Monday, August 3, 2009 at 2:24 pm by Darryl
The Republican’s Dark Ages
Via Political Wire:
Here’s an advance look at a new Public Policy Polling survey in Virginia completed over the weekend: An astonishing 41% of the state’s Republicans think President Obama was not born in the United States while just 32% think he was and 27% are still not sure.
It would be easy to mock Virginia Republicans for these findings (see previous post). But, really, this is pathetic in a sad way. After eight years of Republican strategists selling denial of scientific evidence, enabling rejection of plain fact, and promoting religion over science in public policy, the Republican minions have completely bought into denial as reality. That is, the minions have been brainwashed.
Thus, we have global warming deniers who deny that the science is very good, and don’t realize their denials were originally just a political statement for achieving political aims. And last year we had three Republican presidential candidates who don’t believe in biological evolution. Because, apparently, Bishop Ussher’s somewhat fanciful reconstruction of earth’s chronology is far more convincing than anything modern science has discovered.
We had an administration that denied factual evidence about WMD in Iraq and, instead, resorted to making up their own evidence. The result was a disastrous and costly invasion of another nation—one with no WMD. Perhaps the bigger long-term cost is the collective brainwashing of those on the political right into believing that ideology is truth and that inconsistent facts aren’t all that important.
The funny thing is, when Republicans were in power, the “ideology is truth” philosophy was something of a “don’t question authority” control mechanism. Now that the Democrats are in power, the looney-tune element of the Right not only questions authority, but they are habituated to ignore such things as logic, reason, evidence, and facts. It seems that mainstream Republicans have now lost their control over their fringe element, and the fringe element has expanded alarmingly.
The Republicans thought they could shelter themselves in their castles of Dark Ages reasoning. In an Age of Enlightenment, however, their their castles have become their prisons.
