The BIG LIE: Psychological Projection in the Service of Class Warfare (Dale Tavris)

Dale Tavris, M.D., M.P.H

Sept. 27, 2009 -- There are basically two ways to sell a product or an idea. One is to come up with a really excellent one and then explain it to people as honestly as you can. The alternative way -- if your idea or product is pretty much worthless or even dangerous -- is to lie about it. Of course, if you’re going to lie about it you usually have to have some help so that the lie can be propagated without discovery by too many people.

The right wing corporate elites of the United States and their bought-and-paid-for politicians have worked out a very effective way of doing that. With their enormous wealth they have bought control of huge portions of the so-called “mainstream” television, radio, and print news media in the United States, while at the same time paying off their politicians to maintain the rules of the game such that they can maintain control of “mainstream” news media. And their huge donations to their lackey politicians have helped to maintain them in power, so that the status quo continues to be protected.

Consequently, legislation is heavily tilted to favor the wealthy. This has caused the wealth gap in our country to rise to unprecedented levels, such that by 2006 the Economic Policy Institute estimated that more than a third of the wealth in the United States was held by the top 1 percent of households, while less than a fifth was held by the lower 90 percent. That means that the average top 1 percent household held almost 200 times as much wealth as the average lower 90 percent household.

In order to maintain themselves in office, our corporate owned politicians have adopted a technique that is akin to the psychological defense mechanism known as “projection” (more on that later). Because virtually every major legislative policy supported by them harms the vast majority of the American people, in order to continue in office they must lie about their motivations and the consequences of the policies that they support. But they don’t merely lie. Mere lies would make them appear defensive. Instead, they tell us unbelievable whoppers – the precise opposite of the truth. Their corporate masters want them to relax pollution laws to enhance their profits? Call that law “The Clear Skies Initiative.” Is there a need to hide the fact that the corporate news media slants their facts and opinions to benefit the wealthy? Complain incessantly about the “elite liberal media.” Or as George Orwell said in his novel, “1984,” War is peace, Slavery is freedom, and Ignorance is strength.

Under normal conditions it is extraordinarily difficult to get away with such whoppers. But when you and your cronies control the bulk of the means of communication in a society, the job becomes much easier.

THE BIG LIE IN PRACTICE

Getting a psychopath elected and re-elected president of the United States

In 2000 the corporatocracy was salivating at the idea of installing George W. Bush as president of the United States. The problem was not just that he was perhaps the most inexperienced, incompetent and unintelligent major party presidential candidate in U.S. history; but as Governor of Texas he pushed policies that were unlikely to be popular with most Americans.

For one thing, as Governor of Texas he vetoed a patient’s bill of rights. So, when the issue came up in the third presidential debate against Al Gore, he blatantly lied that he had supported a patient’s bill of rights and got it signed into law as Governor of Texas.

He was also quite vulnerable on his plan to cut taxes for the wealthy -- which of course was a necessary part of his strategy for gaining the support of the corporatocracy. But most Americans wouldn’t be too pleased about the idea of a massive tax cut that benefited only the wealthy. So Bush had to repeatedly lie about that.

These were major lies -- lies that could be easily proven as lies, and which threatened to sink Bush’s bid for the presidency if exposed. So how could the corporate news media protect him? Rather than simply ignore the Bush lies, they went on the offensive and called Al Gore a liar. During one debate, Gore mistakenly said that he had accompanied FEMA Director James Lee Witt on a particular trip to Texas, though he had accompanied Witt on numerous other trips. The corporate media made that into a big lie, though there was no reason for Gore to lie about that. They said that Gore claimed he had invented the Internet, though he never said that. In short, they claimed he was a habitual liar. And all those claims were lies. But they sure did take attention away from Bush’s many real lies.

Then there was the matter of Bush getting into the Air National Guard in order to avoid being sent to fight in the Vietnam War, through the influence of his father. This posed a potentially explosive problem for the Bush campaigns of both 2000 and 2004, since both Al Gore and John Kerry had served in Vietnam. Yet, despite abundant evidence that Bush even avoided fulfilling his commitment to the Air National Guard, the corporate news media gave him a free pass on the whole issue. The importance of this in the 2004 presidential campaign was summed up by Russ Baker in his book, “Family of Secrets”:

But giving Bush a free pass on this issue wasn’t good enough. As with Gore in 2000, the right wingers had to go on the offensive. So the national news media picked up on the bogus claim that the story of Kerry’s heroism was a fraud. CNN, The New York Times, and the Washington Post ran hundreds of articles on the subject between them. The hypocrisy with which the national news media lent legitimacy to the story was shown by an episode of Meet the Press, where Tim Russert innocently challenged a guest, “If the substance of many of the charges … isn’t holding up … why is it resonating so much?” Well, duh. It resonated so much because the corporate news whores resonated it.

