[UPDATED with a new title. Previous title was GOP: Peddlers in Dramatic Realism.]
"Welcome to my web," said the spider to the fly. The GOP is a massive black spider and uninformed Americans are the poor stuck flies. But how do they get that way? How do they get close enough to the web to become entangled? The answer: Dramatic Realism.
To show you what I mean, steel yourself and then listen to Sen. Ted Cruz (RWNJ-Texas & Canada) at the 2014 Values Voter Summit held in September: Ted Cruz on Swilling Chardonnay
Mr. Cruz, card-carrying GOP spider, uses dramatic realism to ensnare the audience and anyone right-of-center enough to take his bait seriously. How?
Hop over the squiggly orange web below and read on!
When Ted Cruz gives a speech, he's really giving a "preach" with all the vocal intonations, fire, brimstone, and mesmeric qualities of an ego-maniacal evangelical at a revival meeting. One of the ways these wailing-preacher types peddle their ideas to their subjects is by setting scenes using descriptive words and phrases to suck the half-mindless into their imagined reality. The spiders seed pictures and scenarios in the vacuums their uplifting and devouring messages create. Once people are receptive to listening, which they are if they walked in the door thinking the person about to speak brings unquestioned authority to the topic, free thought dies and the vacuum opens wide.
Dramatic Realism is a term used in nonfiction writing to refer to actual events that, rather than being simply reported with dry facts, are written the way one would dramatize a scene in fiction. (Read more about it here: Kim's Craft Blog)
Now, not all Repuglicons are such profound (ahem) speakers as Mr. Cruz, but most of them have been coached in the art of dramatic realism or at least taught the latest script to facilitate creatively spreading the GOP message no matter what their IQs or shoe sizes.
When Ted Cruz uses the line "the government of Iran is sitting down with the United States government, swilling Chardonnay in New York City" he's employing dramatic realism--granted in this case it's a realism of lies but I suppose someone somewhere at that very moment was swilling Chardonnay even if it wasn't government officials in NYC. As most anyone with a brain knows, Iranian officials are Muslim and Muslims don't drink alcohol, let alone swill fine French wine. But don't let those tiny facts stand in your way of presenting a great dramatic scene, Mr. Cruz! Vacuum-headed listeners only see that room, as you paint it in a few chosen words, filled with men sitting on leather sofas, cigar-smoke clouds clustered near the ceiling, empty green bottles falling off tables, and full glasses in the hands of powerful (read: evil) world leaders...oh, and the POTUS.
Dramatic Realism is a tool for convincing in these scenarios. If the sheeple can visualize what you want them to see, no matter the number of whopping lies involved, they will believe. The perks to this are that they'll love you and hate whatever you tell them to hate.
Democrats need to step up their game and be on their guard because the GOP is masterful at one thing: using dramatic realism laced with lies and half-truths to fill head vacuums. If the Dems can't go on the offensive and spread truth, show fact-based scenarios in a way the vacuous can comprehend, more and more empty heads will be stuffed with GOP lies.
The promise of hearing a GOP authority figure preach (erm, speak) (that is a "successful" political player privy to all the secrets flooding DC's underbelly) is so great for some gullible Americans they willingly consume and believe the sermon without question. Once stuck in the web, the spider binds his victims in more and deeper layers of adhesive rhetoric--dramatic-realism candy with a nut topping of deception and vitriol--finally infecting them with venom so toxic it erodes free thought, consumes the ability to question, and induces selective blindness.
Hard as it may be this holiday season, every one of us must look inside the vacuums of our family and friends for the little unfilled spaces where facts can be planted. It takes a gentle approach and patience to loosen the web. Yet we all must be bold and brave, don our exterminator's gear, and do our part (no matter how small) to eradicate the influence of those wily dramatic spiders and their lies. While we're at it, let's tell the Democratic party and our elected reps (what few are left) to stop running away from the good and start shouting it from the hilltops.
The system's broken. Fighting the GOP's version of dramatic realism with a truth- and fact-based one is up to us, I fear.