Babblings of a Muppet-Loving Freak

A few years ago, I did some fairly extensive research on Marie Antoinette. What I found after reading a variety of biographies is that her demise actually had nearly nothing to do with any actions she committed. There was never a declaration of "let them eat cake," no wild orgies at Versailles, no diamond necklace, no willful consumption of public funds beyond what was actually required by law, no sign that the royal children were anything other than the blood relations of she and her husband the king. Most of this was complete common sense. Basic logic and a cursory look at facts disproved practically everything that the revolutionaries were printing about her.

And yet she was guillotined.

How did that happen? Marie Antoinette, most biographers would agree, was not a genius, though she certainly was not stupid either. None of the major things she was accused of were real, but she made a very great error in calculation. When the various pamphlets, speeches, and articles being printed all over France were brought to her attention, her reaction was silence. She believed that to give such ridiculous stories even a word in reply to deny their obvious lies was to grant them too much attention and to assume the common people were insultingly ignorant. She chose the high road of not dirtying her hands by defending herself against obvious fabrication.

That's ultimately what got her shoulders separated from her head.

Any and every non-partisan political fact checking source looking at the debate last night has screamed that Trump lied so often his pants should have been smoking. Hillary checked him on nearly none of those lies, instead directing people to her website to sift through the untruths while maintaining the high road of at least usually answering the questions. I saw what she was trying to do. And I flinched because I remembered what happened to Marie Antoinette in nearly the same situation.

I hate to say this, but the majority of people will not take the two minutes to go check whether a purported "fact" is correct. That requires effort, and effort that is not entertaining, either. If a lie is repeated often enough, regardless of how ridiculous it sounds, and no one directly confronts it because it would seem like pandering to the person putting forward the lie, people start to believe it is fact, particularly if it is repeated ad nauseum.

Take, for example, the ludicrous statement wherein Trump blames Hillary, Obama, and by connection, the Democratic party, for the war in Iraq. He says it so often, his supporters can chant it along with him (a common mind control technique, actually). It shouldn't even take a history book or a brief Internet check to realize the war in Iraq started under George W. Bush with the backing of the Republicans. Yes, Democrats did support it. Heck, I admit that I fell for Bush's (or was it Cheney's) portrayal of Hussein being on the cusp of getting or possibly already having WMDs. But to say that the Republican party was not the primary instigator of that war is not only untrue, it's a complete rewriting of history.

Trump's supporters believe it, though, because it's been pounded into their heads repeatedly while the fact it is a lie is not.

The same goes for the ridiculous birther issue. Trump screamed for years that Obama was not a true U.S. citizen, a claim so obviously fraught with racist concepts that it's sickening. He paraded it on Fox News, talk shows, bumper stickers, you name it. Yet, somehow, he is now claiming he never said any of it and it was really Hillary Clinton at the head of the birther movement from the start. It's such a perfectly idiotic lie that it's tempting to say nothing, which is essentially what is now being done from the Democrats.

Due to that, Trump's supporters believe it.

He's literally taking his own faults and putting them on Hillary, a tried and true tactic with many fifth graders who blame the kid behind them in class for their own talking despite the fact their voices sound nothing alike. Hillary, believing this is not fifth grade, is passing over this kind of thing as it's undignified. She's right. It is.

And it's what got Marie Antoinette killed.

That, and anger did it. Trump's supporters are so angry that I have never seen anything similar in my lifetime, largely because it is difficult to figure out what precisely they are angry about. Immigration? Jobs going overseas? The economy? The war? Except the tiniest bit of research punctures holes in all of this. Trump sends jobs overseas. The Republicans started the war on terror. The economy is better now than under Bush by a wide margin. Immigrants are not people that are from some unknown place with no background but are rigorously vetted. But the result is schoolchildren being spat on by adults, people claiming illegal immigrants are stealing such wonderful jobs as mowing lawns and cleaning hotel rooms for below minimum wage, wild claims that this is a bad recovery (no good war, no bad peace, and no bad recovery), and a bizarre splitting on the war with many Trump supporters eager to use weapons of mass destruction on any country with a majority Muslim population while screaming that the war in Iraq was a bad choice, stating their support for veterans while slamming gold star families who aren't Christian or POWs and soldiers with PTSD for being weak. There's a lot of anger there, and the important thing to remember is that anger and common sense are very rarely in the same place at the same time.

The aristocracy in France in the 18th century was not working well. It had major faults. The poor were desperately poor and nearly hopeless, education was sparse, disease was rampant, and the upper classes were in some cases wildly out of touch with what reality was like outside the gates of their chateaux. There were plenty of real issues that could have been actually debated and dealt with. But those were very rarely the points brought up by revolutionaries. Instead of dealing with more difficult concepts, they focused on making the people angry over events that were, on the whole, fabricated and usually far more entertaining for the masses, most peppered heavily with sex, intrigue, and paper-thin villains. Get people angry enough and repeat the same things often enough, and they will believe anything. Let me repeat that, they will literally believe anything.

One of the most despicable human beings who ever lived, Hitler, supposedly stated, "Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it." Look at the propaganda films from Germany in the 1930s, check out the massive crowds who threw any bit of common sense into the book burning fires, remember that Austria actually welcomed the Nazis with open arms, and you start to see the frightening results of big lying. Where it went from there is unthinkable.

Most people do not think critically, particularly when they are angry. Of course, the real key is to not only get them angry and then lie monumentally but to also present the liar's side as the only possible salvation. People will grab for a life jacket when they believe they are drowning even if on closer inspection that life jacket is doused in flesh-eating acid and the ocean around them doesn't even exist. That's the level to which they've been deluded.

Keeping silent about the lies, not confronting them, is putting bullets in the opposition's arsenal. Standing there silently and smiling and shaking your head while Trump screams and repeats (that is not a personality tic, I'd bet good money that is done completely on purpose) things that have no resemblance to reality isn't being above the fray. I'd love it if dignity won the day here, but there's a reason dignity has largely fled the public arenas of sports, entertainment, and even the news. Trump made an ass of himself, yes, but unless Hillary says what seems like the ridiculously obvious statement of "You, sir, are an ass, and here is why" no one is going to listen. At this point, as angry as his followers are, they still may not listen, but it's worth a try.

I'm sure Marie Antoinette would agree.