Robert Reich
Right-wing Republicans have mastered the art of labeling things the opposite of what they really are. A "right-to-work" law, such as enacted in Michigan yesterday, sounds as if it protects workers when in fact it destroys unions and undermines workers' wages and working conditions. A "right to life" law intrudes upon intimate and personal decisions women and their partners should be able to make for themselves. The right's war on "entitlements" has made the term sound as if it's giveaways to the undeserving rather than the social insurance most of us pay for and need. "Getting our fiscal house in order" really means cutting programs the poor depend on. The right wing has turned the estate tax on multi-millionaires into a supposed "death tax," and Obamacare cost controls into "death panels." And so on.
With their billionaire backers and the right-wing media amplifying these distortions, they've been able to do exactly what George Orwell warned of in his dystopian novel "1984" -- engage so often in the "habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts" -- as to fool many people into believing the opposite of what's true.
But why has it been so difficult for progressives to fight back -- not just with clever words and phrases but with clear and simple depictions of the truth?
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