Swift Boating D.O.G.E.

Back in 1997, Senator John McCain was eyeing the 2000 presidential election.  He looked like a strong candidate.  Americans in general like a war hero.  We’ve elected Generals like Washington, Grant and Eisenhower, not to mention, countless more candidates who were war veterans.  A new PAC was formed called Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain.  They sought to neutralize his advantage over opponents like George W. Bush who served in the 147th Fighter-Interceptor Group of the Texas Air National Guard.

George W. Bush’s serving state side during Vietnam in a fighter group “with other sons of wealthy and well-connected Texans”.  Al Gore’s campaign did not go all that hard after George W. Bush’s war record (or lack thereof), probably because while Al Gore did go to Vietnam, he did not see any real combat, instead serving as a journalist. 

That changed in 2004.  George W. Bush was now running against John Kerry.  Kerry had been a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy and he did one four month tour in Vietnam during which he received a Silver Star, a Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts. 

Now, this posed a dilemma for the Bush campaign.  If the two combat records were to be compared, Bush certainly came up short.  Bush’s campaign strategist Karl Rove was already familiar with (if not the instigator of) the Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain.  When your opponent has a strength, then go after it in order to neutralize it.  In this case, an organization was formed called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT).  It was composed of Vietnam veterans who had also served on Swift Boats, but were dead set against Kerry.  When Kerry had returned from military service, Kerry had joined with an organization called Vietnam Veterans Against the War.  This angered a lot of veterans, and they spoke out forcefully against Kerry. It was a well organized political organization that got a lot of publicity.

What should have been one of Kerry’s strongest suits was effectively neutralized, and a new political term was coined, Swiftboating.  After what had been done to Senator McCain, it should have been predictable that the same tactic would be used to go against Kerry.  This tactic of going after an opponent’s strength in order to neutralize it was largely credited to Karl Rove. 

So, there I was listening to Megyn Kelly’s podcast shortly after the Superbowl.  She said that she heard from the Trump campaign that they were thrilled that of all the things the Democrats chose to go after, they picked D.O.G.E.  After all, in their minds, who could be for government corruption?  They should have been looking at the past for guidance.  “The overall sentiment I got from Team Trump was that they are thrilled that the fight the left is choosing to pick is over the firing of bureaucrats and the jobs of bureaucrats. It’s like, Boo, boo. A bureaucrat has lost their lifetime employment on the public dime. They have accurately deduced that is not going to pull on anybody’s heartstrings. As Trump said to Bret Baier during his pre-game interview, he ran on this and he told people he was going to do this.”

The Democrats have learned from the Republican playbook and decided that two can play that game.  I have to completely disagree with the Trump team that people will have no sympathy for a bureaucrat losing their job.  This was a total miscalculation on the part of the Republicans. 

If the Trump administration wants to counter this, they better get on it quick.  Right now, the Democrats are organized as if they had a super big PAC.  The Republican party’s majority in the house is by one seat.  The Democrats are going hard after all Republican congressmen to see who is the weak sister who will cave into their demands.

In the book “Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces That Shape Behavior”, in the first chapter author Jonah Berger tells of a study done by Solomon Asch using a focus group where the members of the group were shown the following image and asked which line (A,B, or C) is the same length as the line to the left:

What Asch would do is to have one real subject and the rest of the group would be made up of actors. The first person (an actor) said that the correct answer was B, and then a second actor would give the same answer. By the time it got to the test subject, the test subject would agree that the correct answer was B despite it obviously being longer than the image on the left. It turns out that psychological studies show that most people are sheep willing to go along with the majority. We don’t like making waves and get into fights even when things are obviously wrong. However, it doesn’t have to be that way. The overwhelming majority of test subjects went along with the charade, however, “Turns out even one dissenting voice can be enough. If just one prior person in Asch’s line experiment gave the correct answer, it was enough to free participants up to give the correct answer themselves. It didn’t need to be half the room, just one co-conspirator.” (Page 58).

The Democrats are trying to give the impression that their numbers are greater than they are and to brow beat those dissenting voices into going along with them. It must be fought back against the sooner the better. The longer it goes unchallenged, the harder it is to reverse.

I live in a conservative district with Republican Representative Nick Langworthy.  If you were to go on Langworthy’s Facebook page, virtually all you will see are comments from Democratic trolls berating Langworthy, demanding he acquiesce to their demands, and asking him to do an in person town hall meeting.  If he caves and agrees to do a town hall meeting, they will swarm it with their operatives and have the corporate media there to cover it.  They want to make it seem like the majority of the constituents in his district are anti-MAGA and pro-Democrat. 

