Advice for Republicans

The Republican party has some decisions to make at this point. They have to remake themselves. The infighting, on an ideological level, that occurred during this past election season, and the high profile defections of Republican intelligentsia reveal a party in crisis. The Republican party is a rather large tent. The three basic pillars of the Republican party - old guard fiscal conservatives, religious whack jobs (aka "moral majority), and warmongers (neocons) - are going to have to come to terms with one another. And it's going to have to become clear just who will take power.

For the past 8 years, the Republican party has been controlled by an alliance between the religious whack jobs and the warmongers. They have won popular appeal by embracing "populism", which to them has meant embracing the common and vehemently rejecting all things "elite", including education, intellect and success based on merit. Think about this - 8 years ago we elected the man you would want to have a beer with. He's a bumbling idiot - but for many he is the sort of person you can identify with. This time 'round, we had GI Joe and the ditsy prom queen - people you love for their story and for the way that you identify with them as real people. But here's the thing - when it comes to those people making decisions - you need the elite. You need intelligent, well-educated individuals who know what the hell they are doing.

The Republican party has been ruined by its "populism". It's been ruined by its warmongering neocons and its bigotry filled, anti-intellectual, religious whack jobs. The ruin of the Republican party is nowhere more apparent than in the selection of Sarah Palin as VP candidate. I don't care how many times you try to cover for her. I don't care how many minutes of this or that interview are on the cutting room floor (so are many minutes of many other interviews with prominent figures, and they still don't sound like 6 year olds). I don't care how much you think the recent comments about her believing Africa to be a continent and not a country are media bias (reported by FOX) or bitterness from her campaign. Just listen to the woman talk and you'll discover all you need to know. She doesn't have the slightest grasp on the English language. She doesn't seem to understand that the conjunction "also" should not be used as filler. She can't string a coherent sentence together - not even a simple one. Given that no one has indicated to me that she suffers some sort of impediment impacting her speech and not her mental prowess, I can safely assume that her inability to utilize basic speech is a signal of an empty head.

And my assumption is backed up by the fact that she didn't know what the Bush doctrine is, believes the earth is 6,000 years old and that humans walked with dinosaurs, and still doesn't know what the vice president does. This is the Republican party - power thirsty, war loving, ignorant, religious nuts. The conservative intelligentsia needs to rid themselves of this "populism". For the sake of the country, and the sake of their party, they need to abandon the religious right and the neocons and return to the party of fiscal conservatism and small government. They need to turn away from Sarah Palin and turn toward something else.

Sadly, a recent poll indicates that 64% of Republicans want Palin to run in 2012. Here is my advice for Republicans - don't let that happen. It may work. You may get Bush with lipstick in 2012, but you will damage the Republican brand, and the country, even more than you already have.

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Yes! Finally!

I have been so fed up with how the Republicans have decided to deal with Bristol Palin's pregnancy. It's not that they want it to be a private matter. That's fine (although they seem perfectly content to use Palin's family as a prop whenever they want... a little hypocritical if you ask me). It's not that they want people to leave Bristol alone. I agree. To a certain extent, it's not even that Sarah Palin slashed funding to teen mothers, opposes comprehensive sex-ed, and likely opposes contraception (although it certainly is partially that).

It's that the Republicans keep lauding Bristol Palin's "decision". They are so happy that she "chose life". And that irks me to no end. You don't get to laud her choice when you don't think she should have one. If you are truly pro-life, there is no choice! "It's a baby, not a choice", no?

Well, Samatha Bee from The Daily Show finally said what I wanted to say. And she said it at the Republican convention. Just watch:

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A Collective Flip Flop?

Palin's being tagged for VP has Republicans falling all over themselves to say things that run contrary to previous statements. Jon Stewart, with his usual wit, puts it in perspective:



Via Pharyngula

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Expelled and Right-Wing Tactics

I just finished reading David Brock's The Republican Noise Machine and it got me thinking. In the book, Brock makes the claim, also put forward in the documentary Outfoxed, that the notion of "liberal bias" in the media is something that has in large part been put into the American consciousness by the right wing, and something that has been continually pushed even as the radical right has taken over the media in a number of ways. I'll refer to this political tactic - that of labeling something as biased when it's not - as the "bias tactic".

One of the immediate consequences of the populace's acceptance of the notion of "liberal bias" in the media - that is, of the success of the bias tactic with respect to media - is that it gives those with radical right wing beliefs an automatic trump card in debate. After all, any facts that you try to bring to light in debate that rely on the reports of the media are automatically under suspicion, since the media supposedly has a liberal bias. And any right wing debater can play this card whenever such reported facts threaten his position - "Well, sure the news supports what you're claiming" he can say, "the media is biased. We're not hearing both sides of the story". This, of course, can be an immediate debate stopper. If one has been sucked in by the idea that the media has a liberal bias, then, if one did not collect the facts oneself, it is impossible to properly justify the facts that you've presented on the basis of media reports. Not only that, but the success of the bias tactic also makes it possible for the right wing media sources like Fox to use anti-bias sounding slogans like "fair and balanced" to draw viewers to news that actually is biased.

It seems to me that Ben Stein's new bit of propaganda - Expelled - is a broadening of the application of the bias tactic. Charges of bias used to be thrown just at the people who report the facts. But now it's the people who collect the facts. This time they're after science.

Think about it for a moment. The whole premise of Expelled is that the scientific establishment is biased, that it kicks out people who do not agree with the established consensus. Now this is patently false, just as it was in the case of the media. There are many scientists who question the current paradigm and don't get kicked out. After all, if you have the evidence to back up your claim that the current paradigm is wrong, you're instantly famous! Here comes the Nobel Prize! But that won't stop the people behind Expelled any more than it stopped those who propagated the "liberal media" myth.

If application of bias tactic to science were to be successful the rewards for the right would be overwhelming - much better than the rewards reaped from duping viewers of Fox news. Just as Fox news managed to situate itself as an actual news organization rather than the propaganda machine that it is due to the success of the bias tactic with respect to the media, organizations doing pseudo-science that supported conservative ideas, even when they contradicted real science, would gain a much greater status. Global warming denialism, young earth creationism, and spurious claims about the ills of vaccines or the effects of abortion like the lie that abortion causes breast cancer would all instantly gain credit. After all, if the scientific establishment is biased, then we can't trust what they say, so we have to listen to both sides. "Fair and balanced" and "teach the controversy" are products of the same idea - the idea that the best way to get around facts that you don't like is to create your own "facts".

Now, I may be being a bit of a conspiracy theorist here. And either way it doesn't look like they're going to get away with it this time. But just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you, and just because they fail once doesn't mean they won't try it again.

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