The BIG LIES to excuse an illegal war

The Bush administration’s justification for invading Iraq in 2003 was the absurd idea that Iraq posed an “imminent threat” to our country. Forget about the fact that Bush was told by his own intelligence agencies that Iraq had no connection to al Qaeda, or that the only evidence to the contrary came from a “confession” obtained through torture. Forget that Bush claimed that an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report stated Iraq was six months from developing a nuclear weapon -- though no such report existed; or that a few days before we invaded Iraq the IAEA stated “After three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq.” That evidence alone -- which comprises a minute fraction of the evidence for the case that the Iraq War was predicated on fraudulent evidence -- is enough to convict George W. Bush of war crimes.

But forget all that. The idea that a nation with a military of relatively infinitesimal size could pose any substantial threat at all to the nation with the mightiest military machine the world had ever known is laughable on its face. That the Bush administration could sell that idea to the American people required a huge amount of assistance from our “mainstream” news media. So who posed a threat to whom? The results of the war and subsequent occupation, for anyone who cares to consider them, should answer that question definitively. Fewer than 5,000 U.S. soldiers have died in that war, while more than a million Iraqi civilians have died. Who posed a threat to whom?

Similarly, the idea that our government refers to any Iraqi who kills U.S. soldiers in defense of his homeland as a “terrorist” represents the worst kind of hypocrisy and projection. The definition of a terrorist is one who kills or threatens civilians. Yes, there are Muslim terrorists in Iraq. But the vast majority of Iraqis who fight against the U.S. occupation of their country are fighting to defend their country. The terrorists are the ones who participate in the mass slaughter of Iraqi civilians.

Then there’s the accusation that Americans who protest against the illegal and immoral Iraq War “don’t support the troops” -- thus implying that sending young men and women off to fight and die in a fraudulent war-for-profit is tantamount to “supporting the troops.”

And to top it off, those who argued that Bush should have been impeached for his many war crimes and other violations of the U.S. Constitution are accused of being “Bush Haters” -- as if the desire to utilize constitutional processes to remove a war criminal from the highest office in our nation requires hate. I could understand calling us “Bush haters” if we suggested removing him from office for something relatively trivial, such as having adulterous sex with a consenting adult.

The BIG LIES to kill universal health care for the American people

The enactment of a government program for providing affordable access to health care for all Americans would be very detrimental… to certain corporate interests. That of course is why they have killed all efforts to accomplish that goal since the first time it received full presidential support, which was during the Truman administration.

Perhaps the most audacious talking point against current efforts towards universal health care is the claim that “the government will ration your health care.” What planet are those people living on? How could a person living on this planet, in this country, fail to recognize that HEALTH CARE IS CURRENTLY RATIONED throughout the United States? In fact, it is worse than rationed. Private health insurance companies in our country go well beyond rationing health care. In their search for profits, they aggressively search for any excuse they can find to deny legitimate health care claims from clients who have paid them health insurance premiums for years. A recent study found that from 2002 to June 20, 2009, private health insurance companies in California alone rejected 45.7 million claims -- 22 percent of all claims made during that period. That’s not health care rationing? The only possible explanation for their audacity in claiming that proposed government health care plans “will ration health care” is that by so doing they hope to take the focus their own health care rationing.

The “Public Option” is a type of health care reform in which Americans would be given the option of choosing a government run health insurance plan or any available private health insurance plan. The opposite of this “Public Option” plan is a system where only private health insurance plans are available to most Americans. Yet continual incessant insurance company propaganda has convinced many Americans that once a public option is available Americans will have to drop their current health plans and find a different doctor. Essentially, they have made the public option into a public mandate. And not only that, but they are led to believe that the public option will contain “death panels” that will have the power of life and death over them.

Consequently, they whine that the Public Option will destroy freedom in the United States. The preference of the insurance industry is that the American people be given a choice only of private health insurance plans to meet their health care needs. And not only that, but they also approve of plans that would make it mandatory that Americans purchase private health care insurance. That’s their idea of “freedom.”

