Griper Blade: Inbox Propaganda

It's a little ironic that I can't tell you how important language is. Instead, I have to show you. The power of propaganda is so strong that both the Holocaust and Kim Il Sung still have fans. The monster Saddam Hussein was a fan of the monster Joseph Stalin. It's not a huge leap of logic to assume that this was, at least in part, a result of Stalinist propaganda. Propaganda is bastardized communication. Words are thoughts -- and these thoughts can be viral.

As reasoning beings, we rely on words. We speak in words. We write in words. We read in words. We think in words.

And so, on the subject of words, I give you this email I got from the Republican party -- helpfully republished at Blog for Oregon:

The radical Left is at it again!

This time MoveOn.org is demanding that Congress cut funding for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. The blame-America-first crowd wants the Democrat senators running for president to block the bill that funds our troops fighting the War on Terror if it doesn't include a surrender date.

In September, MoveOn.org viciously attacked our generals and our troops by running a full page newspaper ad assailing the integrity of our top military commander in Iraq, General Petraeus.

[Wisco], playing politics with the lives of the men and women who protect our nation is wrong. The money that supports them as they fight for our country should not be held hostage by a few radical leftists who pull the strings of the Democrat leadership.

It's more than a little sad that all the GOP has left to run against is MoveOn.org. The party of Lincoln has become the party against some online lefties. But look at how many buzz-phrases are in this fundraising appeal. It's amazing. In the very first sentence, it's not the "radical left," it's the "radical Left" -- "Left" has become a proper noun, like a dangerous foreign power...

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