Welcome to the machine

I had been wondering how the whole Warch Churchill flap became such a barn-burner. Well, Kevin Drum does a little research and provides a handy little timeline and illustration of how fringe, non-stories are pushed by the Right Machine, then ultimately validated by The New York Times. Next thing you know, a guy I'd never heard of has become, for the Right, a leading lefty icon, and an obscure, hate-filled and ignorant rant he wrote three years ago has become a typical America-hating leftist manifesto.

Digby takes Drum's pass, does a neat little head fake, then shoots and scores.

Kevin thinks it's fascinating how an obscure story like this finds it's way into the mainstream, but it's much more than fascinating. It's pernicious. This is also how lies and smears are spread and validated and there is almost no way to tell the difference anymore between a valid story and a right wing feeding frenzy. It's supremely ironic that the minute the "liberal" NY Times decides to engage, even if it refutes the allegations and sets the record straight, it helps spreads the story everywhere because of its massive influence. Its mere entry into the discourse helps turn a contrived right wing smear job into a national scandal and puts one more nail in the coffin of truth and objective reality. Once people hear what they want to hear, it doesn't matter if it's been debunked as a total fraud. They'll continue to believe it...

Digby explains that the politicians and commentariat on the Right have become masters at creating a "mental mode," and then hammer it home, day after day until, before you know it, Democratic Senators are considered traitors, and progressives are trying to sell the country to the UN. Digby calls this pernicious. I call it the bleeding edge of fascism.

They elevate the likes of Ward Churchill, and then, "with more regret than anger," tell their viewers/listeners that this really is what progressives think of the victims of the 9-11 murders (or American troops, or the religious, or, whatever). Meanwhile, creeps who actually do have a large following, like Ann Coulter or Sean Hannity, are able to say the most outrageous things and yet not only are they not taken to task, they are sent on book tours.

The effect of this "mental mode" may well be that certain speech will have "its limits," such as criticizing a Republican president, while incendiary speech that labels progressives as something short of patriotic Americans, or even something other than humans, will become part of the accepted discourse.