Making Ignorance Great Again

As noted many times over the years, the Republican Party was once a political party that valued science and knowledge.  Education and learning were valued.  Not anymore.  Now, inconvenient facts are simply ignored, or, worse yet, said to be untrue.  How did this happen?  One word: Christofacists.  Or, if you prefer two words: evangelical Christians.  Before I resigned from the Virginia Beach GOP City Committee, I had seen an active member of the Christian Coalition elected to the position of Vice-Chairman. Next came a coup of sorts when the then Chairwoman was voted out and replaced by a man who was only too happy to pander to the demands of the Christofacists and, just as disturbingly, have more of them elected to the City Committee.  What happened in Virginia Beach happened time and time again across the country.  The result is a party that lies constantly - a trait I noted in the Christofascists time and time again - and embraces ignorance.  Anything - and anyone - who goes against the knuckle dragging ideology is said to be untrue or not a "real American."  A column in the New York Times bemoans today's GOP which has reached new lows under Donald Trump.  Here are excerpts:

Donald Trump just took us out of the Paris climate accord for no good reason. I don’t mean that his decision was wrong. I mean, literally, that he didn’t offer any substantive justification for that decision. Oh, he threw around a few numbers about supposed job losses, but nobody believes that he knows or cares where those numbers came from. It was just what he felt like doing.

And here’s the thing: What just happened on climate isn’t an unusual case — and Trump isn’t especially unusual for a modern Republican. For today’s G.O.P. doesn’t do substance; it doesn’t assemble evidence, or do analysis to formulate or even to justify its policy positions. Facts and hard thinking aren’t wanted, and anyone who tries to bring such things into the discussion is the enemy.

Consider another huge policy area, health care. How was Trumpcare put together? Did the administration and its allies consult with experts, study previous experience with health reform, and try to devise a plan that made sense? Of course not. In fact, House leaders made a point of ramming a bill through before the Congressional Budget Office, or for that matter anyone else, could assess its likely impact.

When the budget office did weigh in, its conclusions were what you might expect: If you make huge cuts in Medicaid and reduce subsidies for private insurance — all so you can cut taxes on the wealthy — a lot of people are going to lose coverage. Is 23 million a good estimate of those losses? Yes — it might be 18 million, or it might be 28 million, but surely it would be in that range.

So how did the administration respond? By trying to shoot the messenger. . . . . He also accused the office — headed by a former Bush administration economist chosen by Republicans — of political bias, and smeared its top health expert in particular.

But Mulvaney and his party don’t study issues, they just decide, and attack the motives of anyone who questions their decisions.

Which brings us back to climate policy.

On climate change, influential conservatives have for years clung to what is basically a crazy conspiracy theory — that the overwhelming scientific consensus that the earth is warming due to greenhouse-gas emissions is a hoax, somehow coordinated by thousands of researchers around the world. And at this point this is effectively the mainstream Republican position.

Do G.O.P. leaders really think this conspiracy theory is true? The answer, surely, is that they don’t care. Truth, as something that exists apart from and in possible opposition to political convenience, is no longer part of their philosophical universe.

And as health care and climate go, so goes everything else. Can you think of any major policy area where the G.O.P. hasn’t gone post-truth? Take budgeting, where leaders like Paul Ryan have always justified tax cuts for the rich by claiming the ability to conjure up trillions in extra revenue and savings in some unspecified way. The Trump-Mulvaney budget, which not only pulls $2 trillion out of thin air but counts it twice, takes the game to a new level, but it’s not that much of a departure.

As George Orwell noted many years ago in his essay “In Front of Your Nose,” people can indeed talk nonsense for a very long time, without paying an obvious price. But “sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.

The party base simply rejects anything that challenges what it was taught in childhood, especially childish, myth based religious beliefs.  For them, it is more comforting to reject objective reality than to face the wrongness of their beliefs.  And today's Republican "leaders" are only too happy to play the game to stay in power.  They truly are political whores of the worse kind.   

Brexit and Britain’s - and America's - Delusions of Empire

The parallel's between those in Britain who voted for Breixt and white Americans who voted for Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, are remarkable.  In both instances, the two groups long for a perceived glorious past and a seek to reject modern economic reality and the fact that globalization and emerging economies make the days of "good old days" of yesteryear impossible to a bring back.  For the British, it's a longing of Imperial Britain on the eve of World War I when things may have been good for many whites in Britain proper, but not so wonderful for many of the subject peoples.  For Trump voters, it's the days immediately post World War II when America dominated the world, segregation at home maintained white privilege and minorities "knew their place" and gays, for their part remained largely invisible.  One irony is that America, with its crumbling infrastructure and disproportionate military spending is making the same mistake made by Britain post WWI when it failed to modernize its infrastructure and industries to remain competitive.  With China, India and other economies rising, going back to the late 1940's and 1950's simply isn't going to happen no matter what false promises Trump made to the gullible and .those motivated by bigotry.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at British delusions and indirectly makes the case for a wake up call by Trump supporters in the USA.  Here are excerpts:

[I]t’s Brexit supporters who may be in line for a real shock. Even beyond the coming “traumatic” loss of access to the E.U.’s market — as the Economist put it — the promise of a politically resurgent Britain is likely to fall flat.