If you live in a conservative district, this is likely going on in your hood too.  House Leader Mike Johnson has called out this tactic.  The mainstream media (the propaganda wing of the Democratic party) has realized that the Republicans are on to them, but like a fighter whose first take down attempt doesn’t work, they immediately resort to another.  Now, they are saying that the refusal of Republicans to hold in person town halls is evidence that they are being unresponsive to voters. 

I’ve been trying to raise the alarm about this to Republicans, but it seems to be falling on deaf ears.  They need to fight back against this tactic and fight back hard.  If the liberal trolls are on Facebook, or, Twitter, then the Republicans should organize an online group to fight back and post retorts to their posts. 

The Democrats are very good at using the propaganda tools that Joseph Goebbels pioneered back in the 1920s and 30s.  Always stay on attack.  Even if your opponent is able to refute one of the lies you tell about him, have the next lie ready to go to attack again.  The opponent (in this case a Republican punching bag) will find themselves constantly on the defensive, unable to answer all the charges.  Here’s an article from Breitbart with a list of all the hoaxes and lies perpetrated by the mainstream media.  Goebbels claimed that even if a person was able to refute all the lies told about them, the general public would still think there was something wrong with them, otherwise, why were there so many stories about them? 

Another thing that Goebbels supposedly said (I read it in a meme) was that “Whoever can conquer the street will one day conquer the state, for every form of power politics and any dictatorship-run state has its roots in the street.” 

When you think about it, it’s one of the reasons that liberal mayors were so lenient on BLM and Antifa protests.  Also, it’s why the establishment came down so hard on the January 6 protesters.  They couldn’t have a MAGA movement able to control the streets of our nation’s capital. 

D.O.G.E. needs to do a better job of listing its successes.  Elon Musk in his Joe Rogan interview admitted that mistakes would be made, and have to be corrected.  During his speech to Congress, Trump did do a good job of highlighting some of D.O.G.E.’s successes.  However, most people who watched the speech were Republicans.  He was preaching to the choir.  He needs to get that message out to the public so independents and moderate Democrats (all two of them) can see what is going on.  If mistakes are made (I’ve heard anecdotally about Air Traffic Controllers being laid off, not sure how much truth there is to it), then get in front of the problem and correct it as soon as possible. 

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Separate thoughts:

If you go online and try to find anything positive that D.O.G.E. has done, good luck.  The internet seems to be trying to hide any successes and highlight any mistakes that D.O.G.E has made.  One of the media’s claims is that there is no proof that 150 year olds have been receiving medicare.  However, during the three hour long Joe Rogan interview, Elon responded in a way to the charges.  He said that what they found was that by being listed as alive, it was a backdoor way of qualifying for other government programs like government disability checks.  Elon went on to say that disability checks can net an individual even more money than social security.  Around 2:23:50, Musk talks about how being marked alive in one database allows criminal fraud rings to use that data in another database, such as for disability payments, small business loans or unemployment insurance.  Musk calls it a “bank shot” like in pool where you don’t go directly at it, but have your cue ball hit the bank first. 

Fact Checking Elon Musk.  During an interview of Elon Musk on Fox Business News’ Kudlow program, Musk said that the Government Accountability Office (GA) had found a half trillion dollars in fraud prior to Trump even coming into office.  Fact check:  TRUE.  https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/3006140/gao-report-details-up-to-500-billion-in-annual-fraud/. 

Elon Musk has been finding mismanagement such as the “Iron Mountain” mine where government paper files go to be stored.  My file is probably in their somewhere.  DHS did get funds back from FEMA who was still trying to pay for hotels for illegal aliens in New York City despite being ordered not to.  The Pentagon wasted money on things like spending $1,300 a piece on a reheatable coffee cup.  Then there was the Sesame Street in Iraq.  Source here.

If you have a chance, check out the podcasts interviewing Mike Benz.  He has been on Joe Rogan and on Tucker Carlson’s podcasts detailing the fraud and corruption over at USAID.  Here is a fifteen minute clip of him talking to Joe Rogan see here.  Going back to Elon Musk’s Joe Rogan interview, Musk says that George Soros is like a “system hacker”.  He gives a little bit of seed money to start an NGO, and then our federal government comes in and supplies much more taxpayer funding.