Even More CDTC Tactics

Guest Post by Michael Chambers (guest posts are moderated, but not approved or endorsed by the CCA Steering Committee)
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The amount of disinformation that comes out of the CDTC (Charlestown Disinformation Town Committee) is considerable not only in volume but also in the diversity of tactics. The bloggers of the local Democratic Party have raised personal attacks, mud –slinging, and destroying the reputation of good leaders to a high art and science. The more one thinks of the disinformation tactics that the citizens of Charlestown face, the more convinced one becomes of the strategic and intentional use of insults and character assassinations to promote the Democratic Party here and at the State level. Not all local Democrats employ these tactics, but they should take care that their apathy may allow such behavior to continue.

I have highlighted two of these tactics: (1) ignoring the obvious in the “see no, hear no, and speak no evil” defense about their connection to their infamous bloggers, and (2) sidetracking the opponents with name calling and ridicule. A third tactic is to lie large and retract quietly. The CDTC bloggers are notorious for reporting flagrantly dishonest and unsupported news stories and, when challenged with facts and witnesses, quietly retract their statements without deleting the offending stories. The story of a CCA supporter losing his composure over the listing of the order of candidates for the 2012 election was one of these blatant lies. The pseudo-editor of the blog waved off the lie as an over-zealous “reporter” overstating the facts. Anyone who believed that excuse needs to do a reality check. This is one of several instances where these disinformation specialists have promoted outright lies, were caught, and made a quiet retraction or employed tactic number 2 above.

The point is to railroad the lie into the collective consciousness of their readers or anyone who strays onto their website from a variety of other avenues. Once the lie is exposed, it is too late, and a large portion of Charlestown will not notice or care when the truth finally does come out. Just how large a portion of the Town is anyone’s guess, because lies are spread through the written word and in conversation. How hard is it to retract a lie? One parable says that someone who wants to retract a lie should climb a mountain on a windy day, write the lie on a piece of paper, tear the paper into the tiniest possible pieces , throw the pieces into the wind and then try to collect each piece and put the pieces back together. So the excuse about an over-zealous “reporter” was issued several days after the lie first appeared, tucked into a totally disconnected comment page, but the original posting still remained and continues to be available to anyone who scrolls down the Google listings.

There are more examples of this type of disinformation tactic used by some CDTC members, but why illuminate the obvious? As I said, anyone who reads the disinformation posts can identify several other instances on their own. Here is a question to ponder: if the lie is told with a sneer, is it any more of a lie than one told with a smile on the liar’s face? If your answer is that they are the same, you won’t be buying the argument that they were just kidding; but that subject is best suited for another posting.