In the normal course of events, those who want to learn how to do something chose someone who is already doing it successfully, watch how they do it, and do likewise to achieve the same result. Until the rise of transfer to academia of the teaching of technical skill by the masters in the guilds to their apprentices, learning how to do something was by on-the-job training. The apprentices took a position with a master, watched, learned and practiced until they became proficient in the skill and became masters themselves.
The McCain campaign in particular and Republicans in general have been enormously successful in the art of throwing slime at any Democrat who dares to challenge their self-professed supremacy in all things, and making it stick. They are masters at the Republican propaganda that the Bush administration has left the United States in better shape than it has ever been before. This is in spite of the fact that nearly eight years of Republicanism has just about ruined the United States.
According to some of the latest polls, the McCain campaign’s slime smearing campaign is working. Their lies and distortion are believed, apparently even by the media presenting them, as they go unchallenged, and believed by the credulous they’re aimed at, even while the evidence is all to the contrary. It’s incomprehensible but a fact that McCain is gaining and Obama is losing.
You’d think that the Obama campaign could take a look at what the McCain campaign is doing, do likewise, and achieve the same result. But, they can’t. It won’t work. You can’t slime the slimy. You can’t throw slime at the already slime covered and expect any to stick.
There are reasons for this. The slime that the McCain campaign throws is given consideration by liberals, Democrats and Obama supporters because, being liberals, they are by definition even-handed and open minded, and because they are ignorant of who McCain is and accept the propaganda portraying McCain as what he is not. Giving the propaganda just the slightest bit of unwarranted credulity makes it impossible for them to conceive that anyone could actually come right out and knowingly tell outrageous lies about Obama, since they, being rational liberals, would never think that anyone as rational as they are would believe them were they to do the same. They are easily swayed.
That’s why they can’t do the same to McCain. And, even if they were to, it would have no effect at all on the Republican McCain supporters. The Republicans are already protected by their impenetrable, impervious to truth, unfounded, slimy ideological shield. Their ideology, being an abstraction, is not subject to intervention and cannot be affected by anything outside of it that contradicts it.
Were Obama to start throwing the same kind of slime at McCain as he is receiving, the Republicans aimed at would not be affected by it, would be quick to understand it for what it is and dismiss it as just more of the same kind of slime that they are so expert at throwing.
Obama can’t do the same thing to McCain that McCain is doing to Obama and expect to have similar results. The Republicans have a long and glorious record of successful slime throwing, know exactly what it is when they see it and can more easily than Democrats simply ignore it. They cannot be swayed.
That’s the problem. It’s a one-way battle. Some of the slime will stick to some of the credulous Democrats, due to the open minded nature of Democrats, but no slime can stick to any Republican, due to the slimy, close-minded nature of Republicans.
You think that’s overstating the case? Just ask John McCain if he still thinks that Saddam was a threat, that he had weapons of mass destruction and was connected to al Qaeda. Just a few days ago, he was still saying that, but it‘s doubtful he‘ll remember that he said it, or admit it if he does. There’s no telling what he’ll say today. Just look at his record. He’s still holding on to the lies that George Bush told, even though George Bush has had to admit they were untrue. Close minded? You bet. Even his idol, George Bush, can’t penetrate it.
