Splash and Dash

Some lies are told for shock value and when the shock wears off, they are repeated to make them stick in weak minds.

Everything coming from the left is hyperbolic, sensationalized, splash and dash, non sequitur these days.

For example:

• Alan Cumming, Scottish actor famous for a lot of stuff you probably have never heard of, says America has brought back “concentration camps.”

• Tampon Timmy says ICE is the “Gespacho”. We think he meant to say “gestapo” because it is cool to equate any aspect of the Trump government with Nazism.

• In a widely shared tweet, Tim Miller shared a UK Guardian report that “Migrants at a Miami immigration jail were shackled with their hands tied behind their backs and made to kneel to eat food from Styrofoam plates “like dogs" according to a {Human Rights Watch} report."

• Senator Chris Murphy (and several on MSNBC who got the messaging memo) says cancelling a money losing late night show is the “censorship state.”

• Multiple people in power – Karen Bass, Chris Van Hollen, Gavin Newsom, Extreme Hakeem, etc.) are claiming that ICE is “kidnapping brown people off the streets.”

• On CNN Democrat Rep. Jimmy Gomez, D-Calif. Echoed Florida Rep Maxwell Frost when he claimed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers are arresting anyone who is Brown and "looks like [him].”

• Pretty much every Democrat is claiming that ICE is targeting people who “have not committed a crime”, even though they are here illegally.

• Or a Latina was snatched off the streets and was missing – when it really was a GoFundMe scam.

• Multiple outlets have claimed “ICE deported and disappeared an Allentown grandfather, Luis Leon when he went with his wife to renew his green card (more shocking than a Maryland dad, I guess) and he died in a hospital in Guatemala” – or maybe he didn’t.

The problem for these storytellers is that none of those are true. Not even the last one about Luis Leon is true, of whom Guatemala has no record of ever being in the country and DHS says they didn’t detain or deport anyone under that name.

When demand for outrage exceeds supply, I guess you have to make it up.

Some these are promoted for the splash – the immediate, sensational impact, some are the dash variety – repeated so many times over that the weak minded soon adopt them as gospel. Repetition can create an "illusion of truth" effect, where people start believing something is true just because they’ve heard it multiple times, even if it is false.

Repeating falsehoods can drive people into a negative mental state. Constant exposure to or propagation of untrue information can lead to anxiety, confusion, cognitive dissonance, and often violent behavior, especially when individuals suspect or discover the deception. This can foster feelings of mistrust, paranoia, or helplessness, particularly if the falsehoods reinforce negative biases or fears. Over time, the mental strain of processing conflicting information or defending false beliefs can contribute to stress, reduced self-esteem, and a distorted perception of reality, impacting overall mental well-being.

And it is such a disrespectful, demeaning, and ultimately dangerous thing to do – but the time anyone on the left believed in the truth is long gone. It is now all about shock value and repetition to support an agenda rather than truth, even if the proof of the lie is immediate.