Have you noticed that Republicans have been losing a lot lately?

This, in an environment where most Americans think that Democrats are screwing up the country. Why do you think that is?

Sure, hatred of Trump has something to do with it. Abortion politics has something to do with it. A lot, actually. Each of you can name an issue where Republicans are in bad odor with ordinary people, but add them all together and one thing becomes clear: propaganda works.

Why is Trump so unpopular? Was it because things got worse under his presidency? Uh, yeah, no. Things got immeasurably better, and even a lot of people who hate him will say that.

Is abortion such a drag on Republican prospects because people don’t agree that late term abortions are immoral, except in extreme circumstances? That’s not what the polls say.

Why do people think Republicans are all-in on banning books? Has anybody suggested making the publishing of any books illegal? Of course not. Democrats actively campaign to prevent the publication or sale of books they don’t like, but Republicans don’t.

So what is it?

It is the steady drumbeat of propaganda portraying Republicans as Nazi White Supremacists who want to force 11 year-olds to birth babies, schoolmarms who hate gays, and White Supremacists who hunt minorities in the dead of night. We wanted to kill grandma and deserved to be put in camps:

January 2022:

▪️30% of Democrats agreed that children should be taken away from unvaccinated parents
▪️Over 40% of Democrats agreed that the unvaccinated should be sent to quarantine camps
▪️Almost 50% of Democrats agreed that critics of the vaccine should be fined/imprisoned pic.twitter.com/4CsKpsn5X0

— James Melville (@JamesMelville) July 12, 2023

You can’t escape the propaganda. It is everywhere. In the schools, in the classrooms, on every university campus, and in the MSM.

And it works. I had a conversation with a friend who hates Trump and asked him what Trump actually did to make his life worse, and he stared at me. He is Trump!

January 6. Russia. Muh democracy. Orange man bad!

Honestly, he admitted things were better under Trump, but he bought every lie the Left pushed about Trump. The propaganda worked.

In the case of Trump he has the handicap of playing into the tropes. He can’t help himself, because he is a narcissistic jerk. But despite the whole “coup” narrative, somehow he managed to not actually try a coup. He left on January 20th; in a huff, but he left. He never had anything to do with Russian misinformation, and a new report in Matt Taibbi’s Racket shows that Russia spent only $3000 on election-related social media spending in 2016. Not exactly a major investment to get Trump elected. So even the Russian interference story is bunk.

Cost: New Knowledge claimed that the IRA’s “manipulation of American political discourse had a budget that exceeded $25 million USD.” But that number is based on a widely repeated error that mistakes the IRA’s [Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA) troll farm] spending on US-related activities with its parent project’s overall global budget, including domestic social-media activity in Russia. According to a 2019 court filing by attorneys for Concord Management, a firm tied to the IRA, discovery provided by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team revealed that the total amount spent on social media advertisements “that even arguably meet the definition of” 2016 election-related content amounted to $2,930.

Narrative narrative narrative. Rinse, repeat. Truth or falsity matters much less than repetition.

No one story seals the deal, but the constant repetition does the trick. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, right?

How do we counter it? We certainly don’t have the megaphones that the Left does. As you can see with the Israel-Hamas war, public opinion can be swayed not by any one story, but the constant repetition is eroding support for Israel despite the fact that Hamas literally is still holding hostages, declaring that they don’t care about Palestinians in Gaza, and promises more 10/7s.

The media still focuses on how mean Israel is to Palestinians, and the Biden Administration is feeling the heat, and Democrat support for Israel is in peril. The propaganda is working. Slowly, because Hamas is so evil. But it is working. Support for Israel will slip and unless Hamas is finished off soon, Israel will stand alone.

That’s what the media and their allies want.

One thing we can do is speak up individually. We have significant numbers, and no one of us can persuade everybody, but a lot of us rebutting the narrative can create a counter-drumbeat. That doesn’t mean protests, although protests can make a difference. But protests also work by getting media attention and the media hates us.

It means talking to your friends and making the case. You are a trusted source, and the media is less so. It only works its magic through repetition, not credibility.

No one conversation will win the day, but again: drumbeat. With facts. Pictures and videos preferably, because they work better than words.

We have to do something, because we are losing, and in losing we are losing not just elections but our country.

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