Interesting Times - Liars

First, I would like to thank the leaders of the Republican Party for their fine work, shutting down the government and threatening to cause the country to default on its debts.  You see, just a few posts back, well before all the current drama, I wrote about the need to get rid of the Republican Party altogether, plus I have been predicting their eventual demise as a party since Bush II was re-elected in 2004.  The recent Republican antics have made me look prescient and well-informed and wise, and have contributed significantly to the possibility that the party will in fact be wiped out in time.  Nice job guys.

But this post is not about the shutdown or the debt limit.  This post is about a fundamental quality of Republicans that explains the need to destroy their party, and that is that they are liars.  Liars, liars, liars, every one of them.

I'm not really talking about the two pictured above (for them you need a stronger term than liars, like Super-Liars or something), nor about the political leadership or the talking heads like Rush Limbaugh.  Of course those people are liars.  But I'm talking about the rank and file Republicans, the ones who keep voting those leaders into office and listening to conservative talk radio and watching Fox News.  They're liars too.

"Liars" is my brother's word, and he might have picked it up because Al Franken used it, but I used to like to give the rank and file the benefit of the doubt and say that they were "irrational."  I'm warming up to the word "liars," because I think that Republicans are irrational by choice, that they have to realize at some level that they are giving themselves permission to deny reality and reason and start reaching conclusions that are utter nonsense.  Their thought processes are intellectually dishonest.

For an example, take global warming.  Most Republicans understand what science is, and they are used to relying on it.  If they read that a new planet was discovered close to a nearby star, they believe it, even though they don't examine the evidence closely or understand how one finds a planet.  If they hear that earthquakes are caused by shifting plates on the Earth's crust, they accept it even though they have not seen the shifting plates themselves.  But tell them that human activity is causing the Earth to get warmer (which always seemed very plausible to me), and suddenly scientists are all liberals and liars and cheaters out to fool us all, and only Fox News is telling the truth, and the world is NOT getting hotter, or if it is, people didn't cause it.

Deep down, most conservatives have to realize that their point of view on global warming is about the biggest load of horseshit ever, but they have given themselves permission to lie, telling themselves they really believe what they say.  But they know better.  You can't just deny reality without a voice going off in your head, telling you that something isn't right here.  You can shut off that voice and make yourself believe any stupid thing you want to believe, just because that's what you really want to believe it, but at some level, you know that's what you are doing.

The sad thing is, conservatives might have had something of value to say about this issue.  They could have proposed solutions.  We could have had a discussion about the best way to go about solving the problem, how much to use government resources versus private industry, how much money to spend, who should pay for research, etc.  But Republicans decided to deny the whole thing, not because they really don't believe it, but because they don't like the idea that Al Gore was right, or because they hate environmentalists, or something, and so they cannot have a voice in any solutions.  They are just in the way.  The healthcare issue isn't very different, nor gun control.  Conservative don't engage in the discussion because they pretend there isn't any problem.

However, you say, if we destroy the Republican party, these functional idiots, these irrational-by-choice lunatics will still be out there.  Well, the people will still be out there, but people can change.  Consider that most people don't support slavery anymore, or that they don't (openly) demand racial segregation.  The downfall and discrediting of the Republican Party, along with maybe (crosses fingers) Fox News falling into disgrace and going off the air, could do a lot to change the culture.  Denying climate science, or promoting trickle-down economics, or wanting to shut down the government when the American people don't vote for your party, might one day be seen as signs of stupidity and a moral deficit, not just by intelligent people who are paying attention, but across society.

One can hope.