Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Propaganda Minister, famously said: “Accuse the other side of that which you yourself are guilty.”
Or, allegedly said. Various sites claim that this is a misattribution of
“The cleverest trick used in propaganda against Germany during the war was to accuse Germany of what our enemies themselves were doing,” which Goebbels said at a 1934 Nuremberg rally.
All of which is to say, that even toxic and/or homicidal mendacity covers itself with more mendacity. Case in point, TownHall‘s Kurt Schlichter in his Goebbelseque essay (and multiple book plug),
Are We Looking At Another Civil War?
Kurt Schlichter / TownhallConsider the logic of the left and it’s no wonder that many people are considering the unspeakable – whether America will devolve into actual violent conflict. But I dare speak about it at length in my brand-new book We’ll Be Back: The Fall and Rise of America …
The parallels to Goebbels’ questionable quote are so striking as to actually embrace “identical.”
Here is what Mr. Schlichter writes with his poisoned pen:
The logic of the left accepts political violence. A few years ago, one of its acolytes tried to wipe out the congressional Republican caucus on a softball field;
This is known as “extreme cherry picking.”
last month, another member of the MSNBCNN target demo tried to off Justice Kavanaugh for somewhat limiting the ability of progressives to conveniently kill babies.*
Note the fake connection of MSNBC and CNN as the “same.”
Even the reaction to the recent molestation of the famously beer-ophilic jurist as he nibbled on a rib-eye at Morton’s in DC was indicative – this personal confrontation was celebrated by the left instead of decried.
As Pete Buttigieg noted yesterday on Fox News Sunday, Kavenaugh never heard the protesters, never saw the protestors and was never threatened by the protesters. As Mayor Peter ALSO noted, his partner had stated that Kavenaugh has a right to exist in safety, but has NO right to stifle the First Amendment protests of those of whom he has disenfranchised. (That’s for NEXT year’s SCOTUS to revoke).
*NOTE: The alleged assassin has pled NOT guilty to the charge, is on psychological medication and may well be “unhinged.” Either way, if the presumption of the law is “guilty until proven innocent” then Schlichter has a small point of guilt by association. Otherwise, he’s distorting reality to fit in with his frankly repulsive views. Read more here:
Man pleads not guilty to trying to kill Justice Kavanaugh
The judge set a tentative trial date for Aug. 23.
You see? I’m barely halfway through the first couple of paragraphs and the lying has already topped Empire State Building levels when stacked up.
Accuse the other side of that which you yourself are guilty.
How many people have been gunned down, driven into and otherwise harmed by RIGHT WING extremists in the same period? Go no further than the Texas Trump fan’s Uvalde, Texas slaughter. Or Buffalo, New York. Or …. on and on and on. Any of which is certainly equal to the cherry-picked anecdotes of our book pusher.
The point is that our TownHall scrivener has begun his thesis with horrifically bad evidence, which he either KNOWS is propagandistic nonsense, or cynically expects his readers to believe, having been inured to logic, facts and reason by thirty-six years of GOPaganda: painting the Democrats and Progressives as “the other,” as fundamentally “immoral,” and now, as homicidally intent on destroying the US of A.
But what would a civil conflict look like if, heaven forbid, it ever came to pass again? The potential for a low-grade leftist insurgency may be the most likely scenario if it were to happen, but there is also the threat of a more substantial conflict involving paramilitary (i.e., groups of armed civilians) and even traditional military forces – right up to actual maneuver combat between blue forces that are primarily urban and red forces that are primarily rural with suburban territory mixed or contested.
If this military pseudo-science wasn’t bad enough, Schlichter QUOTES himself, pretending to be General Patton or somesuch:
My new book We’ll Be Back: The Fall and Rise of America examines this in detail as a cautionary example, and puts it this way:
“[T]he blues face a real challenge. They will have those massively over-extended logistical lines. It’s nice to hold cities, but if you do not also hold all the rural territory between the cities, as well as the routes to the places where you are getting your food and fuel (and holding those is a big question in itself), then you have a real problem. The stuff that keeps cities alive has to pass through Indian country, and even assuming you could convince civilian truckers to make that passage, the blue states would still have to devote a massive proportion of their forces to defending those routes. Even a small-scale campaign against those supply lines could cause chaos in the cities. Imagine the madness as soft urban professionals, unused to privation and largely disarmed, find themselves both starving and subject to the will of the strong and merciless. It’s The Road Warrior, and there is no Mad Max coming to save you. [SIC – as in no ending quote]
Schlichter understands logistics as well as he understands rational, factual debate, which is to say, not at all.
