Jay Lake: Writer

[culture|politics] Privileging wilful ignorance

Recently in the car I heard part of an OPB broadcast about changes in Oregon law removing religious belief in faith healing as a valid defense for failing to seek needed medical attention for a child. (This in the context of manslaughter and child abuse charges on the death of a child with an otherwise treatable condition.) The host challenged the legislator behind the law as to why they were targeting religious believers as opposed to vaccination deniers.

My reaction was to think that both positions — faith healing and vaccination denial — are positions of wilful ignorance in the face of plain fact. And fundamentally, while adults are free to neglect themselves as see fit, when a parent applies either of those approaches to a child, they are committing abuse. Plain and simple. The child has no choice about participating in the explicitly counterfactual and risky behavior being chosen by the parent. Children deserve better than that kind of wilful ignorance.

Even filtered through my confirmation bias as a liberal-progressive, most of the privileged wilful ignorance I see in our society these days emanates from the religious and political Right wing of our culture. The notable exception to this is the anti-vaccination movement, which is entirely founded on precisely one widely discredited study two decades old, and seems to be a pet theory of a certain New Age-left perspective. Every other significant example I can think of comes from the Right.

I’m talking here specifically about wilful ignorance with a broad base of support or a broad impact. Moon landing denial is a wilful ignorance, but it’s the hobby of a selected few cranks. Holocaust denial has more serious roots and implications, but it’s hardly a major fixture of the American political or social scene. On the other hand, there’s a whole array of conservative hobby horses ranging from evolution denial to climate change denial to stem cell research that have wide ranging implications in electoral politics and educational policy alike.

All of these fixations, no matter where they emanate from, require a belief in a broad-based conspiracy of suppression, a denial of widely available data and plain facts, and a “where there’s smoke there’s fire” kind of logic that says if enough people believe something, it must have validity.

Part of the privileging comes from that idea that if enough people believe something, it must be true. This is the basis of Creationism’s moronic “teach the controversy” mantra. There is no controversy except one arising from wilful ignorance, and that doesn’t deserve privileging as political or social discourse.

Likewise, part of the privileging comes from some of these positions being articles of certain sects of this country’s mainstream Christian faith. Because it’s been defined as an article of faith, evolution denialists can cry foul and claim anti-Christian bigotry to privilege their position. That doesn’t make them an less wrong, of course.

But most of the privileging comes from a deeply cynical long term conservative strategy of building on fear and ignorance to keep the GOP voting base engaged. One of the two major parties of the most powerful country in the world deliberately indulges in all sorts of weirdness from Birtherism to evolution denial to keep their voters activated. That kind of short term electoral thinking comes at the expense of both good government and a rational society.

The principle of crank magnetism weighs in here. (HT to Orac, where I picked this term up.) Once you surrender evidence-based thinking and logic chains in favor of a cherished illogical belief, you strongly risk decoupling your ability to think critically about other matters. Frankly, this is one reason I am an atheist — all faith-based thinking creates this mindset, insofar as I can see. And we can see the evidence in the rapid drift of the Republican party and its standard bearers into increasingly weird territory on a whole host of science and reality type issues. Which then feeds back into deep counterfactual thinking on blackletter issues like budget and tax policy.

I don’t really have any notion how to address this. I do know that undermining the American way of thinking is a great way to score electoral votes, but it’s a lousy way to chart the future course of our country. This is the kind of problem we ought to be able to educate ourselves out of, on the Right and elsewhere (we don’t really have a Left in America), if we’d only listen to reality.

Tags: Culture, Politics

Posted: 5:57 am Fri September 16 2011 | Comments(13) |

[politics] bin Laden

This perspective likely won’t make me very popular right now amid the national euphoria over events in Pakistan yesterday, but I find it difficult to celebrate the death of another human being. Even one as profoundly despicable as Osama Bin Laden.

Would we not have been far better off capturing him and placing him on trial? As it stands, Bin Laden will be seen as a glorious martyr to his cause, and the absence of his body in the reported burial at sea will keep him about as dead as Jim Morrison or Elvis Presley.

