Monday, November 23, 2009

Denialism

Sullivan featured an interesting episode of bloggingheads today about Michael Specter's concept of denialism. The idea of that irrational thinking hinders scientific thinking, harms the planet and threatens our lives. This is especially true of American's distrust of science.



However, I think a case can be made that denialism informs much of our political thinking, on both sides of the aisle. There are plenty of Americans who could not be dissuaded from the belief that the Republican Party had designs to dismantle the Constitution and replace it with some Christianist version of sharia law. However, I never really saw that sense of denialism in a collective sense among Democrats. The spectrum of progressivism is pretty broad, so it follows that a guy like Dennis Kucinich had a place in the same tent as someone like, say, a former Republican like Arlen Specter.



In the GOP, denialism -- that is to say, the collective denial of factual reality -- is a virulent cancer that not only threatens to destroy the party as it elevates into leadership vacuous non-thinkers like Sarah Palin (whose reality is limited to that which is within immediate grasp and is subject to change at any moment depending on what serves her best), but also threatens to unravel civil political discourse and any semblance of the ethnic or cultural diversity that truly defines the greatness of America.



Now, the GOP has a proposed resolution, called "Proposed RNC Resolution on Reagan's Unity Principle for Support of Candidates," that looks like a laundry list of with-us-or-against-us middle finger statements.



(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama's "stimulus" bill; (well, one out of four is pretty good for them, and the stimulus bill was begun by Bush)

(2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare; (Obama-style? From one side of their mouth they extol the virtues of Medicare, which, although more efficient than private health insurance, was responsible for 50% of the government waste in 2008; while on the other side of their mouth, they parrot words passed to them on crib sheets by industry lobbyists currently injecting compaign money right up their sanctimonious rectums);

(3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation; (cap and trade isn't a perfect solution to energy reform, but it certainly has more forward thinking than "drill baby, drill")

(4) We support workers' right to secret ballot by opposing card check; (this is the Republican party speaking in tongues -- they have never supported workers' rights)

(5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants; (so do most Americans, progressives, conservatives, and Republicans alike; nothing revolutionary here)

(6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges; (while they also support endless war and endless access to their natural resources and endless torture and endless warrantless eavesdropping and endless profits for their war-mongering cronies)

(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat; (duh! Except their only solution is more war and aggression)

(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act; (translated: we hate fags and will always hate them)

(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; (read: no death panels for Grandma and no free wombs for women!) and

(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership; (assault rifles in every bassinett!)



My italics, of course. The point is, these planks in the Republican platform are being used as a litmus test for anyone who wants to call themselves Republican. If anyone opposes more than two of them, they don't belong. No debate there, by the way. They're all for ideological purity, per Reagan. Then again, Reagan supported diplomacy and abhorred torture.

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