I am at the point where I can decide what bothers me more: that conservatives tell all these completely outrageous lies, or that millions of people believe those lies.
Just look at some of these:
- Fox News continues to push the same tired old, and repeatedly disproved Benghanzi “scandal”;
- While trying to manufacture a new one revolving around Obamacare and Planned Parenthood;
- Fox News keeps keep talking about ACORN three years after the organization ceased operation;
- Obama is not only to blame for 9/11 but he is somehow to blame for disastrous Hurricane Katrina disaster relief (both of which, of course, took place on the GOP’s watch years before Obama was elected president);
- Rush Limbaugh saying healthcare is “despotic” as though only bad guys promote healthcare (maybe we need more bad guys?);
- Fox News saying sea levels aren’t rising;
- Dana Perino saying taking away welfare will stop crime and Sen. Elbert Guillory (R-LA) agreeing (because all crime is caused by welfare recipients?);
- The New York City Police Department saying its racial profiling through its stop and frisk tactics actually helps minorities;
- In the same vein, Sean Hannity actually claiming Stand Your Ground Laws benefit African-Americans! (I shudder at the thought conservatives think Trayvon Martin was somehow “helped” by being murdered in the street);
- And finally, of course, one of their most cherished lies: Obamacare is not working and it is time to deliver a “crushing blow.” (I guess 41 times is the charm? They were only joking before? I’m not sure how to read this).
And this is all in the last week.
There are, of course, 52 weeks in a year and Barack Obama has been president since 2008. You do the math.
The theater of the absurd has become so absurd it’s a wonder everyone isn’t simply laughing at this point. That anyone can take these ridiculous claims at face value staggers me. They have as much truth value as saying the moon is made of cheese and the earth is flat. Yet millions of Americans gather around their TVs at home or in public places to gobble up the pabulum dished out by Fox News, believing every word of it. What’s worse, eagerly believing every word of it.
Pretty much any lie a conservative cares to tell, the more absurd the better, is likely to be believed by the Republican base. Any lie they tell which is disproven will continue to be talked about on Fox News as though it is true and no mention will ever be made that it has been disproved.
Conservatism has become a reality inside a reality, a bubble completely insulated from our shared reality. Bad enough they choose to stick their collective heads in the ground in this way, but they expect to shape national policy according to not our shared reality but their fabricated version, as though it has any bearing on the world at all.
The problem is that if your argument is based on false premises, your argument isn’t worth much. Look at their recent Syria spin, that the world supported U.S. military intervention in Iraq in 2003. It did not. So they tell a lie about Iraq and pretend it’s true, saying that because the lie is truth, we should do “X” about Syria.
The real danger then of Republicanism’s love of a fantasy reality is that they want to share their dysfunction – forcefully – with the rest of us. They insist upon it. Saying stupid things and having the right to say those stupid things, and even to believe them, is one thing, but forcing us to live somebody else’s delusions is a fantasy too far.
Save it for the public restrooms, Republicans. Really. We mean it.
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