I can’t help but think that a trial, and the humiliation of a long, slow decline in an American prison, would have made our point far better.

Not to mention the precedent. Any aggrieved Iraqi or Afghan whose family was killed by American bombs now has all the justification in the world to assassinate our leaders. After all, it’s precisely what we have just done.

I suppose I believe that America should be better than her enemies. That belief has come to seem very quaint in the decade since the 9-11 attacks.

Tags: Politics

Posted: 6:22 am Mon May 02 2011 | Comments(9) |

[photos|politics] In which I go to a political protest

Yesterday tillyjane a/k/a my mom called me up and asked me to go to a protest in support of the Wisconsin public sector unions. I hemmed and hawed about skipping out on my writing time, but decided that the novel would still be there after the opportunity for civic participation had passed. I figure there were about four or five hundred people there once it got going, a mixture of teachers, nurses, trade union guys and political activists. The weather was clear and quite cold, so I did not last through the entire rally.

There are some aspects of the union movement I am uncomfortable with. My father was a U.S. diplomat, so I did not grow up in a household where labor issues were much on anyone’s mind on a daily basis. My first awareness of unions was the Teamster’s strike, back in the mid-seventies, when scabs were being killed. Specifically, a non-union bus driver who ran into a brick-on-a-rope trap at an underpass, if I recall correctly. That and Jimmy Hoffa. My next awareness was a cross-country family trip to a major theme park that arrived after months of planning and weeks of travel and promises to find it closed due to an employee strike. Let’s just say I wasn’t emotionally primed as a child to see unions as a force for good.

At the same time, I like forty-hour work weeks and paid vacations and benefits packages. Those things did not become standards in the American workplace thanks to the Invisible Hand of the market, or to competition between employers. They became standards because of decades of risky and sometimes fatal union activism. Even if you’ve never paid union dues in your life, even if you believe that unions are satanic tools of the socialist Left, if you work for a living, you owe them a great deal. Unions have done far more for you than your employer ever would have left to the magic of market self-regulation and unfettered capital. That’s a perspective that’s utterly lost on most rank and file conservatives today.

I don’t know if this is a Martin Niemoller moment in our society or not, but I went to stand with the Communists and the trade unionists yesterday. What have you done to protect your freedom?

A few photos… Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: family, Photos, Politics, Portland, Wisconsin, Writing

Posted: 7:38 am Sat February 26 2011 | Comments(1) |

[politics] Dear GOP – the collective you are an Idiot

Originally posted by ladyqkat at Dear GOP – the collective you are an Idiot

Tags: healthcare, Memes, Politics

Posted: 7:09 am Sun February 06 2011 | Comments(4) |

[politics] July 4th

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such disolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Tags: Politics

Posted: 6:32 am Sun July 04 2010 | Comments(2) |

[politics] Incivility and false equivalency

One of the things that continually pops up in political discourse is false equivalency. “[X] was bad, but both sides do it.” The media does it, presumably in an attempt to present balanced stories. Extremists on both the Right and the (American mainstream version of) the Left do it, to justify their own rhetoric and behaviors. Centrists and independents do it as an expression of frustration, or a justification for not getting involved.

You see this especially in the problem of incivility and destructive rhetoric.

But the equivalency here is false. Remember the outrage in the media over a Bush-Hitler video in the MoveOn contest some years ago? Republicans in Congress grandstanded against one anonymous contributor somewhere out of thousands. We were told this poisoned the process, this was typical of the left. Yet during the Obama administration, leading Republican political figures have routinely compared Obama to Hitler and his policies to Nazism, without a hint of protest from the media or the public.

This ties back to Newt Gingrich’s GOPAC memo of 1994, and conservative pollster Frank Luntz’s ongoing updates of keywords for Republican use. Likewise the widespread use of eliminationist rhetoric in the Right wing commentariat and the edgier fringes of conservative political establishment.

There simply is no Democratic equivalent of the GOPAC memo or Luntz’s word lists. There is no Left wing commentariat with even a fraction of the audience and market share of Limbaugh, Beck, et alia, and such as they are, Maddow and so on, they do not engage in eliminationist rhetoric directed at the Right.

