The Careful Craft of Lying

If ever there was a case of "those who do not study the past are condemned to repeat it," it has to be the advent, over the past 2 years, of a politician, now leader, who has used a technique which was well described in the early 1930's and then applied through that and the next decade effectively. Faced with this "new" approach, current journalists and pundits have been befuddled, expressed astonishment at the success of a continuous stream of obvious lies. Everyone from Mark Shields, to Joe Bruni to Chris Cuomo have stared into the camera, or written with jaws dropped, flustered, as if well, this is just something we have never seen before. What do we do?

This well worn technique, which has gone by various descriptions, but most commonly called, "The Big Lie" was described in a paper written by anonymous Army bureaucrats in the middle of the last century:

The phrase was also used in a report prepared during the war by the United States Office of Strategic Services in describing [his] psychological profile:

His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.

--Wikipedia

The practitioner of this technique described the basis for it in his famous book, written while in prison:

"Thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.

It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation.
For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying."

If this sounds familiar, it should.
1. Never allow the public to cool off: Well, thank you Twitter. 
2. Never admit a fault: Check that box
3. Never leave room for alternatives:  Well, that nasty guy was a Muslim, so all Muslims...
4. If you repeat it frequently enough, people will sooner or later believe it. Crooked Hillary. Lock her up. Obama born in Kenya. Muslims coming to kill us. Mexican rapists. 
5. The grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it: Little Marco, Pocahontas, Crooked Hillary.

The one departure is choosing one enemy at a time and blaming him for everything. In that our current Dotard has chosen a new path. He can pick a whole cast of characters to assail, and given the technology, he can keep a lot of balls up in the air.


If all this does not sound familiar,  then you haven't been paying attention.