The
circle of them is not so great as some imagine; the influence of a few
have tainted many who are not naturally corrupt. A continual circulation
of lies among those who are not much in the way of hearing them
contradicted, will in time pass for truth.
Now consider the candidate selected by movement conservatism. As Andrew Sullivan wrote in Five Lies in 30 Seconds:
Kessler looks at the latest post-modern Romney ad:
post-modern because truth is completely immaterial to this propagandist
dreck. It's one thing to broadcast untruths, or misleading half-facts
as obvious truths; it's another to be called out on them, refuse to
change them, and intensify their reach. …
Obama
is now fighting for his political life. And right now, to my genuine
horror, he's losing to a fraud, a war-monger, a liar and a
budget-buster.
As Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote in It Was Like a Sucker-Punch: Here are two interesting selections from Jan Crawford's rather amazing autopsy of the Romney campaign. First the expectations:
"There's
nothing worse than when you think you're going to win, and you don't,"
said another adviser. "It was like a sucker punch."
Their
emotion was visible on their faces when they walked on stage after
Romney finished his remarks, which Romney had hastily composed, knowing
he had to say something. Both wives looked stricken, and Ryan himself
seemed grim.
They
all were thrust on that stage without understanding what had just
happened. "He was shellshocked," one adviser said of Romney.
William Saletan wrote in In The Obama-Romney Showdown Truth Beat Lies:
Rejection of external evidence sealed Romney's fate. ...
“There's
nothing worse than when you think you're going to win, and you don't," a
Romney adviser tells Crawford. "It was like a sucker punch." But when
the punch comes from ignored reality, you’re not just the sucker. You’re
the one who suckered yourself.
Coates continues, "From Adam Serwer":
Ideology
can place blinders on everyone, of course--I don't know how many
liberal friends I've tried to talk out of their affinity for rent
control--but the incentives for misleading one's audience are not evenly
distributed across the left-leaning and right-leaning media. The Romney
surge after the first debate didn't translate to a widespread liberal
belief about systemic bias among polling firms, for example.
Much
of the conservative media is simply far more cozy with the Republican
Party than its Democratic counterparts. ... Departing from the party line, particularly if
one does so in a manner that seems favorable to Obama, would be to
reveal one as an apostate, a tool of liberalism. ...
Conservative media lies to its audience
because much of its audience wants to be lied to. Those lies actually
have far more drastic consequences for governance (think birthers and
death panels) than for elections, where the results can't be, for lack
of a better word, "skewed."
To sum up:
First, as the Republican Party looked on, its presidential campaign lied wholesale.
Second, that campaign was revealed, after the election, to have had no conception of the truth of its competitive situation (“A continual circulation of lies ... will in time pass for truth.”).
Third, as movement conservatives the campaign had valorized ideology, which may be described as the substitution of belief for evidence and reason.
Fourth, “Lies actually have far more drastic consequences for governance (think birthers and death panels) than for elections.”
Fifth, the campaign was not only duplicitous but bumbling and inept (Google “Romney ORCA”).
Last, to reiterate Item Four, had this functionally insane outfit achieved the Oval Office, the nation would have endured a reign even more strongly defined by deficiency of competence than the late W. Bush regime.
Paine deserves the last word: “My solemn belief of your cause is, that it is hellish and damnable, and, under that conviction, every thinking man's heart must fail him.”
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