I wasn't sure of your political persuasion, so I kept my comments neutral to avoid spinning off into a partisan debate. But the truth is, in the first draft of the first paragraph I had the Right alternately complaining of a media conspiracy and celebrating their ability to get out their "truth" via the new media. Because the fact is, the "liberal media conspiracy" is a staple of the Right's Underdog Rap.

The Right's propaganda techniques have lately been put under the microscope by Liberals wondering not only how we got beaten in the last election by somebody so obviously unfit to hold the office, but also why we and the media seem to have imperceptibly bought in to the Right's points of view. The simple answer turns out to be a technique called "framing", alluding to "frame of reference", by which the Right twists language to force debate on their turf and create artificial barriers to rational discussion of an issue.

The example everybody uses is calling a tax cut for the wealthy "tax relief". It's more subtle than just an Orwellian reversal-of-meaning. The word "relief" is designed to put anybody opposed to a tax cut for the wealthy on the defensive, by first forcing them to explain how they could possibly be against something so obviously good and nice as "relief". And while we stammer and splutter trying to figure out how to respond to such a lame trick, the Right starts crowing about how we're obviously wild-eyed lunatics determined to destroy America by burdening it (note the antonym of "relieving") with oppressive taxes.

Framing isn't the only trick the Right's been using, and they're very big on intimidation too. Check out the massive flame war on the Flame board over their constant accusation of "treason!" against anybody who disagrees with them. I've no doubt that there are many people keeping quiet to avoid that kind of sleaze. But there are also many people going along unconsciously, and framing goes far to explain the weird phenomenon in which the media and even Democrats themselves seem to be going along with the Right's point of view. Bush calls it "tax relief" and the media reports what he said, repeats the phrase over and over, and before you know it everybody starts thinking of it as actually being some sort of general relief. In another example, weakening environmental laws to increase air pollution is called the "Clear Skies Act", which, while more obviously Orwellian doublespeak, still presents a barrier to opponents to first explain what they could possibly have against clear skies and clean air. There's an extra intellectual burden imposed by always having to first confront the lie before going on to debate the truth.

I have to give credit to the Right for coming up with a novel new propaganda technique. It's unlike Goebbel's Big Lie in that it's composed of a myriad of smaller lies, though each small lie is just as false; the wicked innovation is that there are so many more of them to have to debunk. It's not always strictly Orwellian, either, because the best examples of framing aren't quite opposite in meaning, but rather tack on an emotionally-weighted word that takes the concept off on a tangent and tries to trigger subrational impulses to derail rational thought. An example in the latter category is the homophobic "Defense of Marriage" movement--what kind of evil monster could be against marriage? And if there is somebody out there like that, damn, we'd all better rush to defend marriage. Once the adrenalin starts flowing, nobody thinks to ask just how the existence of homosexual relationships could possibly threaten somebody else's heterosexual marriage.

It's difficult to base an ideology on a history of moral bankruptcy.

When all else fails, rewrite history. Perhaps the grand triumph of framing is the Republican Party's ability to portray itself today as the bastion of high morals and heartland American values. This from the party that once represented the view that it's a dog-eat-dog world, every man for himself, the devil take the hindmost, and the poor deserve to starve to death for their moral turpitude in being poor. The Party that believes that money is the essential measure of human worth. And above all, the party of the rich elite that barely bothered to hide its contempt for the "little people" who today make up Red State America. Now that is some wicked framing!

There's nothing like understanding how a trick is done to rob it of power. The days of the Right leading the country around by the nose are numbered.

And maybe someday we'll be talking about the hardcore holdouts, the future Ben Steins, claiming that Bush was framed by the Democrats, after a Democratic Congress impeaches him in 2007. One can only hope....