Here is his diagnosis of the 1960s followed by his suggestion for the 2020s:
In the late-sixties/early-seventies, there was an urban leftist insurgency by groups like the Weather Underground and the Black Panthers that resulted in hundreds of bombings and many killings. It was dealt with as a law enforcement matter, but in a distinctly militaristic way. The Los Angeles Police Department famously annihilated most of the Symbionese Liberation Army – whose battle cry was “DEATH TO THE FASCIST INSECT!” – in a blazing firefight in South Central that was broadcast on national TV.
Seriously? Using the “Symbionese Liberation Army” as emblematic of anything is the historical equivalent of illiteracy. As several have noted, the SLA breaks virtually all behavior patterns for “resistance” groups, but perhaps in Schlichter’s view, at least they are Black.
And then, a few paragraphs down, this IDIOCY — and its implicit rejection by the same source!
Keep in mind that a civil conflict that spins beyond a law enforcement operation is certain to involve paramilitary forces – bands of civilians with their own private weapons while living their best Second Amendment lives by fighting against what they see as tyranny. That has happened before, and as a result we don’t drive on the left and have generally good teeth.
But we should not be glib about it.
Too late. Glibness has passed into incoherency. But DO go on, Mr. Self-Righteous:
But don’t insult our intelligence by referencing the minor fracas that was J6. If that was an insurrection, you would have seen some armed insurrecting instead of selfie-snapping. If red America wanted to start something, they would have brought along their ARs like progressive James Hodgkinson did.
So, while the chance of civil conflict is low, violence is not only possible but it has been used by the left as a means of making political change in America in the past. And the evidence is that the left remains ideologically open to using violence in the future to achieve its goals.
Right. The January 6 insurrection was nothing, but one mentally questionable individual and one outlier group from the Sixties is fair game as evidence. What has Mr. Schlichter been smoking, and more importantly, where can we get some? (It must be some KILLER weed.)
Oh, and don’t forget historical false equivalency:
The Civil War that followed four score and change years later was sparked by Democrats angry over the Republican demand that they stopped treating human beings inhumanly – a theme that continues to this day.
This is historical, logical, and purest Goebbelsian nonsense. Taking the right to choose from half of Americans over half a century was Republicans’ treating human beings “humanely”? Seriously?
It is obvious that Schlichter KNOWS he has spouted nonsense, as he attempts to inoculate himself from the fair criticisms of anyone who reads this noxious swill:
Leftist critics and their fellow travelers at garbage outlets like The Bulwark will no doubt lie and claim that I am somehow advocating what I am warning against – sadly, this kind of bad faith refusal to engage and debate honestly has become all too common today and itself promotes conflict by eliminating the possibility of resolving disputes through reason. It leaves the exercise of raw power as the only means to solve problems, a situation common in much of the rest of the world. But we must look the monster of political violence in its eyes if we hope to defeat it. The way to bring America back to greatness need not be force. We have the Constitution, and it gives us the answers to all our questions…. [emphasis added]
Nope, Kurt. you are thinking of the Fundamentalist bible.
The Constitution is not and never has been the prescription for solving all US problems, else there would be no amendments, no SCOTUS and certainly no need for Congress. this is even more ridiculous than the OTHER brain-dead reasoning of this walking coma victim.
And yes, Kurt, you ARE advocating what you ware warning against, muddled though your prose be, and muddied as its thinking.
Finally, this mess concludes with a long advertisement for other brain-dead offerings from our GOPagandist. Even dead Goebbels would be embarrassed by the sheer amateurishness of this wrong-headed screed.
Coming Thursday: “Is It Time for a National Divorce?”
Which he decried earlier! “My book is not giddy over the threat of conflict – instead, it is a warning that comes from both my personal history and what I saw overseas.”
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What a terrible ad! Indeed then entire column is his advertisement for his seemingly lousy book on questionable logistics and even more questionable tactics in a war that he says shouldn’t happen but gleefully embraces.
What has happened to our society that someone so clearly unworthy of serious attention can turn into a virtual multinational conglomerate of Right wing nonsense and absurdity?
The Right is on the verge of a civil war, and, if anything, the Left is far behind in the rhetoric of revolution AND the acquisition of weapons FOR said war. To pretend otherwise is to pretend, period.
And, as with Goebbels propaganda, GOPaganda is literally toxic to human life.
Courage.
NOTE: Evidently, I dealt with Schlichter’s civil war nonsense before in 2018:
MARCH 12, 2018 · 3:09 PM
Townhall Columnist hilariously suggests that GOPs will win next Civil War
his vorpal sword 