onegoldenraptor

Posted by David Brin

https://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2025/05/lying-promises-and-how-to-nail-them.html

Back to politics this weekend. Starting with:

1.  Please don't use the TACO slur. It may amuse you and irk your enemy, sure. But this particular mockery has one huge drawback. It might taunt him into not backing down ('chickening out') some time when it's really needed, in order to save all our lives. So... maybe... grow up and think tactics?

A far more effective approach is to hammer hypocrisy! 

Yeah, sure. Many have tried that. Though never with the relentless consistency that cancels their tactic of changing the subject.

I've never seen it done with the kind of harsh repetitive simplicity that I recommended in Polemical Judo. Repetitive simplicity that is the tactic that the Foxites perfected! As when all GOPpers repeat the same party line all together - like KGB metronomes - all on the same morning.

And hence...

2. ... and hence, here is a litany of hypocrisy and poor memory that is capsulated enough to be shouted!   

These are challenges that might reach a few of your getting-nervous uncles. especially as a combined list! 

Ten years ago, Donald Trump promised proof that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. 

“Soon! The case is water-tight and ready. I'll present it next week!”  The same promise got repeated, week after week, month after month. And sure, his dittohead followers relished not facts, but the hate mantra, so they never kept track...

Also ten years ago Beck and Hannity etc. declared "George Soros personally toppled eight foreign governments!" (Actually, it's sort of true!) They promised to list those eight Soros-toppled victims! Only they never did. Because providing that list would have left Fox a smoldering ruin.

Nine years ago, running against H Clinton, Donald Trump declared I will build a Big Beautiful WALL!" From sea to shining sea. 

Funny how he never asked his GOP-run Congress, later, for the money. And he still hasn't. Clinton and Obama each built more fences & surveillance systems to control the border than Trump ever did.

Also nine years ago,"You’ll never see me on a golf course, I’ll be working so hard for you!”  Um...

Eight years ago - after inauguration and taking over the US government, he vowed: “Within weeks the indictments will roll in a great big wave. You’ll see the Obama Administration was the most corrupt ever!”  

(Real world: there were zero indictments of the most honest and least blemished national administration in all of human history. Bar none. In fact, grand juries - consisting mostly of white retirees in red states - have indicted FORTY TIMES as many high Republicans as Democrats. Care to offer wager stakes?)

Also eight years ago, his 1st foreign guests in the White House - Lavrov and Kisliak, giggled with him ecstatically (see below), thinking their KGB tricks had captured the USA. Alas for Putin's lads, it took them 8 more years.

Seven years ago, ol’ Two Scoops promised a “terrific health care bill for everyone!” to replace ‘horrible Obamacare!’  And repeatedly for the next six years he declared “You’ll see it in two weeks!” And then... in 2 weeks. And then... in 2 weeks. And then in 2 weeks… twenty... fifty more times.

Also seven years ago, "Kim Jong Un and I fell in love!" (see above).

Six years ago, Fox “News” declared in court “we don’t do news, we are an entertainment company,” in order to writhe free of liability and perjury for oceans of lies. And still Fox had to pay $150 millions.

Five years ago Trump’s son-in-law was “about to seal the deal on full peace in the Middle East!”

Four years ago, Don promised “Absolute proof the election was stolen by Biden and the dems!" 

Howl after howl by Foxite shills ensued, and yet, not one scintilla of credible evidence was ever presented. While blowhards and blockheads fulminated into secessionist fury, all courts – including many GOP appointed judges - dismissed every 'case' as ludicrous, and several of them fined Trumpist shriekers for frivolous lying. Oh, the screeches and spumes! But not…one…shred of actual evidence. Ever. 

Three years ago, three different GOP Congressmen alluded-to or spoke-of how sex orgies are rife among top DC Republicans. And two of them alluded to resulting blackmail. 

Trump demanded “release the Epstein Files!”... then filed every lawsuit that his lawyers could concoct, in order to prevent it. And to protect an ocean of NDAs. 

Oh, and he promised “Great revelations!” on UFOs and the JFK assassination, just as soon as he got back in office. Remember that? Disappointed, a little? And Epstein's pal is still protected.

Two years ago, Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney and even Mitch McConnell were hinting at a major push to reclaim the Republican Party - or at least a vestigially non-traitor part of it - from the precipice where fanaticism and blackmail and treason had taken it. 

If necessary - (it was said) - they would form a new, Real Rebublican Party, where a minority of decent adults remaining in the GOP 'establishment' might find refuge and begin rebuilding. 

Only it seems that crown prince Ryan & co. chickened out, as he always has... RACO.

One year ago... actually less... the Economist offered this cover plus detailed stats, showing what always happens. That by the end of every Democratic administration, most things - certainly the economy and yes, deficits - are better. And they always get worse across the span of GOP admins. Care to bet this time?

   Alas, now the bitterly laughingstock of the world, deliberately immolating the universities and science and professions that truly Made America Great. 

There's your year-by year Top Ten Hypocricies countdown. And it's worth a try, to see if hammering the same things over and over - which worked so well for the Foxites might be worth a try?

            Oh, sure. Those aren’t my paramount complaints against Putin’s lackey and his shills. 

My main gripe is the one thing that unites them all -- Trump’s oligarchs with foreign enemies and with MAGA groundlings. 

 That one goal? Shared hatred of every single fact using profession, from science and civil service to the FBI/intel/military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on Terror…

... the very ones standing between YOU and a return to feudal darkness.*

These reminder samplers of promises never kept are still valid. They could be effective if packaged properly, And will someone please show me who – in this wilderness – is pointing at them?

== Final lagniappe... a reminder of the most-loathesome of all... ==

* And yeah... here again in the news is the would-be Machiavelli/Wormtongue who flatter-strokes the ingrate, would-be lords who are seeking to betray the one renaissance that gave them everything they have.

Okay, I was planning to finish with a riff (again) on teleologies or notions of TIME. Very different notions that are clutched by the far-left, by today's entire right, and by the beleaguered liberal/middle.

But anon. Another time.

https://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2025/05/lying-promises-and-how-to-nail-them.html