Have you noticed how the radical right wing keeps rewriting recent history?

[Angry Mollusk]

Right wing republicans keep rewriting history- examples being

*They claim Bush inherited the deficit from Clinton
*That Pres Clinton did nothing to go after Osama Bin Laden
*That GW Bush wanted to defeat terrorism, from the moment he was elected
*That 9/11 and Iraq were in fact connected
*That anyone who opposes the war in Iraq 'hates freedom'.
*That Saddam refused to allow the weapons inspectors inside Iraq
*That the US never supported Saddam Hussein
*That we found WMD in Iraq
*That Saddam was involved with attacks on 9/11




All of these points have been discredited, yet many right wingers cling to them as truth, particularly the lie that WMD were found. Point out that they're wrong, and the conservatives will question your patriotism. Do the Republicans who buy this disinformation know it's BS, or are they just hopelessly ignorant fools?

[angstlessk]

1. yeah, all 19% of his supporters, in fact!

[Vincardog]

2. I know them to be willfully hopelessly ignorant fools

[zonmoy]

9. left out evil.

[DeeDeeNY]

3. Republicans do not believe in the "reality based community"

Just like their their leader, they make their own reality: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17BUSH.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[Stapz]

4. They think they can actually get away with it?

If they think all Americans are going to fall for their lies why dont they stop lying?

Because they havent been impeached yet? Lets get that ball rolling ok...

[emperor124]

5. Something like..

40% of fox viewers still believe at least half of those last I checked. n/t

[Perry Logan]

6. It's more than just history. Wingers live in a delusional Bizarro World all the time.

They have their science cooked up for them. They have news outlets that tell them what they want to hear, hate radio hosts to reassure them it's all real. The whole conservative thing has been a fraud from the start.

As soon as GWB leaves office, I'm sure they'll start telling us what a terrific job he did and how everybody loved him. Wingers believe what they want to believe, no matter what.

[zonmoy]

17. When wingers end up in hell.

they will be deluding themselves that they are in heaven.

[TomHansley]

7. people just believe what they want to...

with all the media spin now a days, if they don't like what's on CNN, they can just flip on to FAUX news...

[Donkey_Punch_Dubya]

8. They are best at this for elections

In 2004 they convinced many millions of people that George Bush was a war hero and John Kerry was a military deserter/traitor. They convinced people that Bush inherited Clinton's economic shambles, and they convinced people that Democrats are the ones who spend and create deficits despite creating the biggest deficits ever.

More importantly, they routinely convince millions of lower middle class people to vote against their interests because of fear tactics on gays/abortion while they have done almost nothing to actually change those things during their time in office. I mean, if you are someone who votes R because you care so much about ending abortions, and are told that if you vote R they will stop all abortions, you might wonder why abortion is only slightly harder option for people (thank Jebus it is still legal) instead of running back to vote R the next time when they told you they would eliminate it. But they do, and it keeps working.

These are the most dangerous things the right wingers have done to rewrite history, and they will no doubt try to do it again this year by saying that all their problems under Bush are the Democrats' fault, and once again tell voters that unless they vote R then government will spend way too much money, as if the Bush admin hasn't thrown away a TRILLION dollars on Iraq and spent more money than any Democratic adminitration by far. They try to immunize themselved from something they are guilty of by preemptively accusing the democrats of doing it, so that any response looks weak on the surface ("I know you are but what am I?") despite being 100% true.

[SergeyDovlatov]

10. well, technically it is not a rewrite

if you examine publications in the build up to the war in Iraq, administration was able to successfully paint that picture with help of the media and a lot of prominent democrats (Kerry and HRC both made passionate speeches on why we need to go into Iraq).

So in one sense, they made history to be what they wanted. Since then, some people have learned the truth, some didn't.

