The following content originally appeared on the Minocqua Brewing Company website. For more information about the brewery and their Super PAC, please click here.
I want to talk about our national embarrassment, Sen. Ron Johnson; his overtly racist political ads against Mandela Barnes; and the politics of projection and deflection.
As any politico knows, negative ads against an opponent have been shown to move the needle more than positive ones. That means every election season we get hammered with nauseatingly nasty ads.
Cue a mailing sent to voters with Mandela Barnes’ face noticeably made to look darker than his actual complexion, and many other overtly racist television ads that mischaracterize him as “soft on crime.” These ads of course use racist tropes that attempt to link people of color to crime.
The ads are awful and play to our worst instincts—fear and hate. We ultimately need to have a national conversation on how to reject these ads and the dark money that funds them, but until then, we have to focus what’s really happening here.
These awful ads and Johnson’s entire political campaign, like the rest of the Republican Party, is built on projection and deflection.
Comic by Phil Hands
Definition of Projection—The transfer of one's own desires or emotions to another person.
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Johnson projects being “soft on crime” onto his opponent because he was criminally involved in an attempted presidential coup, has undermined the FBI’s investigation into Trump stealing classified documents, and has repeatedly voted against funding police departments and taking guns away from dangerous people.—both obvious solutions to reducing violent crime.
He is projecting his own criminal behavior and voting record that can be linked to higher crime onto his opponent to psychologically confuse Wisconsin voters.
Definition of Deflection—a deliberate tactic in which any attempt to talk about feelings or behavior is met with a barrage of argument and blame of others.
Johnson is hammering away at the issues of crime and inflation because he doesn’t want voters to remember how he recommended gargling Listerine and taking ivermectin as substitutes for getting a scientifically proven and CDC-recommended COVID-19 vaccine. This intentional misdirection by a sitting U.S. Senator with a huge mouthpiece undoubtedly led to increased and unneccessary COVID-19 death.
He also deflects because he doesn’t want voters to remember that he intentionally ignored FBI warnings that he was amplifying Russian misinformation meant to destabilize America, and constantly parroted Trump’s never-ending stream of lies to the American people.
Ron Johnson is America’s second least popular Senator after Mitch McConnell, so all he can to do to win this race in Wisconsin is to use psychological warfare to scare Wisconsin voters into thinking Mandela Barnes is more of a demon than he is.
Wisconsinites, we have to keep talking about Johnson’s and the Republican Party’s projection and deflection because it’s the truth.
Unfortunately, the truth has a hard time finding its way into people’s brains unless it is repeated ad nauseam.
Studies have shown that the more you repeat the same message, the more people believe it is true. It’s called the Illusory Truth Effect, and the Republican Party has become MASTERS at using it to win elections. The “Big Lie” is the most glaring example of how using this tactic has convinced a large percentage of the Republican rank and file that election fraud was behind Trump’s defeat—a lie that has been disproven too many times to count.
Image via Minocqua Brewing Company
The Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC is trying our best to keep the focus on Ron Johnson’s history of lies and criminal misdirection. We’re like a dog that has latched itself to his ankle and won’t let go.
We are repeating these themes of Projection and Deflection through radios ads, billboards, our weekly radio show/podcast, and social media.
We’re still selling beer and t-shirts, but until the election on November 8, you're gonna hear about how we must save our democracy by rejecting the “Big Lie” and by getting Wisconsin women their reproductive rights back.
And that doesn’t happen unless we re-elect Tony Evers and send Ron Johnson packing.
Everything is at stake, and nothing is more important to our communities than to hold the Trump Cult accountable and to reverse a SCOTUS decision made by corrupt Neanderthals.
If you want to chip in to help our cause, here’s a link to donate. Otherwise, just keep on buying our beer and merch. We’ll do the rest.
Thanks for reading and thanks for sticking with Minocqua Brewing Company.
Together, we can keep beating the drum of truth and convince those that have since refused to hear it—one beer at a time.
