When a right winger posts some talking points on a social media sight, or in a group setting,
don't try to defend against them.
1. First insult them. "How can you be so stupid as to believe that shit?"
2. Then put them on the defensive. "How many jobs bills has the tea party congress proposed?"
3. Then post a left wing talking point, "We have more active oil wells in this country today than at any time in our history."
= new reply since forum marked as read
or whether or not they hold muster. Their formula for molding public opinion, forged by the gutter-level tactics of Gingrich, Atwater, and Rove, is simple: 1.) conjure up an inflammatory self-serving talking point, no matter how absurd (i.e. "Obama is a Muslim socialist who wants to take away your guns"
, 2.) repeat, repeat, repeat, 3.) repeat, repeat, repeat, 4.) continue to repeat until the ridiculous assertion takes root among enough useful idiots, 5.) when a rational person tries to counter the claim with facts, call them anti-American and repeat some more. No matter how much hard data and factual backing the rational person has, the useful idiots are now parroting the ridiculous claim, spreading the message like a chain letter.
I believe Stephen Colbert referred to this as "truthiness".
Logically, the only hope to counter these propaganda talking points would be to repeat the factual points ad nauseum in the media. However, two problems lie here; first, factual, logical reality does not own a media empire ready to tow it's party lines like trained seals; second, unlike right-wing propagandists who have made an art form of whittling down their message into black-and-white five-words-or-less jingoism, factuality tends to run more long-winded, given that most aspects of politics and sociology are nuanced and multi-faceted. In other words, you've already lost them at "If you look at the actual numbers here..."