To say that “both sides do it” with respect to political incivility and calls for violence, intimidation and other forms of rhetorical attack is both untrue and ignores the specific, well-documented facts on the ground. One of the many reasons I’m a committed liberal-progressive is that I find the rhetorical tactics of the Right distressing and often disgusting. Even if they have something to say I might want to hear, it’s so often cloaked in a combination of aggressiveness and dismissiveness that closes my mind.

If you think I’m wrong, show me. Show me how conservatives have stood up and challenged the use of Nazi rhetoric to refer to Obama to the same degree they challenged the MoveOn video. Show me where the Democratic equivalent of the GOPAC memo is, and who uses it. Show me liberal talk show hosts with Limbaugh’s ratings, Beck’s attitude, who use eliminationist rhetoric to delegitimize the right.

Because so far as I can tell, the current poisonous climate of political discourse has been deliberate fostered by the Republican Party and their media proxies since at least 1994 in an attempt to energize their political base and polarize the sought-after undecided center. I don’t see good faith, or meaningful rhetoric about policy, politics and process. I see highly organized nastiness directed at a large segment of American society, an attempt to separate “Real America” from the rest of us. Yes, there’s always some leftie nut saying outrageous things, but those people don’t host major talk shows or hold national elective office, unlike the lengthy list of conservatives who say outrageous things.

Where am I wrong?

Tags: Politics

Posted: 6:03 am Thu June 17 2010 | Comments(15) |

[politics] Wondering about my reactions to Sarah Palin

I’ve been trying to figure out why Sarah Palin annoys me so much. (This at least partially in response to a fair amount of polite prodding from .)

It’s not her politics per se, though I don’t agree with much of what she appears to stand for. If it were her politics, I would find virtually every Republican pol equally annoying, and clearly I don’t. Well, okay, let’s be honest: I do find virtually every Republican pol annoying, but not in the same special way Palin annoys me. Being mad about politics is like shouting at the neighborhood kids to get off your lawn — it’s a club sport once you reach a certain point in life. The usual “I voted against it in Congress and came home to take credit for it anyway” hypocrisy is life in the political minority in our system. Et cetera.

It’s not the history of unresolved corruption and abuse of power issues in Alaska that got largely buried once she hit the national stage because, well, that’s par for the course on both sides of the aisle. Look at the current Democratic efforts to undermine the House Ethics Committee in order to head off various investigations. And no, I don’t mean that all politicians are corrupt, or even most/many of them. Just that the temptations are strong and the rules are complex and even otherwise good people will see gray areas. Otherwise not-so-good people will exploit those gray areas mercilessly. There’s all kinds in office, just like everywhere else in life.

What I’ve finally come down on is that like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, when Sarah Palin is off-script and speaking from the hip, she doesn’t make any sense. Reagan never did make sense if you listened to his words rather than his tone and delivery. Bush didn’t even have tone and delivery, all he had was the family name and the GOP in lockstep behind him under Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment.

Contrast with, say, George H.W. Bush, with whom I have political disagreements just as vast, but at least he seemed to know what he was doing, understand both history and current events, and despite his occasionally fractured diction, have a grasp of what he stood for and the ability to articulate it. Or Newt Gingrich, whom I suspect of being ferociously intelligent, albeit by my lights misguided to a point bordering on evil. (Ie, the GOPAC memos, etc.)

I am sure there are babbling Democrats, but I haven’t seen them in any real danger of holding high office lately. All three of the 2008 Democratic front runners — Clinton, Edwards, Obama — were almost frighteningly sharp people. And like Jon Stewart, I want a president who’s smarter than me. Just like I want a cancer surgeon with steadier hands than me, and an airline pilot with better reflexes than me, and so on.

So is my reaction to Palin class-based? I don’t think so, because I had the same reaction to Reagan, and there was nothing populist or blue collar about him (or Bush 43), despite occasional rhetoric to the contrary. A similar bit of self-analysis applies to wondering whether my reaction to Palin is gender-based.

