Republicans Hate Facts

The last few years have proven that Republicans don’t like facts. Facts require more thought than a bumper sticker. Facts require accepting something you might not like, but… well… it’s a fact so we accept it. Extreme republicans refuse to accept facts if they don’t align with their own world view. They live outside facts in the way Bonnie and Clyde lived outside the law.

This democrat cannot figure out why the more extreme republicans continue to live inside an information bubble that is more and more divorced from reality. Then they scream and point their guns at the rest of the world as if we’re the ones who are crazy! For the life of me, I can’t figure out why republicans hate facts so much and with such vigor. I understand that facts can get in the way of politics, but the republican political tactic of ignoring all things factual is unsettling. Ignoring facts is one thing, creating their own, isolated truth is when it gets scary. The more extreme right wing within the GOP’s ability to mutate blog rumor in “truth worth fighting for” is when the rest of this country starts to worry a little bit about their social sanity. Shouting a phrase louder than the other guy doesn’t make it truth.

First, the more extreme the angry faction of the republican Party becomes, the more important it is to acknowledge up front that these people really are the minority within the Republican Party. I’m just as much to blame as anyone else in truncating good, hard-thinking, small-government republicans with the crazies who are giving the entire party a bad name. People who define themselves based on how angry they can make themselves are not a political party. It’s very unfortunately that the got locked in with the GOP that is now stuck with them until the Tea Party finally embarrasses enough people to estrange them from working politics.

But back to republicans hating facts: The whacky Tea Party faction who spend their days yelling at busses full of children are giving the Republican Party a bad name because they live exclusively inside Republicanland. They don’t have passports to get outside to look and learn about anything who isn’t exactly like them. (…Don’t these stains-on-America Tea Party protesters who keep gathering to turn away busses have jobs? Who has time to stand on the side of roads and yell at busses all day long? Maybe they’re on government assistance like Medicare and Social Security. Or maybe they’re just lazy and disgusting like they call people who are on government assistance…)

NewsMax has it’s own channel (satellite, I think). It has started running ads lately on regular cable promoting the two same stories: “Paul Ryan is a rising start in the GOP”, and “Will Donald Trump run for president?”. I thought I was stuck in early 2011! Since when has Paul Ryan been “a rising star”? And who outside of the Tea Party doesn’t think Donald Trump is a self-serving buffoon? But these are the two headline stories are the NewsMax channels primary  marketing tools right now – July, 2014. Paul Ryan “a rising star” and Donald Trump “is he running for president”. Not only are both of those “ideas” 3 years old, but everyone who does not rely on right-wing TV and radio think the exact opposite. That’s how isolated Republianland is. Facts don’t work in Republicanland, if not only because facts require change, and staunch conservatives fight change with every atom in their bodies. Republicans don’t love America – that requires accepting what America is… facts. Republicans love their own version of America; usually whatever they see in the mirror, in their closet, and outside their front door – fully subjective.

It’s not mistake that for the last 20 years the marketing machine of the Republican Party has instructed Republicanland to not trust “main stream media”. Literally, the information that “all the rest of America” absorbs is not allowed, and any that sneaks in is immediately labeled “liberal bias”. The Tea Party not only deeply distrusts “main stream media” they believe that somehow NBC, ABC, CBS, heck even PBS are all part of some sort of conspiracy. That’s dangerous.

Doesn’t it strike any of them as odd that they’re told not to trust anything except what those in power within the Republican Party tell them? Doesn’t it strike them as dictatorial? Doesn’t freedom require of all of use to listen to all arguments, not just Drudge Report? But you see… republicans hate facts. If you have facts you have answers, and they seem to have so much fun shouting at the world “demanding answers”. Republicans hate “liberal” education with facts and free will at the end. That’s how the people who are controlling these bobble heads keep them under control: keep them ignorant, keep them angry.

To be angry and misinformed is the very definition of the extreme right wing in modern America. That mental sate makes people and companies like Newt Gingrich, Koch brothers, NewsMax, Drudge, Bunker-buildings, and Fox billions of dollars. It’s both hilarious and very, very sad that those who claim to “know the truth” are the ones being played by people trying to sell them the latest “Take our Country Back” product.