Just as conservative legislative politics isn’t really about free markets conservative judicial politics isn’t really about restraint. The rhetoric is just rhetoric, and the reality is that conservative politics is about conservatism—about entrenching the power and influence of the dominant economic and sociocultural groups.
You need simple proof that the facts don’t matter? Doesn’t get much more simple than this.
Dick Cheney, on the floor of the Senate tells the cheerfully collegial Pat Leahy “Go fuck yourself.” Here’s how Cheney described this incident yesterday:
“You’d be surprised how many people liked that. That’s sort of the best thing I ever did.”
Bill Kristol says:
“[telling Leahy to go fuck himself is] a beautiful statement, really, of justice. […] Dick Cheney is going out [and] defending justice in the end.”
Joe Biden, on the other hand, says “This is a big fucking deal” with glee, not with malevolence or personal animus, in regard to the signing-into-law of health care reform.
Bill Kristol says:
“This is one of the most despicable moments in American politics in our lifetimes.”
Repeat after me: The FACTS DO NOT MATTER.
Couldn’t agree more on the myth of the drunken poor (emphasis added):
over 72 percent of adults whose family incomes are at least four times the federal poverty level drink alcohol. The figure for adults whose families make less than the poverty threshold? 45.2 percent.
[…]
These surprising figures counter the prevalent misconception that poor people drink too much, forfeiting well-paying jobs in exchange for lazy afternoons in front of the TV, beer bottle in hand. Rush Limbaugh’s suggestion that Americans on food stamps “buy Twinkies, Milk Duds, potato chips, six-packs of Bud, then head home to watch the NFL on one of two color TVs” is more than factually incorrect (food stamps can’t be used to purchase alcohol anywhere in the country); it’s another disturbing example of conservative propaganda that blames poverty on the poor. The sole function of this dangerous rhetoric is to dissuade middle- and upper-class Americans from examining the flawed social structures and policies that both cause and perpetuate poverty across the nation.
From that promising start we go right into Why We Fail:
we progressive advocates do have something powerful on our side that Limbaugh and other conservative personalities lack: facts.
How many times does the fact that facts don’t matter, at all, have to be shoved into our collective faces before we realize it? Let’s all have a Dr. Sean Maguire moment together:
The facts don’t matter
The facts don’t matter
The facts don’t matter
The FACTS DO NOT MATTER
In the modern rhetorical war, taking place in the context of the modern MSM, the facts are a hindrance to be overcome. The modern GOP proves that simple truth above all else. Nuance, reason, adherence to “the facts” simply doesn’t play and wont play anywhere in the foreseeable future. Short, rhyming slogans, preferably divorced from all meaning and aimed directly at the limbic brain are what will carry the day. Every time. Until the Democrat realizes that, and plans accordingly, they will fail. Every time.
Lemkin 