored them in the first place. And like climate change, the conspiratorial impact of these cover-ups will impact millions of people for generations.

In a chilling report issued by Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), the group described the tobacco industry as “a predatory industry whose market dynamics demand that it recruits young people. It does this by deploying vast promotional expenditures to create, communicate and amplify a set of positive values associated with the product. Once the glamour phase subsides, nicotine addiction takes over making the customer dependent on the product and securing a profitable cash flow. Trapped by nicotine addiction, the smoker is subject to a variety of sub-lethal illnesses which culminate in a one in two probability of death through smoking-related disease. The smoker’s death means a replacement customer must be found – and the cycle begins again.”

So what was the tobacco industry trying to hide? Many things. The worst being that the annual global death toll caused by smoking is 4 million. By 2030, that figure will rise to 10 million with 70% of those deaths occurring in developing countries, according to the Action on Smoking report. (This death toll should be compared to the use of marijuana worldwide (zero deaths) as an argument for its legalization.)

Then, there are issues related to second-hand smoke, especially the impact of smoking on society. One 2004 study from MIT found that the estimated actual cost of smoking was nearly $40 per pack, if the cost included its secondary health impact on others.  This total included:

–$33/pack for the cost of early deaths, smoking related disabilities and other factors (which includes $20.28 a pack due to reduced life expectancy);

–$5.44/pack for the cost of the effect of second-hand smoke on significant others;

–$1.44/pack for the cost of the effect of second-hand smoke on the society as a whole.

With a pack of cigarettes costing approximately $40, it is estimated that a smoker would spend $171,000 over a lifetime. More recently, a pack of cigarettes can cost up to a whopping $150/pack, according to the web site, Natural Society.

While there are numerous web sites and films (The Insider, 1999; Thank You for Smoking, 2006) describing the tobacco industry’s cover-up, this timeline shows the scope and deceit of the tobacco industry’s propaganda campaign.

The Tobacco Industry Propaganda Timeline

1953–A group of tobacco companies met at the Plaza Hotel in New York City and devised a public relations plan to counter health concerns associated with smoking. (Source: BeyondCommonKnowledge.com)

Early-1950s–Research is published showing a statistical link between smoking and

lung cancer. At the same time the industry’s own research begins to find carcinogens in

smoke and starts to confirm the relationship between smoking and cancer. (Source: ASH)

Late-1950s–Tobacco industry scientists privately accept the association between

smoking and lung cancer, believing it to be one of cause and effect. Thirty years later, the

majority of the industry still publicly denies the causation theory – with one exception –

the US manufacturer Liggett, who broke ranks in 1997, much to the dismay of the other

major tobacco companies. (Source: ASH)

Late-1950s to mid-1960s–Tobacco industry scientists urge executives to admit to the problem and solve it, arguing that there were commercial opportunities to exploit. Research begins into the “safe cigarette,” but it soon fell under the influence of the lawyers, who successfully argued that a company could not produce a “safe” product. (Source: ASH)

1964–U.S. Surgeon General issues report linking smoking to lung cancer, tobacco. Tobacco companies seek to discredit the report.

1999–Clinton administration accused the tobacco industry of racketeering as part of a coordinated plan to deceive the public about the dangers of smoking and to cover up the knowledge they had to the contrary. (Source: BeyondCommonKnowledge.com)

2006 (August)–A federal judge ruled that the tobacco industry had actually engaged in racketeering practices, stating that the industry had engaged in a decades-long conspiracy to hide the dangers of smoking from their users. (Source: BeyondCommonKnowledge.com)

This is a propaganda campaign and cover-up that has lasted over 50 years and killed millions of people worldwide. It is a campaign that involved politicians, industry groups, lobbyists, scientists and doctors. It is a propaganda model that is still being used by some corporations and industries today.

Propaganda Campaigns in 2015

While many people think slavery was eliminated after the Civil War (1861-1865), there is more slavery worldwide today (an estimated 35 million) than at any other time in history.

Similarly, people should not think that propaganda is a rudiment of 1930s fascist dictatorships. It is alive and well today and it is an extremely profitable business, just ask the think tanks and some bad media outlets, which knowingly push bad information. The stakes of pushing misinformation is high because propaganda is used freely to advance specific social, religious, and political agendas, such as those opposed to the legalization of marijuana.

The counter-measure that should be used against bad, prejudicial propaganda is education. This is not high tech, but it’s most effective technique when used on a daily basis to counter distorted and prejudicial presentations that try to come off as authoritative. Simply put, truth is the best offensive weapon against lies. But the unfortunate reality is that prejudicial propaganda is a common tool in the marketplace of public opinion. It also will become worse in any election year.

In their weekly radio show on Sirius Radio, and their web site, Media Matters often has a litany of questionable factual discrepancies made by FOX in its reporting. 

A search of Media Matter’s web site for February 2015 alone has seven pages of articles about FOX and its top personalities (Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Dana Perino, Stuart Varney, Lou Dobbs, etc.) as well as various other right-wing guests, who have presented slanted and distorted stories that are not part of accepted, old-school mainstream journalism practices.

Not only is this pure propaganda, but it is good business.  Hannity’s net worth is estimated to be $55 million, while Rush Limbaugh has signed a $100 million, 10-year contract to be the mouthpiece for the Republican Party.  Yet on their daily shows, these conservative commentators claim to speak for the average American.

The FOX Distortions

This focus on FOX by Media Matters is fertile ground for media criticism and presents a near- endless source of material for any objective citizen and watchdog media group.

The problem is that FOX was never intended to be a traditional news source like the old NBC, CBS and ABC.  It was always envisioned as an incendiary, ideologically-driven, infotainment outlet with a distinctive propaganda purpose.

In the words of FOX News  and Republican media advisor David Frum, the idea behind FOX was to provoke the audience “into a fever of indignation (to keep them watching) and fomenting mistrust of all other information sources, so that they never change the channel.” This fed  FOX’s “liberal media” fetish as evidenced when Shawn Hannity used to look into the camera and mouth “too liberal” when his artificial liberal sidekick Alan Combs used to deliver a short rebuttal to the overwhelmingly conservative onslaught against anything remotely associated with the Obama administration.

To keep viewers near the fever pitch of indignation, FOX manipulates any news event into an attack on the U.S., the military, corporations, the Constitution, states’ rights, gun possession, law and order and patriotism.  It’s also a given that the Obama administration is the paramount enemy.

All this leaves Media Matters chasing windmills since it is concerned about factual reporting and that is not even on the radar screen at FOX.   Instead, FOX is the conservative political philosophies brand manager and it, along with Rush Limbaugh, essentially control the Republican Party.

As the Media Matters web site says, it “posts rapid-response items, as well as longer research and analytic reports documenting conservative misinformation throughout the media.” This is a constant job since the misinformation pipeline is always flowing full bore.

Combating propaganda with truth and facts is a thankless task.  This will keep Media Matters busy for the long-term, as individual citizens watch the country overrun by false claims and misleading facts.  All this makes it a sad day for democracy and traditional journalism.