Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Liars, Damn Liars and Romney

Double speak is on a rampage these days, from cheaters calling themselves sex addicts to Romney calling out Obama's campaign as "about division and attack and hatred" that is "designed to bring a sense of enmity and jealousy and anger." (CNN) This came a week after Romney coined his own term "Obamabloney" (see below) to attack the President for lying so much. To call the Obama campaign hateful is like Minstrel stars calling blacks racist for picketing outside a show, just as Romney critiquing the President for lying is like an elephant calling a mouse "fatty." One of the more interesting terms used here, besides hatred (which I guarantee will be used by Romney as the election nears), is "jealousy." The reference, of course, is an attempt to argue that the poor and middle class condemning the growing inequality in America is simply envy, and that there is no reason to engage in such debates. It is one way to handle the biggest problem Romney faces -- which is the fact that he himself is emblematic of what Americans are so tired of, the rich and entitled "elitist" Ivy Leaguers whose greed is costing average people jobs and reducing the overall quality of life of Americans.

The campaign is clearly sizing up as one of the most contentious in history, with Romney and his team willing to say just about anything to win. The lies started with the first campaign ad (which famously used a clip of Obama saying: "The McCain campaign say if the election is about the economy, we lose", without the rather contextually important, but inconvenient, first three words) but they have accelerated in recent months. And while attacking your enemy for doing what you're doing is a tried and tested rhetorical strategy, here it almost seems like classic Freudian projection from a man that seems to stand for little but the interests of his below multimillionaires. Now that he has signed up Ryan on the ticket, at least he can't pretend to be a moderate and one could thus argue that like 2000 (though with a very different media narrative), this election is shaping up as one that will affect the country for decades ...

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