The BIG LIES about ACORN

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, more popularly known as ACORN, has long been a bogeyman for right wingers. ACORN is an advocate organization for low- and moderate-income families that helps people register to vote, provides advice on obtaining health care or affordable housing and filling out tax returns, and provides a variety of other social services. Among reasons why right wingers attack ACORN are that most of the people whom they register to vote are Democrats (because most poor people are Democrats) and that they advocate for progressive social policies, such as a mandatory livable minimum wage.

Over the years, the most frequent right wing accusation against ACORN is that they routinely engage in “voter fraud.” The reality is quite different. ACORN employees have occasionally been charged with misconduct, such as submitting fraudulent voter registrations. When that has happened, ACORN has cooperated with government officials to prosecute the misconduct. Perhaps the most notorious case occurred in Kings County, Washington, when seven temporary ACORN employees were charged with submitting fraudulent voter registrations. Even in that case the prosecutor acknowledged that the motivation for the misconduct was “an easy way to get paid (by ACORN), not as an attempt to influence the outcome of elections.”

The fact is that “voter fraud” is a rare phenomenon, and furthermore, ACORN has never been convicted of that or any other criminal activity. As an example of how rare voter fraud is, David Iglesias was fired from his U.S. Attorney job in the Bush administration for failing to prosecute ACORN on voter fraud charges, though he could find no evidence to substantiate those charges. By contrast, Republican operatives (not in their role as voters) were involved in illegally purging tens of thousands of mostly Democratic voters in Florida in 2000 and hundreds of thousands in Ohio in 2004. In both cases, the illegal purging of voters was responsible for George W. Bush’s “victories.” Yet, the “mainstream” news media hardly covered these attacks on American democracy.

The latest ACORN “scandal” involved a sting operation conducted by right wingers who accumulated video footage of ACORN employees, which was used to allege improper or illegal conduct with respect to tax advice that they gave. Amidst a flurry of publicity, both Houses of Congress voted by large margins to defund ACORN for being “charged with breaking federal or state election laws, lobbying disclosure laws, campaign finance laws or filing fraudulent paperwork with any federal or state agency.”

The problem, other than the fact that ACORN was neither tried nor convicted of anything connected with the recent “scandal,” is that the above wording would apply to a multitude of other organizations. For example:

PSYCHOLOGICAL PROJECTION IN THE SERVICE OF CLASS WARFARE

The Evils of psychological projection

Psychological projection is the process whereby a person “projects” unflattering, unwanted, or reprehensible characteristics of their own onto other people. It is a psychological defense mechanism. The idea is that by projecting the characteristic onto someone else, one can feel that they do not “own” that characteristic. Presumably the process takes place unconsciously.

Most important, it can lead to highly socially destructive and dangerous behavior. A simple example is former U.S. Senator Larry Craig’s (R-ID) frequent support of anti-gay legislation, though he was quite obviously gay. A much worse example is Adolf Hitler’s demonization of Jews and several other genetically defined groups of people as the incarnation of all evil. That is not to say that Hitler was a Jew. But his demonization of various races and ethnic groups as evil most certainly represented a projection of his own perceived character traits onto those various groups of people. Indeed, it is likely that most genocides have a strong element, if not the primary motivation of psychological projection at their root.

The examples of blatant lies provided in this post would not appear on the surface to be rooted in peoples’ subconscious minds. It is very difficult to believe that the people who propagate these lies actually believe them -- that these “lies” take place in their subconscious minds. But then, it’s also difficult to believe that Larry Craig is not aware that he is gay, or that Adolf Hitler really believed what he said about the Jews. I’ve read several books on the subject, and I’ve never been able to determine with the least bit of confidence whether or not he really believed it. I’ve concluded that there is a very thin line -- or no line at all -- between a person subconsciously projecting his/her unwanted characteristics onto another person through his/her subconscious mind vs. consciously lying about it. In all likelihood, among Nazis who demonized and killed Jews there was a continuum between how much of their beliefs and actions were motivated by subconscious vs. conscious thoughts. It does not seem possible for another person to pinpoint these motivations with any accuracy.

But then, does it really matter? If Hitler really believed, by means of subconscious psychological projection, that Jews were evil, would that excuse his actions? Not in my mind it wouldn’t. For all practical purposes, I just don’t see any substantive difference between psychological projection and outright lying. Call it what you want. The end result is the same.

