The Washington Post today highlights the jihad by conservatives to shut down any and all efforts to combat disinformation:
The escalating campaign — led by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and other Republicans in Congress and state government — has cast a pall over programs that study not just political falsehoods but also the quality of medical information online.
....Jordan has issued subpoenas and demands for researchers’ communications with the government and social media platforms as part of a larger congressional probe into the Biden administration’s alleged collusion with Big Tech.
“This effort is clearly intended to deter researchers from pursuing these studies and penalize them for their findings,” Jen Jones, the program director for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental group that promotes scientific research, said in a statement.
Lawsuits, congressional investigations, subpoenas for email, and personal harassment. This is the same game plan conservatives have used to intimidate climate scientists over the past few years.
Republicans want nothing and nobody to interfere with a conservative movement that can only exist amid a huge web of lies. Vaccinations are unsafe. Trump won the election. Climate change is a hoax. Joe Biden is a crook. Voter fraud in Democratic cities is endemic. January 6 was a peaceful demonstration. COVID originated with a Chinese lab leak. The FBI has been weaponized against Republicans. Social media is a liberal cesspool.
The reason that disinformation fighters spend a lot of time on Republican lies is because Republicans lie a lot. It's that simple.
If they tell the truth, at least half of their voters will abandon them immediately.
Maybe, but they would probably abandon them for someone even further right, further anti-science anti-fact, and even more full of BS.
Conservatism is identical with corruption in every single case, when not directly then in the service of hiding it with a pretended virtue.
There are no exceptions at all even where someone may be 'legitimately confused'.
Remember it's a smoke screen; it's all about securing power. Fighting the disinformation in detail exhausts energy, misdirects efforts, seems fruitless as they spin into another frame.
Flood the zone with BS, then complain about the smell...
Exactement ! The trick though is to not let it go to far, so it doesn't turn around and bite your ass. I think they've passed that point. And that's the real problem. Living a reality apart from reality is ... suicidal. See the emperor's clothes, er, or not see them.
Their ultimate downfall will be because they believe their own bullshit.
That's why they have to attack education too...can't have critical thinking skills.
+1
So start every e-mail conversation with:
“Can you believe how corrupt and sleazy that idiot Jim Jordan is? I don’t understand how a child molestation enabler is still in congress. Don’t those people have any standards?”
Actually, that sounds pretty good. A catalog of similar "elevator speeches" ought to be compiled for non-maga folks to help spread the word.
Cheaper than teevie ads, with wider reach, and more convincing.
"The reason that disinformation fighters spend a lot of time on Republican lies is because Republicans lie a lot. It's that simple."
That is a function of perspective. It's that simple if the perspective is, "They're bad, I'm good, so they have to change, and I don't have to change."
A second perspective is that they've managed to convince themselves that the only people that matter are the people on their side, and everyone else they think about the same way they think about an object, which is an opportunity to be exploited, or a threat to be neutralized, and otherwise irrelevant.
It's not about lying or telling the truth. They lie if they think it will help their side defeat the other side, they tell the truth if they think it will help their side defeat the other side, and they change the subject if they think it will help their side defeat the other side.
The problem with this second perspective is that it's not simple. Instead, it forces me think about who I care about, and otherwise think about the same way I think about an object, and that is uncomfortable. So, never mind.
"Republicans want nothing and nobody to interfere with a conservative movement that can only exist amid a huge web of lies."
That hits the nail on the head. It explains why some of these lies (e.g., about vaccines) don't even seem to have a partisan point. Their usefulness lies in being part of an alternative, strictly political reality that insulates movement members from contact with factual reality.
Like the adherents of the totalitarian movements of the 1920s and 30s, today's US "conservatives" believe in everything and nothing. Keeping them perpetually in that state is the goal, because it's the key to power for the leaders of that movement.
I noticed that TFG in his latest tweet is now threatening the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, with the death penalty. Trump claims it is for talking to the Chinese before Jan. 6 and assuring them we would not launch a surprise attack, but the timing suggests it is more about Jeff Goldberg's Atlantic article about how most of the military's leadship thinks Trump is incompetant, ignorant and dangerous.
