You Cannot Reason With Right-Wing Conspiracists

[Nevilledog]

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/04/you-cannot-reason-with-the-gops-conspiracists.html

There are many explanations on offer for the bitter, “uncivil war” tone of contemporary politics and government, and at least some share of blame to go around. But I’m not going to indulge in false equivalence here: The radicalization of the Republican Party and its dominant conservative ideological faction has been — and for the foreseeable future will continue to be — the prime engine of polarization and gridlock. I’ve felt that way since the George W. Bush administration, and it’s a big reason why a card-carrying centrist like me has abandoned all hope of bipartisan “problem-solving.” Nine years ago President Obama confidently predicted the GOP “fever” would “break” if he won reelection. Clearly the “fever” is running higher than ever in the Trump era, with no particular end in sight.

Understanding that differences between left and right aren’t just a matter of reasonable differences of opinion on legitimately disputed facts is the first step towards comprehending the current political environment. The fact that conservatives have a tendency to subscribe to conspiracy theories or dismiss inconvenient facts is not an absolute bar to debate. But as Greg Sargent pointed out recently, MAGA ultras exhibit a more systematic rejection of verifiable reality in favor of ideological systems that interpret (or reinterpret) everything according to an antagonistic depiction of the left as virtually demonic:

Political theorist Laura K. Field has a new essay that helps us make sense of this. Field’s key distinction is between conspiracy theories, which make purportedly grounded claims of some kind, and conspiracism, which is more a habit of mind, a tendency to unshackle oneself in a way that permits a kind of open-ended indulgence in fabulism….

In too many cases, Field argues, empiricism is entirely absent. This tendency sometimes attacks the political legitimacy of the entire left by conflating liberals and Marxists into one monolithically tyrannical political force. Or it attacks the legitimacy of institutions which have fallen under the left’s cultural spell (such as the media or “woke” corporations, never mind the latter’s pursuit of a distributive agenda the left hates). Or it attacks the political system itself (which the left has manipulated, rendering elections illegitimate).

*snip*

[Grasswire2]

1. and you cannot extract bipartisanship from their leadership.

That is a fool's errand, a TRAP, and going that direction will lose the republic.

The electorate legitimately gave Dems power in November. Power to over-ride the conspiracists and empiricists.

Carpe diem.

Tempus fugit.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

2. These idiots are too stupid to reason with

[kentuck]

3. They are capable of shutting off everything they do not want to hear...

Tell them that this is Saturday afternoon and it is beautiful outside and Joe Biden is the President of the United States, and they dismiss everything you say. Facts get in their way.

[Duppers]

4. Excellent description.

"tendency to unshackle oneself in a way that permits a kind of open-ended indulgence in fabulism…."

It's a 2nd religion for them.

[Hortensis]

5. Not when the whole purpose is to indulge rejection of reality and truth

for something one wants to believe. Politics/social issues have turned out to be a dangerously slippery slope for some.

I often wonder these days what the difference between legal insanity and how psychologists see it would be, and when some of these people might qualify as effectively legally insane. If intense counseling can reattach people to reality, does that meant they're not technically "crazy?" But who's going to get that?

[Towlie]

6. To say the way you feel now is the way you've felt since the Bush administration is a very bad sign.

 
?

The George W. Bush administration was certainly bad but it was nothing compared to the current GOP under Trump's influence. People who accurately remember the past should feel much worse now than they did then. It's probably the human tendency toward unrealistic rosy retrospection that causes the fall-back that we risk in the next election.

[Tommymac]

7. Too bad most of them will never read this because words. nt