But for modern Republicans, being downright proud of their ignorance has become a badge of honor, a way to demonstrate loyalty to the right-wing cause while also sticking it to those liberal pinheads who think there’s some kind of value in knowing what they’re talking about before offering an opinion. This mentality, in its modern form, can be traced back to the Bush White House. In 2004, Ron Suskind of the New York Times interviewed an unnamed Bush official who famously pooh-poohed what he believed to be the shortcomings of journalists who insist that the truth matters more than fantasy: The aide said that guys like me were ”in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who ”believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ”That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.” The sense that you could stick it to the liberals by being utterly indifferent to reality actually grew worse on the right after Bush left office, starting with the adoption of Sarah Palin as a right-wing hero. Palin represents this new era of treating the truth like it’s a horrible force of oppression trying to squelch conservative America. Subsequently, any utterance from her mouth is far more likely to be a blatant and aggressive falsehood than anything resembling fact. The thing is, shameless lying and ignorance works surprisingly well as a debate tactic. It’s hard to argue with someone who not only has signaled that he doesn’t care what the truth is but is downright proud of how little he actually knows. Such a person is not amenable to being educated. Once the pretense of really caring one way or another about what is right and what is wrong has been abandoned, all avenue of discourse is shut down. Take Rep. Jeff Miller’s recent appearance on MSNBC. It was a performance that has become standard on the right when talking about climate change: Dismissively wave away the scientific consensus and spout ignorance in the most condescending tone possible, as if nothing could be sillier than those scientists with their interests in facts and research. Miller repeatedly dismissed decades of scientific research showing the reality of global warming as “foolish.” Then he went above and beyond the call of duty, really showing off how proud he was to know so very little. “Then why did the dinosaurs go extinct? Were there men that were causing — were there cars running around at that point, that were causing global warming? No,” he said, full of contempt for people who aren’t nearly as stupid as he is.
Posted on: Sun, 18 Jan 2015 23:05:38 +0000
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