They're extremists, there can be no middle ground with them. This is their choice, not mine.
These individual points, while true in themselves, don’t add up to a coherent or complete estimation of the situation:
“Republicans want nothing and nobody to interfere with a conservative movement that can only exist amid a huge web of lies. Vaccinations are unsafe. Trump won the election. Climate change is a hoax. Joe Biden is a crook. Voter fraud in Democratic cities is endemic. January 6 was a peaceful demonstration. COVID originated with a Chinese lab leak. The FBI has been weaponized against Republicans. Social media is a liberal cesspool.”
Fine. But why? Why would any group of people act this way? The assumption in the blog post appears to be that conservatives can simply be dismissed as lunatics. No further need for explanation, and certainly no need to hold up a mirror to our own side.
But, sorry, that’s just not good enough. And I don’t see anything better in the comments. Conservatives have a lust for power? Who doesn’t? They’re corrupt? Please. That’s hardly unusual.
So I’m going to assert that the reason why neither this blog post nor the comments offer a convincing explanation for the Conservative behavior described above is because there are so few on the Left willing to take an honest look at this moment in our history.
When we see the main if not the defining aspect of 21st century American politics as a Republican descent into madness (a theme pushed endlessly and inaccurately by Liberals like Paul Krugman), then we’re missing the big picture.
Kevin does a perfectly good job providing a list of absurd assertions from Republicans. But, as it so happens, Republicans could effortlessly come up with an accurate list of Democratic (or Leftist) assertions that an overwhelming majority of Americans would consider equally crazy if not even more dangerous. Here’s an admittedly incomplete sample: outcomes, rather than opportunities, must be equalized; free speech is dangerous and must be curtailed in the name of social justice; academic freedom induces curricular trauma; the concepts of merit, punctuality, and hard work (among others) are expressions of white supremacy; teachers must accept and practice anti-racism if they want to receive tenure; biological sex does not exist and anyone saying it does exist is practicing genocide; and anyone advocating for border security is siding with trump (and is therefore basically a fascist).
I cannot say it any better than Ruy Teixeira (From 2022):
“Equality of opportunity is a fundamental American principle; equality of outcome is not. Americans love equal opportunity! But lately more and more Democrats have embraced, implicitly or explicitly, the idea that we must equalize outcomes as well by emphasizing policies that promote ‘equity’ as opposed to simple equality.
“The statement above was tested in the very liberal state of Massachusetts by pollster Louis DiNatale … On this statement, DiNatale found that Massachusetts voters overall agreed with the statement by 61 percent to 16 percent. Republican voters agreed with the statement by 72-12, but so did independent voters by 65-13 and even Democrats by 56-17. White voters endorsed the statement by 63-12 but so did black voters by 56-17. There just isn’t much of a constituency for equality of outcomes.”
The story of our times is not a Republican descent into extremism; rather, the complete story of our times is a Republican and a Democratic descent into extremism, with an attendant rise of illiberalism from the Right and from the Left.
And the Conservatives who behave as Kevin describes can point to genuinely concerning behavior on the Left to justify their actions. That doesn’t excuse them, but it does offer a much more complete explanation.
None of those assertions you ascribe to leftists are, in fact, Democratic policy or believed by any but a very small minority of crazed extremists. They are to the mainstream "left" (actually soft right; US politics has no left wing) as assertions like "[people of color] are not really human and may legitimately killed at whim" are to the mainstream right, which is to say WELL out of the mainstream.
+ 1
Another difference between Republican lies and the allegedly Democratic beliefs on Leo1008’s list: those extremist beliefs are all value statements, not empirically false claims such as claiming vaccines are unsafe, the election was stolen, climate change is a hoax, etc.
The leftist value statements are wrong-headed, but they are not outright empirically false LIES being perpetrated by a majority of elected representatives, as they are on the Republican side. The fact that the Republican claims are outright lies is key to Kevin’s post.
+1
"The leftist value statements are wrong-headed, but they are not outright empirically false LIES being perpetrated by a majority of elected representatives, ..."
There are plenty of empirically false statements about race promoted by liberals elected and otherwise.
Examples, please — particularly examples from elected Democratic Representatives and Senators.
"Examples, please .."
