How Conservatives Have Turned Out The Light

Post 2016 Election, it's as if we woke up in a pre-Enlightenment world. Trump and his genie Steve Bannon are medieval in their instincts and their sense of what people should be told by their master and what they should believe (always the same thing).

“It wasn’t Christianity, or religious faith itself in general, that helped make Republican voters more likely to be duped by fake news than their Democratic compatriots. (There were, and continue to be, lots of progressive or liberal people of faith.) Instead, susceptibility to fake news has its particular historical origin in Christian fundamentalism’s rejection of expert elites.” ~Christopher Douglas, The Annenberg Center, USC This article is worth the read. It goes into why conservative Christians are more easily conned than more progressive ones. At least in areas other than the usefulness of yoga for treating skin conditions.

Here's how the Right has rigged the internet, our knowledge marketplace, to steer the public to the Right. Do you hate when people finish your sentences for you? Google does this. When you type in search criteria it has a strong tendency to complete your thought in an angry racist or sexist way. From The Guardian

Why is it so hard to unlearn wrong information and false ideas and distorted feelings like hatred? Because they're written on our brains like tattoos. There are people who know this and exploit it. The New Yorker writes about this problem.

After carrying water for the anti-enlightenment side for decades, David Brooks muses about why the Enlightenment is losing out in the Age Of Trump.

Three reasons I can think of. 1. Stupid people are easier to cheat. 2. Gullible people are more obedient. 3. The rich Republicans who dominate our country prefer dumb, obedient people.

At Esquire.com Charles Pierce refuses to feel sorry for all the Trump voters who got tricked into voting for him and now realize Trump plans to hurt them.

Trump refuses to believe facts and expert analysis that contradicts what he knows in his gut. When he doesn’t like what he hears he demands reality be reconfigured to please him.

So instead of being guided by expert professionals American policy is being guided by the intestines of a man whose emotional disorders date back to his early bathroom training. Steve Benen of the Rachel Maddow Show writes about this.

Fact Avoidance as Republican Policy

The people worked up about Planned Parenthood’s policies regarding fetal tissue don’t seem concerned about the fetal tissue that fertility clinics donate to science on a routine basis.

The Washington Post reported on this double standard.

The people worked up about Hillary possibly deleting emails do not get worked up about the 22 million White House emails deleted at the order of Karl Rove...

Pensito Review reported on this double standard.

What makes this difficult for the thinking half of the population is this. These people who are getting selectively worked up are not being intentionally dishonest. They are lying to themselves, you are just in the way.

“…One of the most frustrating things about attempting to engage "a Republican argument" is precisely how often the arguments seem disingenuous. It is not as if rank-and-file activists are actively lying about their motives. It is that they have never questioned them themselves. They have simply heard and regurgitated the talking points so often that they believe their own bullshit and are beyond questioning it. The frustrating thing is not that they are lying to you. It is that in effect (to borrow a Colbert construction), they are lying to themselves at you."

Digby's Blog reported on this interesting and useful gift of self-deception.

Trying to persuade them of the truth is dangerous the way trying to rescue a drowning person will sometimes drown the rescuer. A friend of mine once pointed out that the more you point out the truth to people the less they will believe it.

What are we supposed to do? Wouldn’t you think an advanced society would have mechanisms for revealing and destroying this kind of malicious bullshit? Because it’s all intentional, whether the people know they are being fooled or not.

That corrective mechanism is supposed to be journalism. When Karl Rove explained that the truth about Iraq didn’t really matter because “we create our own reality” it was a journalist who reported that. A lot of us thought the cat was out of the bag, but it wasn’t, because half of America took Mr. Rove at his word about George Bush being able to create new realities. A useful godlike ability, that. Why didn’t that revelation sink the Bush White House?

Journalism Professor Blog discusses the weird reality bending powers of Karl Rove here.

Too often the reporting class just reports, just repeats the bullshit. By reporting the bullshit it becomes news and most people figure news and fact are the same. They have a problem telling bullshit from fact. If it’s reported by a newspaper or a news channel it’s assumed to be fact. Just as Mr. O’Reilly declaring his program is a “no spin zone” means he would never spin a story. Ever. Because he says this with incredible force and conviction makes it even truer. And because Fox viewers are spinning at the same speed as O’Reilly is himself it begins to seem like the spin isn’t spin at all.