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For eight long years---longer actually---all the conservatives had to do to "catapult the propaganda" was to announce it. Their spokesmen simply made things up as was thought necessary or convenient from time to time and the Republican "echo chamber"---sometimes called the "main stream media"---repeated it on the radio, the TV, the blogs and in print---until many deemed it true simply because "everyone" said so.
In this fashion, we were taught that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9-11, Iraq possessed "Weapons of Mass Destruction" and that our conquest of Iraq would be a "cakewalk", with grateful Iraqis greeting our troops with smiles, songs and sweets.
That was then.
Now, we're being told that Obama has failed. Not "Is experiencing some difficulty". Not "Hasn't yet accomplished all he'd hoped". No, the word is "failed". Just as Rush and the rest of the neo-con cheerleaders had hoped, "failure" is the albatross that is now being hung as an accomplished fact around Barack Obama's neck.
The Health Care legislation is a "failure".
All actions taken to shore up the economy have "failed".
And, now, President Obama has "failed" to plug the leak in the Gulf and is "failing" to clean up all the crude oil washing up on our beaches and killing our marshes.
No need to substantiate anything. No need for corroboration or---what are those things called?---"facts". No, just say it. Launch it into the 24 hour news cycle and let the bought-and-paid-for "journalists" ping pong it back and forth across the airwaves: "As reported on Fox News---"; "Matt Drudge has a story that---"; "Glen Beck today announced that---".
If we as a nation continue to allow this slow-acting poison to be distributed without remedy or antidote to virtually every citizen on a daily basis, are we really going to claim to be surprised when democracy and decency and liberty perish?
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