That there are no racial differences in crime rates. As shown for example by the refusal of the liberal media to include race in descriptions of criminal suspects. Which has only destroyed the credibility of the liberal media among non-liberals. Because who knows what other information (like lab leak evidence) they are suppressing because it doesn't fit the party line?
So, frequent outright lies by leading Republican politicians, and on the other side… some newspapers are sometimes coy about the race of some criminal suspects. Got it.
Why are you lying about this?
Taking poverty into account, there are no differences.
Taking poverty into account.
Did you take poverty into account?
Republicans rarely do that.
Tell me that non-whites are inferior to whites without telling me that non-whites are inferior to whites.
@lawnorder: Thank you for the reply, but I disagree.
Regarding this:
“None of those assertions you ascribe to leftists are, in fact, Democratic policy or believed by any but a very small minority of crazed extremists.”
The misguided emphasis on “equity” (described by Teixeira in my post above) is more than just Democratic policy, at this point it’s basically Dem gospel. Every liberal campus, media outlet, and industry (including entertainment, tech, and publishing) has a DEI office. And DEI, of course, stands for diversity, EQUITY, and inclusion. The unquestionable faith in all left circles now is that we must be judged by the color of our skin and must not be judged by the content of our character.
You assert that these beliefs are practiced by a small minority, and yet the Board of Governors of California’s Community Colleges has passed regulations stating unequivocally that every teacher must adopt, practice, and promote anti-racism. If they fail to do so, they don’t get tenure (they’re basically fired). That’s the impactful action of a mass movement (one that promotes censorship), not a tiny minority.
Regarding the Left’s assault on free speech, it can be found in 303 v Elenis. In that decision, three Supreme Court justices appointed by Democrats asserted that the state of Colorado could compel preferred speech from its citizens, thereby forcing them to express support for same sex marriage. The idea that a free society must allow the expression of unpopular opinions was cast to the winds by these Liberal justices. Free speech was upheld in that case by Conservatives. Astonishingly, Trump appointees now have an arguably better (dare I say a more Liberal) record on free speech than Obama or Biden appointees. And Conservatives are expressing entirely reality-based concerns if they vote based on that issue.
Regarding gender ideology: The constant death threats issued by the extremist wing of trans activism have never once been condemned by a high profile Dem. If you have an example to disprove that claim, I would genuinely love to see it. But I’m not aware of one. And that amounts to an obvious (if implicit) level of support for an overwhelmingly unpopular ideological sect. DEMs only condemn violence when it is practiced by Republicans (as on the 1/6 insurrection). And that just does not constitute a very convincing opposition to violent extremism.
And the opposition to border control was a constant throughout the DEM 2020 presidential primary. One Atlantic article quoted a DEM spokesperson stating exactly what I paraphrased above: support for border security is support for trump. The one and only Dem who bucked his party on that issue was Biden. And that’s one of many reasons why he was the only candidate in 2020 with a hope of a ghost of a chance of taking out trump.
My observations constitute one of the best ways that I know of to make sense out of Trump/Republican support. I have read many Liberal commentators assert that the tens of millions of people who vote for Trump must be voting for racism and/or fascism. Josh Marshall at TPM had a post up just last week expressing these sentiments. But such views, no matter how well-intentioned, are nevertheless unimaginative, condescending, and inaccurate.
Sure, there are some bigots out there. But I believe my own explanation is more accurate: Conservatives look at Trump’s behavior, then they look at all of the Dem behavior I describe above, and they decide that trump and republicans are the lesser of two evils.
I personally don’t agree with that assessment. But I’m also cognizant of the fact that the current Dem party seems to be working as hard as it can to drive me into the “Independent” category.
So it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine that the behavior on the Left that can disturb a lifelong Democrat must really be driving Republicans insane. The two sides are radicalizing each other. It’s not a one way street.
You're using the RWNJ definition of "equity". My understanding of equity is that it is intended to ensure selection (whether in hiring, promotion, or whatever) on merit. The idea is that the Equity Office is supposed to try to prevent selection based on race, gender, religion, parents' socio-economic status, nepotism, and other factors irrelevant to actual merit. It is NOT supposed to ensure or practice "reverse discrimination" wherein people are selected by those same irrelevant characteristics but from the groups previously discriminated against.
