Fracture Lines

This is from an interesting article, titled "Shibboleths." It begins with the fact that a majority of potential Republican voters believe Barack Obama is not a US citizen:

...birtherism is a shibboleth, that is, an affirmation that marks the speaker as a member of their community or tribe. (The original shibboleth was a password chosen by the Gileadites because their Ephraimite enemies could not say “Sh”.) Asserting a belief that would be too absurd to countenance for anyone outside a given tribal/ideological group makes for a good political shibboleth.

It’s clear, as Dave Weigel points out, that beliefs of this kind are a marker for partisanship, as witness the high correlation between stated birtherist beliefs and approval of Palin. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the statement isn’t actually believed. ...

... we can distinguish numerous different belief states that go along with birtherist answers to opinion poll questions. There are lots of nuances, but most are combinations of the following

• A conspiracy-theoretic view of the world in which liberal elites (a term encompassing Democrats, unions, schoolteachers, scientists, academics and many others) are plotting to undermine the American way of life and replace it with some unspecified, but awful alternative. In this case, answers to these questions reflect actual beliefs
• Partisanship as suggested by Weigel in which Republicans choose to give the most negative answer possible about Obama as an affirmation of tribal identity.
• Doublethink in which people are aware that in some mundane sense Obama was born in Hawaii, but also believe that Republican ideology is true and implies the birtherist answer
• Conformism, in which people know the truth but give the culturally preferred answer, or choose some evasive form of words, as with John Boehner recently.

Does all this hurt or help the Republicans? In short-run electoral terms, I think it helps. A base of loyal supporters who, for one or other of the reasons mentioned above, are immune to factual evidence has to help win elections. (emphasis mine, as it's the whole Rovian point.) There are, however, two big costs

• First, people have noticed that Republicans have a problem with reality. That perception, which undermines the rationale for all sorts of thinking about policy, will take a while to sink in, but it will also be hard to erase once it is generally accepted. In the long run, this has to turn off a fair number of Republican-leaning independents and any remaining Republicans with a capacity for embarrassment.

• Double-think is very difficult, and people will start to act on the basis of their beliefs. If those beliefs are ludicrously false, trouble is likely to follow.

It's among the most puzzling phenomena with which I wrestle daily: the fact that acceptance or rejection of undeniable facts should fall so sharply along party lines. Deniers of anthropogenic climate change, rejectors of evolution, believers in Obama's foreign birth -- they're all Republicans. I get that hating Obama is politics as usual; but birtherism simply has no explanation in reality as understood by those living in, well, reality.

I've said it before: I think it's no accident that there is a strong religious undercurrent that flows through the separation between Ds and Rs. Which is not to say that Ds aren't religious: many are; maybe even most (I'm sure there are polls out there). But, from what I observe, there are very few biblical literalists on that side of the breech. Few who would force their beliefs on others, and substitute them for public education. The sort of religious certainty that demands rejection of the observable resides, it seems, essentially exclusively on the other side.

So it comes back to neurophysiology, as it always seems to: our brains simply work differently. Unfortunately, there's no vive la difference there, no "it takes all kinds," no tangoing by twos. When the gears of a major political party are turned by those who actively and proudly reject reality, it does few of us any good. Oh, John Boehner sheds happy tears, Michele Bachmann thinks her shit don't smell. But for those of us whose eyes are open and able to look from side to side, there's trouble coming, as the above author said; and it's heading here fast and hard.

I've expressed the unlikely hope that at some time before it's too late, people will realize that teabaggers have long since passed through the departure gate from reality. It's why I continue to write. The article posits that it could happen, too. It's a question of how many critical thinkers there are out there, unheard from; and how willing they are to employ their brains, when so many have already chosen not to and seem happy as clams at high tide. When the tide is out.