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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 6/5/12

The Big-Lie Coup d'Etat

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But you might also blame something deeper, more sinister.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist (you can't have served in Washington and seriously believe more than two people can hold on to a big story without it leaking), but I fear that at least since 2010 we've been witnessing a quiet, slow-motion coup d'etat whose purpose is to repeal every bit of progressive legislation since the New Deal and entrench the privileged positions of the wealthy and powerful -- who haven't been as wealthy or as powerful since the Gilded Age of the late 19th century.

Its techique is to inundate America with a few big lies, told over and over (the debt is Obama's fault and it's out of control; corporations and the very rich are the "job creators" that need tax cuts; government is the enemy, and its regulations are strangling the private sector; unions are bad; and so on), and tell them so often they're taken as fact.

Then having convinced enough Americans that these lies are true, take over the White House, Congress, and remaining states that haven't yet succumbed to the regressive right (witness Tuesday's recall election in Wisconsin).

I desperately hope I'm wrong, but there's growing evidence I may be right. 

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Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor and Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, has a new film, "Inequality for All," to be released September 27. He blogs at www.robertreich.org.

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