An Allergy to Political Alternatives

The Republican Party has an allergy to facts - The Boston Globe:

The specifics of what are in this column are really not all that important -- what is important is the assumption of the author, the editors, and no doubt a good many of the readers of the column that there is one truth, and "The Party" (TP - Democrat) is its prophet. Naturally, listening to infidels makes those faithful to TP become uncomfortable. A sample ...

I seethed as one candidate after another offered more heartless and uncompassionate plans for how to treat illegal immigrants.

Here is the "money paragraph" ...

It’s one thing to marvel at the unprecedented and stupefying levels of GOP know-nothingness on display this election season — the misstatements, the untruths, the exaggerations, the falsehoods, and the straight-up lies. But these vaccine comments represent a legitimate public health menace. And it’s indicative of the allergy to facts, data, and evidence that is the real story of the GOP debate, and indeed of the Republican nominating contest — and we need to be talking more about it.

Politics, branding, advertising, sales, mythology, story telling, etc, etc are ALL much less about anything like "facts" than they are about convincing others. Marxists believe that history is "wired" by "something" (they believe in no god) so that the "progress" to communism is inevitable. "Progressives" likewise believe in "progress" -- due to "something", we are guaranteed that history is somehow getting "better". We certainly don't know what that means -- having seen something north of 100 million people slaughtered in the 20th century due to the more "progressive" forms of government -- National Socialism, Communism, etc, but their faith is not shaken.

Certainly TP would like to tell everyone that "it has the facts" -- they were confidently sure we were out of oil in the '70s, even more sure the USSR would be around forever, Reagan would be an economic disaster, the age of big government was over, if we liked our healthcare we could keep it, red lines in Syria, ISIS was the "JV team" ... and on it goes.

The point here is more that those in the dominant political party -- TP, with the media like the Boston Globe and the universities generally on their side ACTUALLY BELIEVE that they have the "facts". The real truth is that there is NOTHING about the future that is 100% predictable, even that the sun will appear to rise tomorrow AM (see major meteor impacts, gigantic solar eruptions, etc) ... precisely NOTHING in this physical world is certain, so anyone that claims otherwise is doing politics, branding, story telling ....etc.

The author of the column ends it this way ...

We joke about this stuff, but after a while it’s no longer funny. The Republican Party is dominated by candidates who are proudly, even boastfully ignorant. Rejecting the clear science on vaccines or climate change is practically the price of admission even to be considered a legitimate presidential candidate. Playing on xenophobic fears of immigrants by lying about the economic costs and threats to American workers — pro forma. It reached a point Wednesday night when a candidate actually saying something true was an event worthy of note. 

But make no mistake, the descent of the Republican Party into dishonesty, lies, and cravenness is no joke. It’s a national crisis.

Sadly, I'm guessing he doesn't realize that a whole bunch of the things he believes are "true" are -- politics, marketing, myths, etc ... he is a TRUE BELIEVER!

I'm a true believer too -- in Jesus Christ. All other information is highly questionable, often inaccurate and in many cases downright false. Often intentionally so, but also often just because people have "good intentions" that don't work out. They (for some reason) were certain that if they raised taxes a lot on cigarettes they would drastically reduce smoking, but were equally certain that they could massively raise taxes on income and profits without having the taxes cause a reduction in income and profits. They believe taxes behave according to their wishes!

The author of the column is obviously a TP true believer -- he would find my statement about taxes having the effect of reducing income or profits to be as foolish as the idea that just because Global Warming predicted more hurricanes and we got less that it somehow reflects badly on Global Warming being "settled".

The point here is I have a Religion -- Christianity, and so does he -- "THE PARTY"! It turns out that the discussion on vaccinations is an old one -- and in fact the LEFT tends to be more inclined to have concerns, (I covered it here) ... if you really want to go off to the left wing tinfoil hat set, see GMOs. Unlikely the MSM will ask Hilly or BS any such questions though.

What the left has is a STRONG allergy to political alternatives. BO has been the farthest left since Carter -- it remains to be seen if any of the Republican alternatives even has a ghost of a chance as being as much of a turn back to the right as Reagan was. No doubt this columnist thought the '80s were a "disaster", but there are a lot of very real people and very real numbers that would call that view into strong question.

That is the difference between politics and what science USED to be (before it entertained the idea of being "settled") ... politics is NEVER settled, even after you start rounding up people and shooting them to get them to agree with you -- see USSR. The author of this column apparently doesn't understand that, and THAT is the dangerous problem -- because people that make politics their religion always end up shooting the infidels sooner or later.

The American difference is that here, we SHOOT BACK!
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