Sometimes, to overcome past discrimination, equity may call for considering those otherwise irrelevant characteristics as tie-breakers; e.g. if a white man and a black woman are in competition for a job and both are equally qualified, it may be acceptable to make being a black woman a tie breaker. It is NOT equitable to give the black woman the job if the white man is clearly better qualified. That is how Justice Brown-Jackson was selected; she was just as good as any of the other possibilities and so was given the benefit of the tie-breaker.
Your other points are similarly misstated or overstated.
The male lion is a self-important beast, with his great mane and harim of lionesses who hunt for him. Consider with whom you are communicating.
@leo1008: "The constant death threats issued by the extremist wing of trans activism have never once been condemned by a high profile Dem. If you have an example to disprove that claim, I would genuinely love to see it."
Criticisms of "the extremist wing of trans activism" by high profile dems:
Hilary Clinton: https://thehill.com/homenews/media/3528763-clinton-us-at-the-precipice-of-losing-democracy/
And if we agree our own Kevin Drum is a high profile dem: https://jabberwocking.com/how-far-should-activists-go/
More common are more general denunciations of wokeness and identity politics:
James Carville: https://www.vox.com/22338417/james-carville-democratic-party-biden-100-days
Barack Obama: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/10/30/barack-obama-tells-woke-youth-get-over-quickly/4095362002/
'Threats' that produce precisely zero effect.
Imagine all the trans militias with their massive collections of military ordinance and compounds in the woods.
That would be terrifying!
'Constant death threats'.
Really?
Seems like you're asserting without context.
Outright racism is not a reaction to Marxism; it's centuries older.
Covid denialism and vaccine rejection are no more reactions to Democratic overreach than is creationism.
Climate change denialism is the product of the naked self interest of the oil and coal billionaires through their funding of politicians and propagandists.
The party that accuses the other side of being pedophiles once elected a Speaker of the House who went to prison as the result of his proclivities.
In other words, there's a decided lack of symmetry between the two sides.
+1
For every Right-wing temper tantrum at the U.S. Capitol, just because black peoples votes counted in the 2020 Presidential election, there's an imaginary Left-wing temper tantrum at the U.S. Capitol just because white peoples votes counted in the 2020 Presidential election.
They're practically imaginary mirrors of each other.
A big part of the explanation you are asking for (and that you imply doesn't exist) is the Republican commitment to tax cuts for the rich. If Republicans said honestly that their mission was to represent the top 1%, they would get 1% of the vote. But you really should respond to “lawnorder” rather than me, because there's no point in discussing why the Republican has gone off the rails if you don't accept that this is a Republican Party phenomenon in the first place.
Please be more concise, no one likes to read long posts. Especially when they are just a repeat of "both sides do it", "white priviledge doesn't (never did?) exists", and the rich (and the sons and daughters of the rich) deserve to get more, so shut up and support their tax cuts.
Thank you for demonstrating how lies work in conservative circles. You pick out a bunch of Fox News talking points, pretend that Democratic politicians are pushing these policies and then say "Both Sides!" Excellent work, your NewsMax residual is in the mail.
We don't need to explain why someone acts some way to observe that they're acting in some way.
Something like 1/3 of American adults are a clear and present danger. Republicans are the enemy and since we can’t or won’t lift a finger or a fist to protect ourselves, we shall simply have to accept this new way of life. So really… quit your bitching!
Without bad faith….
Republicans would have no arguments at all
Kevin lists the COVID lab leak theory as a sample Republican lie.
"D_Ohrk_E1" will show up objecting to that in 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .
Prosecuting people who commit crimes is discriminatory! Everybody should be prosecuted!!
By "misinformation," Kevin and the WaPo mean stories like the Hunter Biden laptop. Thank goodness responsible actors like the WaPo were able to work cooperatively with government officials to keep total fabrications like that away from the public.
You mean, where they insist because the laptop existed, their conspiracies are true?
The laptop being real doesn't mean their conspiracies are true, any more than the Zapruder film being a real piece of film means whatever the speaker's conspiracies are also true.
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