[T]he Right has constructed its own Bubble World, a sort of political Truman Show complete with its own facts and rules (albeit facts and rules that are constantly changing based on political expediency). The writers, directors, and actors in this conservative version of Seahaven are the legions of GOP politicians, operatives, and conservative media outlets that relentlessly push this politically expedient alternative reality, and the Trumans are the millions of regular Americans who don't realize the joke is on them.
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In Bubble World, there is a movement known as the Tea Party, whose members are simultaneously incensed about the size of the deficit and the fact that they have to pay taxes (even though they have the lowest tax rates in the free world and just got significant tax cuts--from Obama--in the past year). Moreover, they're not angry at the party that built the deficit--by starting wars and giving massive tax cuts to people who are much richer than them--or that presided, just recently, over the near collapse of the economy. But they are furious at the party that just recently took the reins, inheriting both a crumbling economy and massive deficit. And if they had their way, they would put back in power a party whose only policy idea is, that's right, cutting taxes; which, of course, would only make the deficit much worse.
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Freed from the burden of any actual governing responsibility, the GOP has been free to devote all of its efforts to reconstructing their Bubble World. And they've been largely successful. An entire movement has formed that is based, almost entirely, on confusion and mis-directed anger, a movement that sees the world only through the lens of Fox News and other right wing outlets. The Tea Party is an army of Trumans, a movement of people who have whole-heartedly embraced the false reality with which they've been presented.
Kant’s Three Hundredth Birthday
19 hours ago
1 comment:
The last thing we need is a political organization dedicated to stoking these feelings among its victims.
In the last two days I've been forwarded garbage which is, plain and simple, designed to create and increase paranoia and xenophobia in those susceptible to these. (One was an obviously false claim that everybody would have to pay taxes on their employer-supplied health insurance benefits. The other was a claim that two "devout" Muslims were appointed by Obama to the DHS.)
Of course, the people who forwarded these to me believed them implicitly. We're talking about mostly rational people, but, like all of us, prone to paranoia and, like too many, unable or unwilling to spend the time to evaluate the truth of these claims.
(In the tax claim, I was able to shoot it down. For the xenophobics, there's not much you can do except explain to them that you know Muslims who are at least as rational as they are, and that the people in question had brilliant careers and extensive experience -- and that's not much good in allaying the xenophobia.)
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