In his diary on January 29, 1944, the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels wrote,

The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore

always be essentially simple and repetitious. In the long run, only he will achieve basic results in influencing public opinion

who is able to reduce problems to the simplest terms, and who has the courage to keep forever

repeating them in this simplified form, despite the objections of the intellectuals. And I thought about that quote a lot while

reading the tweets and watching the public statements of Trump advisor, White House Deputy Chief of

Staff, Stephen Miller. Now, I've read an awful lot of right-wing propaganda in my time. I've actually published an entire book dissecting conservative arguments, taking them apart

piece by piece.

But I've never actually felt my intelligence insulted quite the way I do when I'm reading

the words of Stephen Miller.

Because usually, conservative arguments have something slightly compelling

about them. There's some supposed evidence, some reasoning, something to back them up. And

then those of us who find them abhorrent, we have to then explain why the evidence presented

is misleading, why what seems like logic is in fact sophistry. For example, if the claim that a conservative is making is that a higher minimum wage will kill jobs

because raising the price of something reduces demand for it, we have to show that the weight

of the economic evidence suggests that this doesn't, in fact, happen in reality, and then we have to give a theory

explaining why it doesn't happen. But the claims that Stephen Miller typically makes are of an

entirely different kind. While some conservatives at least try to look like they're engaging

in rational argument, Miller doesn't. He doesn't even seem to be trying to persuade people.

He's not appealing to their rationality at all. He speaks to their gut, not their brain.

So, for example, Hillary Clinton, of whom current affairs is certainly not a long-time fan,

she recently criticized the Republican tax plan,

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