Consequences for our current political climate

The BIG LIES discussed in this post -- whether the result of psychological projection or not -- are just a small sampling of the total. The bottom line consequence is that our whole political discourse moves way to the right. Republicans and other right wingers can lie with virtual impunity. Progressives, on the other hand, risk political annihilation if they publicly tell a lie, no matter how minute -- that is, if their lie leans to the left. Progressives too can lie with impunity as long as their lies advance the cause of the corporatocracy. But if they do that with any frequency, then they aren’t really progressives, are they?

But progressives also risk being lambasted by the corporate media for telling the truth -- especially for telling the truth. Indeed, any time they say something that challenges the interests of the corporatocracy they risk political annihilation -- which explains why the 2008 presidential candidacies of Dennis Kucinich and John Edwards never gained much traction.

The Congressional votes to defund ACORN are a perfect case in point. Senators Feingold, Boxer, and Kerry are certainly no corporate shills. Nor (in my opinion) did any of them really want to vote to defund ACORN. Yet they all voted to do so. I can only believe that they did so under substantial pressure that signified risk to their political viability. Even the best of us sometimes bow to political realities.

Similarly, I have often been quite disappointed in President Obama for his veer to the right since being elected President. But then at other times I think about what he might face if he challenged the corporatocracy a lot more than he has. And I think about how much more difficult it is for him by virtue of the unprecedented (for U.S. presidents) racism directed against him. By that I don’t mean to make excuses for him. I believe that we must all criticize him when we disagree with his words or actions. But still, the extraordinary challenges that he faces are something to think about.

Many of we progressives were very happy in 2006 when Democrats won control of Congress, and again in 2008 when Democratic control of Congress was consolidated and a Democratic President was elected as well. But many of us have been very disappointed at what the Democratic Party has failed to accomplish with this advantage. The problem of course is that the corporatocracy is one step ahead of us. As the American people recognized the moral bankruptcy of the Republican Party they voted large numbers of them out of office -- so that the Republican Party now appears to be in danger of extinction. But with that, the corporatocracy has begun transferring their financial support to certain Democrats -- with unseemly results. Consequently, it appears that even the complete extinction of the Republican Party may not constitute a victory for progressives or for the American people. The American people now have a tougher job ahead of them. Having recognized the moral bankruptcy of the Republican Party, they now must learn to recognize the same for corporate shills with a Democratic label.

A light at the end of the tunnel?

What chance is there for the American people? Our Congress is filled with corporate whores and psychopaths. This is largely the result of a system that accepts the bribery of public officials as a necessary fact of political life. The system has showered special privileges on corporations while simultaneously giving them the rights of personhood. Having equated money with speech, our Supreme Court has deemed corporate bribery of public officials to be the equivalent of exercising their First Amendment rights of free speech. This ultimately resulted in the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and the disappearance of the Fairness Doctrine, which led to consolidation of our national news media into corporate hands to an extent never before seen in our country.

The retired psychology professor Bob Altemeyer described what he called right wing authoritarian leaders -- or “social dominators” -- in his book, “The Authoritarians.” His description of “social dominators” is almost identical to what psychologists have long called psychopaths. He described them as:

They tend to concentrate in certain places -- such as the U.S. Congress under our present system. Yet decent people vastly outnumber them -- and that is a main source of hope for the future. History has shown that no tyrannical system lasts indefinitely. Abuse of power by the elite classes eventually gives rise to enough public outrage to topple the system.

Of great potential for the future of our nation, in my opinion, is the rise of the Internet as a means of spreading information. A Pew Research Center poll showed that between 2001 and 2008 the percentage of Americans who received their news primarily from the Internet rose from 13 percent to 40 percent. That is a tremendous rise in just seven years. Furthermore, by 2008 the percent of voters under the age of 30 whose primary source of news was the Internet equaled that of television. Though the quality of news obtained through the Internet varies a great deal, the best thing about it is that the corporatocracy (currently) exercises much less control over it than it does over TV, radio, or print journalism. Consequently, corporate control over the information Americans receive has loosened considerably since 2001. And that may largely explain the misfortune of the corporate controlled Republican Party. Who knows how far this trend will continue into the future?

So I think that Americans are wising up. Information is power, and I believe we are much better informed than we were just a few years ago. Now it’s about time that our elected politicians stop bowing down to the corporatocracy. In order to make that happen, we the people need to show them that they will face dire consequences for continuing to do so.