Or am I exposing a linguistic prejudice regarding speech register and articulation? Maybe, because what I’m essentially reacting to is an inability to communicate ideas clearly. On the other hand, isn’t one of the key components of leadership precisely that ability?

Or am I seeing linguistic expression as a proxy for intelligence, and reacting along those lines? Which would be an ugly prejudice if true, though again, I do think it is quite defensible to prefer a sharp mind in the White House.

More to think about. But she does spark the same annoyed contempt in me Reagan and Bush 43 always did, and for that matter, Dan Quayle. Hmm. More to consider.

Tags: Personal, Politics

Posted: 5:56 am Wed June 16 2010 | Comments(9) |

[politics] Why I focus on certain kinds of hypocrisy

As I’ve observed many times before, we are all hypocrites. I don’t think it’s psychologically possible to be completely consistent. The tension between mythos and logos in the human psyche pretty much puts paid to that. It’s certainly possible to be morally and intellectually rigorous, and intensely self-correcting, but most of us (definitely including me) are too busy leading our lives to keep that up on a full time basis, either. Insofar as I can tell, one of the whole points of pursuing religion, or some other form of ethical and philosophical system, is to provide a framework in which such consistency can be pursued without having to continually reason from first principles.

And for the most part, I don’t care, so long as you (and I) are not harming anyone. Have fun believing six impossible things before breakfast. I do it all the time. Revel in your self-contradictory nature. I do that all the time, too.

But when you move into the realm of politics, specifically legislation, and you bring your religion or your ethical framework with you and begin governing from that stance, you’d better damned well be consistent. My ethical framework tells me that other people’s private sexual, reproductive and social behavior is none of my damn business, except insofar as they might choose to include or inform me for their own reasons. If I were in politics or government, I’d stay the hell away from putting government in the bedroom. That’s one of the core reasons I’m a liberal-progressive: I firmly believe government doesn’t belong interfering in private life absent a compelling public interest (mandatory education, for example) or preventing harm (domestic violence, for example).

Contrast this with core conservative principles that attempt to control private sexual behavior, personal medical and reproductive choices, and ethical behavior. Legislating morality is a non-starter in any free society, but conservatives love nothing more than the idea of inserting government into the private lives of people they disapprove of. It’s in black-and-white in virtually every Republican party platform out there.

So when we see a story like the resignation of Indiana GOP Rep. Mark Souder in a sex scandal, I call it out. Like I (and so many others) called out Republican Senator Larry Craig, who promised to make the lives of gays a living hell while cruising for men in public restrooms. Or Republican Senator David “Diaper Baby” Vitter for his use of prostitutes while running and serving as a family values champion.

These are not the quiet, private hypocrisies of you, me and everyone else in America. These are the public hypocrisies of the people legislating sexual behavior and private lives of everyone else in America, and they’re doing it on a “punishment for thee but not for me” basis.

That’s why I don’t care when Democrats, or entertainers, or sports figures, are caught out in such scandals. Unlike conservative politicians, those people are not trying to use the force of law to constrain my freedoms and the freedoms of those I love.

It’s not the hypocrisy of doing one thing and saying another that incenses me. That’s just human nature. It’s the hypocrisy of doing one thing while criminalizing and persecuting others for doing the same damned thing that incenses me.

To my mind, that’s reflective of the ultimate flaw in conservatism. My worldview as a liberal-progressive encompasses most of the conservative worldview. Against abortion? Don’t have one. Creeped out by homosexuality? Don’t hang out in gay bars. Almost everything conservatives want, I’m happy for them to have. Even (grudgingly) guns, if people keep them safely. But conservatism, by its very nature, is incapable of granting me the same courtesy. Their worldview, as defined in their party platforms and public rhetoric, explicitly seeks to limit and criminalize mine.

I could never choose a narrowing of opportunity, freedom and the future for myself or anyone else. Souder, Craig, Vitter and the entire conservative movement base their entire political lives on exactly that narrowing. And they betray themselves with the hypocrisy of sex.

