To the editor:
How did Trump engineer the upset? Want the true answer? Then look at the complicit media and the method behind the message.
Check out the success of the age-old ‘big lie’ technique with the much repeated, outrageous statements: “Why I heard it so often from so many sources that it must be true…Hilary must be related to Dracula.”
Note the economic success of low cost talking heads with a sporting face-off between Trump opposition and Trump supporters all focused primarily upon fuzzification of the outrageous rather than any real search for truth.
Rather than any fearless investigative journalism, easier to pander to sensationalism and catchy but meaningless slogans; “Drain the swamp of [Republican controlled] Washington”.
Study history and the dictatorships that followed simple Machiavellian rules; smear, undermine and destroy any reasoned opposition, starting with the cowing the media, tinting legal authority as ‘rigged,’ and minority groups as “threatening,” etc. ‘Trumping’ reason with base emotions of suspicion, fear and hatred, we avoid key issues of tax evasion and litigated fraud.
Want a lie to succeed? Make it big, emotionally reinforcing, and viral. And get the media involved in headline repetition.
How long will it take the American public to recognize the strange brew that has caused such a severe hangover?
This is nothing new. Perhaps citizens should study the historic methods of totalitarian regimes before elections and not after.
Ian R. Sisett, Kelowna