Much of the rhetoric of the pro-Brexit crowd centers around the reclamation of British “sovereignty” from technocrats in Brussels. But Brexit proponents have also projected a nostalgic vision of Britain once more asserting itself as a dominant player on the world stage. May trumpeted the dawn of a new “Global Britain” earlier this year: a nation shorn of its continental commitments and capable of finding a new accommodation with other parts of the world — especially those it once colonized.

Brits are hardly alone in harboring delusions of empire — consider, for example, the colonial nostalgia of France’s far-right nationalists or the Ottomania of Turkey’s ruling party. But the fantasy of Britain’s past collides almost farcically against Britain’s present.

Never mind that Britain’s empire was a precursor to the forces of globalization and migration that the Brexiteers so profoundly resent.

Never mind that Brexit will “be a considerable blow to Commonwealth nations that export to Britain,” as the Financial Times reported: “Thirty-two Commonwealth countries, mainly in Africa and the Caribbean, are covered by free-trade agreements with the E.U. These states therefore enjoy duty-free and quota-free access to the E.U. for nearly all their goods. . . . Once the UK is out of the E.U., these countries will end up paying $800m a year in additional duties to access the UK market, according to an analysis by the Commonwealth Secretariat.”

The reality is that many Commonwealth nations simply don’t need Britain. Australian exports to its former colonial ruler amounted to just 1.4 percent of its total outgoing trade. Canada, which shares a huge land border with the United States, will always look south, not east. India, once the jewel in Britain’s imperial crown, has an economy already roughly the same size as Britain’s; Indian moguls now own some of Britain’s most iconic companies.

“In anglophone Africa, the game is already up,” British historian David Olusoga noted in the Guardian. “The motorbikes on the freeways of Accra and Lagos are Chinese, assembled by local mechanics from kits shipped direct from Shandong. 

“Brexit is rooted in imperial nostalgia and myths of British exceptionalism, coming up as they have — especially since 2008 — against the reality that Britain is no longer a major world power,” British academic Tom Whyman wrote in a withering column. “Those most under the spell of imperial nostalgia have now become the sorcerers themselves, having somehow managed to conjure up a mandate to transform Britain in their image.”

The myth of British exceptionalism.  Sound familiar?  America suffers from a similar delusion and myth making.  Clinging to myths and what allows one to avoid thinking  is not the answer to achieving prosperity and a just society. Brexit supporters and Trump supporters are both in for a rude shock and the economic pain will be self-inflicted. 

National Review: Will the Virginia GOP Civil War Keep Virginia Purple?

Jennifer Rubin isn't the only one worried that the Virginia GOP will continue on its self-inflicted suicide death spiral.  The venerable National Review also has a piece that looks at the battle between those who would try to save the Virginia GOP and the Kool-Aid drinkers who are the root of the problem.  The column notes the national implications of how the civil war in Virginia plays out.   Unfortunately, thoughtful, reality based arguments do not play well with the Christofascists, Tea Party and white supremacist elements in today's Virginia GOP.   Here are excepts from the column that underscore the problem and the difficulty that will be involved in weeding out the cancerous extreme right elements in the party:

In Virginia, it’s easy to divide state Republicans into two groups. Most would draw some sort of line between the grassroots and the establishment — say, the Tea Party versus GOP loyalists — and those types of designations are indeed helpful.

But the most useful dichotomy might be this one: One group of Virginia conservatives advocates using the primary process to choose nominees; the other advocates nominating conventions. 

That’s a fairly wonky distinction, but it helps clarify the rift in Virginia’s GOP politics that helped pave the way to a once-inconceivable outcome: Governor Terry McAuliffe. It’s a rift that is deep, persistent, and very problematic for future conservative victories in the state.

It’s a proxy war, but a messy and important one — important not only to Old Dominion politics nerds, but also to anyone who’s interested in Mark Warner’s Senate seat or the state’s Electoral College votes in 2016. Virginia is a big deal. Therefore Virginia Republicans are a big deal. And, therefore, an insurmountable rift could have national implications.

At least, that’s the view from just north of the Potomac. Not everyone sees it that way. Rick Boyer, a homeschooling father, Liberty University graduate, longtime conservative activist in the Old Dominion, and chair of the Republican party in the state’s 22nd congressional district, says he’s not especially interested in intraparty reconciliation just yet.

“If you can’t mount a statewide campaign to win the party nomination, why do you think you can mount a statewide campaign to beat the Democrats?” he [Linwood Cobb, the GOP chairman in the seventh congressional district] asks.

The brewing conflict came to a head when a coalition of tea partiers, libertarians, social conservatives, and other grassroots activists organized to take over the Republican Party of Virginia State Central Committee (usually called State Central) in 2012 and then voted to have a nominating convention instead of a primary.

The race for Republican representative Frank Wolf’s old seat in Northern Virginia should be a bellwether for whether the two sides will coalesce behind one candidate.  Bobbie Kilberg, a long-time Republican operative and president and CEO of the Northern Virginia Technology Council, expects the race to be revealing. 

“The business community and centrists have not asserted their clout, and it’s time they did so,” she says. “Once they do so, you’ll have a conversation from strength about the direction of the party that would include all sides. So it will be a very interesting year.”

Not that much on the line, just a U.S. Senate seat and the possibility of keeping Virginia purple.