The only thing - ostensibly - stopping the Democrats in congress from stopping the war is fear of right wing memes and their power. Hopefully, illustrating some of these memes will show how ridiculous they are.

The current phrasing of the Dolchstoss (stab in the back) meme (more on the definition below) is “undercutting the troops”. Note “cut” in the root of the verb. Other phrasings include “undermining” the troops and “not supporting” the troops.

Just last week, right-wing propagandist/enabler Chris Wallace served up some Dolchstoss for Dick “Dick” Cheney:

Vice President Dick Cheney said any such effort would be “undercutting” U.S. forces. Moderator Chris Wallace, on “Fox News Sunday,” asked Mr. Cheney what he would say to “members of Congress who may try to block” the troop increase. “Would they be, in effect, undercutting the troops?” “Well, I think they would be,” Mr. Cheney said.

Today on Face The Nation, Ol’ Crankypants warms up last week’s leftovers:

SCHEIFFER: Let me ask you this, Senator. Vice President Cheney says this sort of thing undercuts the troops. What’s your response?

HAGEL: Let me tell you this. I served in Vietnam in 1968. Others did too. Jim Webb, John McCain. John Kerry. Other members in the House. In 1968 when I was there with my brother, worst year, deaths, I would have welcomed the Congress of the United States to pay a little attention as to what was going on. I would have welcomed that. That is complete nonsense to say we’re undercutting the support of the troops. What are we about? We’re Article 1 of the Constitution. We are co-equal branch of government. Are we not to participate? Are we not to say anything? Are we not to register our sense of where we’re going in this country on foreign policy? Bottom line is this: our young men and women and their families, these young men and women who are asked to fight and die deserve a policy worthy of those sacrifices. I don’t think we have one now.

Hagel (R-ES&S voting systems) does a better job at swatting this meme than any Democrat I’ve heard, with the exception of Murtha. They don’t try to defend themselves against the meme, they just point out that it makes no damn sense.

Memes do not work on the rational side of the brain, they appeal to the emotional, instinctual side. Some, like the Dolchstoss appeal to Archetypes that are part of the collective unconscious, as Kevin Baker explains in his seminal article for Harpers.

The word dolchstoss—“dagger thrust”—had been popularized almost fifty years before in Wagner’s Götterdämmerung. After swallowing a potion that causes him to reveal a shocking truth, the invincible Teutonic hero, Siegfried, is fatally stabbed in the back by Hagen, son of the archvillain, Alberich.

Wagner had himself lifted his plot device from a medieval German poem, which was inspired in turn by Old Norse folklore, and of course the same story can be found in a slew of ancient mythologies, whether it’s the fate of the Greek heroes Achilles and Hercules or the story of Jesus and Judas. The hero cannot be defeated by fair means or outside forces but only by someone close to him, resorting to treachery.

From the Wikipedia entry.

The Dolchstosslegende (German: Dolchstoßlegende, literally “Dagger stab legend” often translated into English as “stab-in-the-back legend”) refers to a social mythos and persecution-propaganda theory popular in Germany in the period after World War I through World War II. It attributed Germany’s defeat to a number of domestic factors instead of failed militarist geostrategy. Most notably, the theory proclaimed that the public had failed to respond to its “patriotic calling” at the most crucial of times and some had even intentionally “sabotaged the war effort.”

Der Dolchstoss is cited as an important factor in Adolf Hitler’s later rise to power, as the Nazi Party grew its original political base largely from embittered WWI veterans, and those who were sympathetic to the Dolchstoss interpretation of Germany’s then-recent history.

It’s high time for the Democratic party to stop running scared from some recycled Nazi propaganda.

Illustration from this poster circa 1924. Anyone speak ze german?