Fat Cats Excel at Mind Control

There is a snippet of wisdom in the political world which has been practiced, successfully, by some of the most powerful men in the world.

It is simply that if you say a lie often enough and to enough people, they will believe that the lie is a fact. You can probably think of just such an example in your own life.

Usually, it involves gossip on a personal level. Someone accuses you of doing something you did not do, tells everyone you know and you don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell to ever again gain the high ground of truth.

At best, in the minds of the intended audience, it has now morphed from a lie into “he said-she said.” Your credibility has just been flushed down the toilet and you will forever appear to be desperate. In fact, it will be the thing that people will remember most.

Bringing that concept home, Linda Parks attracted a new set of bullies when she declared she was a political independent. What? She left the far-right Republican Party that had tried to beat her into a pulp two years ago and did not become a Democrat? That could not stand.

So the Democratic money machine in the form of various committees, along with the opposing Democratic candidate, threw as much filth at Parks as possible. They didn’t just send out mailers, they inundated the area, sometimes with five mailers a day. The truth didn’t have a prayer. Neither did Parks.

This election had an initiative on the ballot that would financially ding the tobacco industry. You can’t let something like that get started, it might gain some support and, who knows, it might even maake the tobacco company CEO’s in Washington, D.C., forced to testify in front of Congress.

Last time that occurred, every CEO mouthed the exact same words, which were all lawyer-created lies. Still, it made those corporate kingmen mighty angry. Best to stop any challenge to their lies at the beginning.

And so, with their $50 million in cash, the tobacco industry blanketed the airwaves with lies about Proposition 29, a law which would have added a $1 tax to every pack of cigarettes and use the money to fund cancer research.

That would be a double hit to the cigarette makers. That industry abhors having the words “cancer” and “smoking” used in the same sentence.

The fate of Prop 29 was again predictable. No new taxes, they railed. It won’t create jobs, they screamed. It just has too many flaws, they said, and then pronounced it dead. The tone of the ads were aimed at the audience implying that a vote for Prop 29, in the face of what we are telling you, is absolute proof that you are an idiot.

If you think this little go-round was obnoxious, you ain’t seen nothing yet. This fall, the airwaves will be awash in finger-wagging, false dire warnings, fake credentials of those telling you what to do, all paid for by the unlimited funds of the biggest, wealthiest people and groups in the country and even the world.

This is because U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling on Citizens United, which gave corporations the same freedom of speech rights as actual citizens, does not limit the advertising funds to domestic origins.

It is wide open for any regime, industry, cartel or other group to hide their identity and say whatever they choose. Liars won the day. The courts have clamped down on important issues like whether a chocolate spread is not really nutritious for false and misleading advertising, but are impotent due to the transient nature of political advertising. A prime tenet of a functional democracy has been lost.

We want it back.