THE PREVIOUS POST IN THIS SERIES explained how Lou Pritchett's "Open Letter to President Obama" attacked Obama (falsely) for not being willing to admit his mistakes, then attacked him almost immediately after that for thinking that we, as a country, should admit our mistakes.
Apparently Lou thinks that there's something grown-up and admirable about refusing to admit that your country ever did anything wrong.
He continues with a very slippery and complicated twist:
You scare me because you want to change America to a European style country where the government sector dominates instead of the private sector.
Pritchett has reached the mindless part of his rant. His repeated refrain is supposed to have had its hypnotic affect by now, so he can begin to cast his spell.
He pretends to have insight into what Obama "wants". But that's not what this one is really about.
What is really going on here is a bit of selling. One problem with the right-wing is that the leaders and financiers of the movement are constantly having to sell the grassroots on a set of economic values that are not in the grassroots best interest.
So Pritchett skillfully combines the grassroots' distaste for things "European" with a bit of propaganda for corporate America—he is, after all, "one of corporate America's living legends".
What he's selling, of course, is de-regulation. In this climate it's very hard to make that case honestly, so he merely rephrases it in a way he thinks will disconnect it from the current crisis—he calls regulation "dominance by the government sector" and de-regulation "dominance by the private sector". Then he smears the whole idea of regulation with the word "European".
And immediately, without offering one bit of evidence, he moves on:
You scare me because you want to replace our health care system with a government controlled one.
It becomes increasingly clear that he thinks his repetitive style has lured us into a trance.
Anyone who had been listening at all knows that the difference between Obama's plan and other liberal plans is that Obama doesn't want to replace the current system with a government system.
But by now we are supposed to be completely under the influence of the "living legend's" Jedi mind tricks.
You scare me because you prefer 'wind mills' to responsibly capitalizing on our own vast oil, coal and shale reserves.
Notice the emerging pattern.
In the first half his case is deceptive, but it contains a degree of truth, to lure us into the trance. Obama did go to an Ivy League College, he did spend a few years out of the country, Pritchett apparently doesn't know anything about him—but now he's giving us more and more stuff that's got less and less truth behind it.
Notice, also, the neat little trick of putting 'wind mills' in quotes and inserting the word 'responsibly' in front of the oil, coal, and shale option. Net rhetorical effect: to give the impression that Obama's plan is Quixotic ('tilting at windmills', get it?) and irresponsible, compared to all the other alternatives.
Except, of course, there's nothing Quixotic about windmills (they supply more of our energy every year) and Obama's plan includes coal, and solar, and gas, and more efficient use of oil .
The reference to "shale reserves" is probably intended to reinforce another famous piece of conservative propaganda—the misleading email about Oil in the Bakken Formation. It's outside of the scope of this post, but you can find out about that one here .
You scare me because you want to kill the American capitalist goose that lays the golden egg which provides the highest standard of living in the world.
The lies are coming fast and thick now, so next time we'll take this one on piece by piece...
