THE CONSERVATIVE PROPAGANDA MACHINE seems to live off conflation in various forms—smearing one idea with another until they are so covered with mud that no one can tell them apart.
Health care, we are told, equals "socialism".
When we were against Bush's policy in Iraq, we were "against the troops".
"Saddam" equaled "Al Qaeda", "Abortion" equals "murder", "invasion" equaled "liberation", not allowing teachers to force children to pray equals not allowing children to pray.
It's an effective technique.
If you can't find a reason for people to reject something, find something they already reject, then tell them it's the same thing.
So I was only mildly surprised when they started calling President Obama both a socialist and a fascist.
But the more I thought about it, the more surprised I became—because this time they have a point.
I think it was C.S. Lewis who recommended reading one old book for every new book.
I don't hold to anything like that ratio, but during the last few weeks I have been to see Michael Moore's new film, Capitalism: A Love Story, while I was in the middle of re-reading G.K. Chesterton's The Outline of Sanity.
Moore's film was frightening, insightful, and strangely hopeful.
In particular, he makes a very clever argument against our Capitalistic system, by accepting the conservative conflation, and turning it against them.
Capitalist propaganda has, for decades, worked at embedding two simple equations in the minds of Americans:
Liberal = Socialist = Communist = Russian and Chinese Totalitarianism = Godless = Labor Unions = Welfare = Health Care = UnAmerican = Slavery = Evil = Death
and
Conservative = Capitalist = Democracy = American = Freedom = Laisez Faire Economics = God = Success = Plenty = Family = Home = Rosy-Cheeked Children
As these equations became more and more accepted by the conservative base, it became easier and easier to manipulate their votes.
Take health care reform, for example.
What Obama and the Democrats have proposed, public option and all, is a rather mild set of measures to put a predominantly Capitalistic and free market system back on track.
If it works, they will have saved our Capitalist approach to healthcare, while protecting all those rosy cheeks.
The giant health care corporations are against this, not because it will cost them profits, but because it won't increase their profits enough.
So they call his plan "socialist" and talk about "government-run healthcare" even though they know, full well, that the Democrats are suggesting no such thing.
By doing that, they bring up pictures of Russian dictatorship in the minds of their base, and energize them to come out and disrupt town hall meetings in order to "save their country" and children from "socialism".
Moore responds by doing three things:
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First, he accepts the simplistic propaganda split between "Capitalism" and "Socialism".
He doesn't try to undo the conflation, or argue fine points. -
Second, he makes a strong case against Capitalism, based on what it is doing to families, and
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Third, he makes a case for socialism as the alternative, pointing out that in its simplest terms socialism is simply another word for democracy.
He's probably right to take this tack.
Long, detailed discussions of the various shades of "isms" have no place in a two hour documentary, not if he's hoping to get more than six people to watch.
And the case he makes is both clear and compelling.
But I've also been reading G.K. Chesterton, another mountain of flesh who used humor and intelligence to address the issues of his day.
Next time, C.K. Chesterton on
socialism, capitalism, and
something completely different...