[Karl_Bonner_1982]

11. Economic revisionism, right wing style:

*The system worked so wonderfully in the late 19th century before government and the unions got involved.
*FDR's policies prolonged the Great Depression. Had we just let the free market take care of itself, everything would have recovered several years sooner.
*Things were great back in the 1950s before we had disability insurance, equal pay for women, affirmative action, anti-discrimination law, or Medicare. But then the damn government got in there and wrecked the economy.
*Reagan's tax cuts and war on unions helped save our economy from total disaster.
*Reaganomics has benefited everyone. We are all richer today that we would have been without him.
*Supply side economics didn't work because we didn't cut spending. If we had - oh wait, we were claiming that we could get more revenue for the government! Hmmm....
*Clinton benefited from the legacy of Reaganomics. But then he raised taxes - which we are feeling the pinch of today despite Bush's tax cuts. So we'll have to cut taxes even further and that'll make everything feel really good!
*The Bush tax cut was mainly for the middle class.

[Blackeye101]

13. Good stuff

There is nothing to refute here.....

[Stingo]

12. Writing takes too much talent

With rewriting they just take the truth and alter it. not much talent needed, but a whole bunch of mendacity.

[agentS]

14. Historical revisionism, minus a few details

notice that the ReichWingers have not made any mention of the bombing of the USS Cole and Bush's non-response to it. Nor any mention of the failed immigration reform or the failed social security reform. Nor any mention of the failures of Abu Garib and Gitmo.

Truth, it seems, has a liberal bias.

[Puer Rex]

15. wag the dog

I am so sick of these TRAITORS putting their party ahead of their country. They call us traitors at the drop of a hat. Clinton bombed bin Laden and planned to keep doing it until Delay and his slimy ilk, in all their impeachment rapture, raised such a fuss he had to stop. Thanks GOP. And thanks for that great un-American idea your permanent majority. I am a staunch Democrat ,but not even I would want a Democratic permanent majority. Why? Bad for the country.

[grillo7]

16. It's always been puzzling to me...

when I hear the unbelievable lies that go unchallenged and unrefuted on O'Reilly or Hannity or whoever, I have to wonder: are these guys just completely mentally unbalanced, or are they brilliant Goebbels-esque propagandists? I guess the question for me is, are they consciously changing the facts as it suits them, like sociopaths, or do they somehow really believe this shit? Either way, it isn't good...

[Middling]

18. Goebbels-esque propagandists covers it

I have read and posted on Hannity’s forums for years, but I haven’t had the stomach to listen to Hannity or Rush for at least 6 years or more. I would probably throw something at the radio.
They cannot quote the half-truths and outright lies that they do without knowing what they are doing. They are simply clever and evil.

But the scarier group is the one that believes every word they say.
There are a few of us posters there who attempt to poke holes in the enormous gaps in their logic.
We are normally answered with insults-never reasoned replies.
And, of course, if we push them too hard, we get “banned”.

No, it isn’t good.

[deskartez]

19. The Radical Right wing rhetoric will become even more radical

My opinion on the matter of republicans rewriting history so that it suites their agenda is that this is nothing new. It has been going on for decades, but more recently it is overwhelming, particularly thanks to fact that like almost all of the media outlets in the USA that is; radio, newspapers, tv channels have been monopolized by right wing neo-cons such as Rupert Murdoc.

People working for radio, newspapers, and tv stations cannot independently or accurately report the news. Instead they have to follow some form of corporate guidelines and censure on what they say so that what i see and hear on the radio or on TV just turns me off. Even more upsetting is how on these talk shows they have constant debates with one opinion expert or another to help us think like the herd. What a load of ***. We can all think for ourselves its just a matter of, connecting the dots and adding one & two, to figure things out. All you had to do was watch BBC, DW, some french and italian news stations and read newspapers from like the Guardian, Le Monde etc., to figure out way back in 2003 that the reason for invading Iraq was because Oil. It feels to me that everyone in Europe is like 5 years ahead in time in regards to being informed. For the majority of people i come across here in the US, i feel as thought they just started figuring this matter out, maybe in great part to some expert like Allen Greenspan's giving voice to this notion in his Book, - like 5 years later after the fact. I dont know what else to say, it's just sad.

[zonmoy]

20. You never read 1984 or other more recent materials by past fascist dictators

or you would have realized that it is in the nature of fascists to keep rewriting history for their own benefit.