And yet these people are winning.
Claiming, contra virtually every economist on the planet, that the stimulus didn't work; spreading the falsehood that cutting taxes increases revenue when it never has; blaming the deficits on Obama when it was Bush that turned record surplus into unprecedented red ink, every single one of them says the same things; all of which are demonstrably false.
And yet these people are winning!
In the endless -- and likely unresolvable -- search to find an explanation for the seemingly limitless ability of teabaggers (and, lately, all conservatives) to ignore reality, I came across this article in (warning: anathema approaching) Scientific American:
The critical quality that leads people to treat rookie cards like rosaries is that of the sacred, whereby an object becomes worthy of boundless reverence, commitment, and protection. As diverse as people are in ascribing sacred status to possessions, they are equally varied in which values they consider sacred, a diversity that can breed substantial conflict. The abortion debate, for example, often presents a divide between those who consider woman’s “right to choose” sacred versus those who consider a fetus’ “right to life” sacred.
Referring to a study of feeling among Iranians for their country's nuclear program, the article adds:
...The work is a reminder that sacred values are tremendously influential in disputes both international and interpersonal, but that our negotiating instincts can lead us away from common ground...
....What truly distinguishes sacred values from secular ones is how people behave when asked to compromise them. When people are asked to trade their sacred values for values considered to be secular—what psychologist Philip Tetlock refers to as a “taboo tradeoff”—they exhibit moral outrage, express anger and disgust, become increasingly inflexible in negotiations, and display an insensitivity to a strict cost-benefit analysis of the exchange.
I may be extrapolating too much here, but I think it applies to the current state of affairs in our politics. The mantras of tax cuts and deregulation, held as deeply sacred and absolutely foundational by all conservatives, have never been so threatened by reality. To accept that either idea had anything -- anything at all -- to do with our economic calamity is to allow a disruption in the force of the conservative mind that is simply incompatible with earth-bound equilibrium. Those beliefs which we hold closest are those that allow us to function in an incomprehensible and threatening world. The more the beliefs are shown to be false, the more we hold onto them. Absolutely natural and entirely inevitable, discordance between belief and reality is what so many people seek desperately to avoid. In my view, it pretty much defines the difference between the conservative and the liberal mind: willingness to process fact, to adjust to new circumstances, to evolve one's thinking. (Or to think one's evolved!)
Closed mind, in other words, versus open.
Based on current events, I'd guess another study might confirm the tendency, when all else fails to buttress one's sacred holdings, to find new ones, just as rigidly velcroed to the inside of the skull, but even more lightly attached to the firmament: like Obama's birth as a Kenyan Muslim terrorist. Seek, it is said, and ye shall find.
And whereas it's undoubtedly true that both sides are guilty of similar blindness (after all, where's the evidence that voting rights and education are essential to democracy or that societies which provide for their people are more stable than ones that don't?), based on the past ten years it's the conservative sacraments that appear to be on shakier ground. Thus, the greater tendency among teabagger ilkophiles to cover their eyes, finger their ears, and cleave for guidance unto the RWS™.
An explanation, perhaps. But hardly a comfort, given the actively, proudly, and resolutely fact-averse hordes taking to the polls in a week.
What have we become? And what will we become when they're in charge? Again.
