TODAY'S PROPAGANDA EMAIL is a brief one, and my analysis is brief, as well.
Here's the email, which tells a straight-forward, but clever, lie:
It's hard to believe our President is that dumb!! OK. It's not so hard.
Your government at work...
You will love this one, I haven't stopped laughing yet.....
For those of you who have never traveled to the west, or southwest, cattle guards are horizontal steel rails placed at fence openings, in dug-out places in the roads adjacent to highways (sometimes across highways), to prevent cattle from crossing over that area. For some reason the cattle will not step on the "guards," probably because they fear getting their feet caught between the rails.
A few months ago, President Obama received and was reading a report that there were over 100,000 cattle guards in Colorado . Colorado ranchers had protested his proposed changes in grazing policies, so he ordered the Secretary of the Interior to fire half of the "cattle" guards immediately!!
Before the Secretary of the Interior could respond and presumably try to straighten him out, Vice-President, Joe Biden, intervened with a request that.. before any "cattle" guards were fired, they be given six months of retraining.
And these guys are running our country, OMG!!Passed on to you without further comment....
The interesting thing about this one is that it's actually a very old joke, native to cattle-country.
The original joke is of a variety that my cousins, who grew up on a farm in Maine, used to tell me all the time: the theme being the ignorance of city-slickers.
A city slicker visits a farmer, and asks if he can have a try at milking a cow.
The farmer watches the slicker get more and more frustrated as time ticks by and he fails to get a single drop.
Finally, the farmer takes pity on the poor guy, and drawls...
"If you can't find anything there, you might try the udder end."
I'm sorry.
It's the only one I can remember.
But the point is—these were jokes.
The teller knew it, the hearer knew it.
There was no deception, no intent at deception, involved.
But put this kind of joke in the hands of a propagandist—a person who asks of language, not "Is it true?" but "What effect can I make it have?" and you get a lie—like the one above.
Even though the lie is so pathetic that it's hard to believe anyone would buy it.
Notice, by the way, that the propagandist slyly buries a dishonorable reason for Obama's decision in the middle of the story—sheer revenge over a protest to some of his policies.
A nasty little touch, which he also expects you, the reader, to believe.
Which brings me to the real tragedy—and real irony—of this email, in the opening line:
It's hard to believe our President is that dumb!!
The author chooses to sell you, the reader, on this idea by telling a lie so transparent that he gives away a truth about himself.
He doesn't really believe the President is dumb.
He believes you are.
He misunderestimates you.
At least, that's what I think today.