Tags: guns, Politics, sex

Posted: 5:52 am Wed May 19 2010 | Comments(3) |

[politics] Dear Arizona

Dear Arizona,

I am a proud immigrant to these American shores. My nth grandfather Lake arrived in North America in the mid-seventeenth century via Guilford, Connecticut from England. He did not have papers, he did not have a visa, and he certainly was looking for work. My family wandered across colonial and national borders, moved to the territories and to the Republic of Texas, and eventually back to the United States in the fullness of time. Always without papers, or a visa, always looking for work. Every single Arizonan who is not a tribal member is just as much an immigrant as I am. Even the tribes are, along their different path of history.

So the next time you ask someone for their papers, my dear Arizona, fall down on your knees and thank your petty little shriveled soul that no one was doing that to you when you were new, hungry and poor.

No love,

Jay Lake, proud immigrant American

Tags:

Posted: 5:58 am Wed April 28 2010 | Comments(11) |

[politics|culture] Opinions and those inconvenient facts

Among other political and cultural hobby horses of mine, I rattle on a lot about evolution denial in education. Likewise the gross historical revisionism of the Texas Textbook Commission. There’s a reason for that, beyond my dedication to intellectual honesty and my aversion to hypocrisy.

Opinions, even those that come in the form of sincerely-held, passionate beliefs, do not substitute for facts. Especially inconvenient facts that contradict those opinions.

Yet when we teach kids in school that the objective evidence of the natural world can be disregarded for a subjective religious belief, we are teaching them exactly that. We are fundamentally undermining critical thinking and replacing it with magical thinking.

Magical thinking is something you see all time in adults. I don’t know a single writer who doesn’t indulge in it as part of preparing their writing mind. (Myself included.) Anyone who has a lucky hat, or cannot write without their tea in a special mug, or any other ritual, is doing this. But most of us understand that. I’m feeding the mythos part of my mind when I say I can only write on the Mac laptop, not the Dell. There’s no objective reason I can’t do it the other way around.

But I know I’m doing this. I don’t confuse my own rituals and magical thinking with the objective reality of the world around me.

One of my big quarrels with the contemporary conservative movement, both in its media form (FOX, etc.) and in its political form (GOP, Tea Party) is the pervasiveness of magical thinking they indulge in, and their overwhelming tendency to confuse opinions with facts. Yes, that’s human nature, and we all do it, but movement conservatism has institutionalized this as policy.

Note this item from a recent New York Times/CBS poll of the Tea Party:

Regardless of your overall opinion, do you think the views of the people in the tea party movement generally reflect the views of most Americans? 84% of the self-identified teabaggers said yes. Only 25% of the general public agreed.

These people honestly believe their view is a majority view. They’re not interested in facts. These people also honestly believe that Obama is a Muslim and was not born in the this country.

And outside of the fringe, you see the same magical thinking. Every time the Republican leadership gets into the media and talks about America being a center-right nation, they’re wrong on the face of both the polling and the electoral results. It’s a narrative they believe in, and need to be true to back their political stance, but it simply isn’t true. Any more than their narrative that a majority of Americans want to repeal HCR is true. Similarly, back in the 2000 election, when the Clinton economy was going strong, Bush advocated tax cuts to stimulate further growth. When the economy began to collapse in the face of an oncoming Republican victory, Bush advocated tax cuts to combat economic contraction. That’s like saying you use the gas pedal in your car both to speed up and slow down.

All this confusing opinions with facts? A lot of it comes down to how you’re educated and socialized in the first place. The conservative attack on education, which in its current form has been in play since at least the Reagan years, is about nothing more or less than raising citizens who don’t know how to question their own position, who will uncritically accept passionate statements as truth, and who, like evolution denialists, eagerly embrace their own opinions as facts, unswayed by the reality of the world around them.

Censoring reality is profoundly unAmerican and unpatriotic, and it’s a core conservative value, starting in the grade schools and going right on to the memory hole of FOX News, the GOP and the Tea Party. Reality is unforgiving, those opinions still aren’t facts; but politics is infinitely malleable, as the activists and leaders of this movement well know.

Tags: Culture, Politics, Process, Writing

Posted: 4:46 am Fri April 16 2010 | Comments(12) |