Before linking to articles examining the history of the Right’s war on truth, I offer these introductory remarks.
==
Traditional American conservatism has been transformed into a radical Right "Movement Conservatism" (con-servatism), and has gone from pledging to support and defend the Constitution, to pledging to support and defend the wealth of the elites.
The radical Right MUST LIE, because they represent a powerful and wealthy anti-democracy minority bent on one-party rule. They serve that political power, and their god called the “Free Market”. Their god has no conscience, no morals, and no regard for our air, water and planet.
Slavery and child labor were once in service to their Free Market God, just as science denial, environmental degradation, union busting, and opposition to minimum wage and job safety standards are today.
This is the unspoken truth in both our culture and corporate/government complex.
We who seek and share the truth now find we are out on the "Reality Fringe". It is the place not to be recognized, to be dismissed by the corporate media, ownership class, and extremist political culture.
Con-servatism is based on beliefs focused on self interest, but over-proportionally benefiting the economic elites, all under the banner of their false god.
Progressivism is based on facts and reason, focused on the common good.
While we reject their beliefs, they reject facts and reason. 'Twas ever thus.
==
In “1984” Orwell said, "Ignorance is strength". Electing a man who claims climate change is a Chinese hoax makes the case. We needn't continue down the long list of ignorant statements.
Americans have been long conditioned to revere wealth, and view the wealthy as morally and intellectually superior to the general population.
Remember when "personal responsibility" was the value conservatives claimed as their own?
That went out their "Overton window" when they embraced alternative facts.
Personal responsibility doesn't apply to our new con-servative authoritarian leader. "When you're a star, they let you get away with it". This boast of sexual assault is from the "law and order" candidate. We know just who "law and order" applies to, don't we?
==
The “Big Lie” wins again.
The voices from the far Right insist newspapers and broadcast media (AKA “Liberal media”) are "cheering sections for the most progressive elements of government".
They will ignore certain facts though. Today's corporate news media are owned by a small number of corporations. A very large share of it is owned by Murdoch’s Right Wing News Corp; Fox News, Wall Street Journal, etc.
"Liberal media" is the far Right's highly misleading propaganda term for corporate media. Unlike in the past, the news divisions are used for profit generation. Much has changed from the public service requirement of airwaves and print news.
Corporate media serve their bottom line, not liberal ideology. Their bias is always in favor of their corporate owners and advertisers.
Always.
They support the status quo because the status quo supports them.
Always.
Corporate media run stories the Right doesn’t like, so it is accused of bias against them. They ignore the fact the same corporate media virtually parroted Bush and Cheney’s Saddam/al-Qaeda ties, “nukular” aluminum tubes, and “biological labs” lies as news.
The radical Right’s war on truth is now getting dangerous for the entire world.
The Pentagon knows climate change is real. Why do Republicans disagree with both the scientific consensus and Pentagon on what is real?
How can that be sane, let alone reasonable?
They are rewarded by Big Oil and the Kochs to reject reason and science, and to deny climate change. Then they project unto science their own obvious “political agenda”.
This corruption is a threat to the nation, humanity and the planet.
Their lack of intellectual honesty clearly disqualifies them to lead any country.
The truth offers no comfort. The lies wrap it up and put them at ease. No more thinking about what they don't want to know.
====
From:
“Secrets of conservatives’ decades-long war on truth”
Deep on page 546 of his 1,839-page budget, Wisconsin’s Governor Scott Walker tucked in a crucial idea. He proposed to strip a principle from the mission statement of the University of Wisconsin, a school that attracts students from all over the nation and from 131 foreign countries. From the core philosophy that has driven the university since the turn of the last century Walker wanted to hack out the words: “Basic to every purpose of the system is the search for truth.” Rather than serving the people of the state by developing intellectual, cultural and humane sensitivities, expertise, and “a sense of purpose,” Walker prefers that the state university simply “meet the state’s workforce needs.” In the face of scathing criticism, the governor backtracked and, despite a trail of emails that led to his office, tried to claim the new language was a “drafting error.”
But Walker’s attempt to replace the search for truth with workforce training was no error. Since the earliest days of Movement Conservatism in the 1950s, its leaders have understood that the movement’s success depends on destroying Americans’ faith in the academic search for truth. For two generations, Movement Conservatives have subverted American politics, with increasing success, by explicitly rejecting the principle of open debate based in reasoned argument. They have refused to engage with facts and instead simply demonized anyone who disagrees with their ideology. This is an astonishing position. It is an attack on the Enlightenment principles that gave rise to Western civilization.
Make no mistake: the attack is deliberate.
... After an economic free-for-all of the 1920s that had pitched the nation into the Great Depression, Americans embraced the government regulation that reined in shady business dealings and protected workers. How could businessmen make inroads against such a popular program?
In 1951, a young William F. Buckley, Jr. articulated a strategy for opposing the consensus that supported New Deal policies. Buckley’s “God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of ‘Academic Freedom’” was a sophomoric diatribe by the Catholic son of a wealthy oil magnate, published by the small right-wing Henry Regnery Press. In it, Buckley rejected the principles that had enabled social progress for centuries and laid out a mind-boggling premise: The Enlightenment, the intellectual basis of Western Civilization, was wrong.
Rational argument supported by facts did not lead to sound societal decisions, Buckley claimed; it led people astray...
...When Governor Walker replaced “the search for truth” with “meet the state’s workforce needs” in the charge to the University of Wisconsin, he did not make an error. He was articulating the principle that has driven Movement Conservatives since their earliest days: Facts and arguments can only lead Americans toward a government that regulates business and supports working Americans, and they must be squelched.
====
And more recently we have a piece by conservative talk radio host Charles Sykes, admitting what went wrong.
Amen.
==
Traditional American conservatism has been transformed into a radical Right "Movement Conservatism" (con-servatism), and has gone from pledging to support and defend the Constitution, to pledging to support and defend the wealth of the elites.
The radical Right MUST LIE, because they represent a powerful and wealthy anti-democracy minority bent on one-party rule. They serve that political power, and their god called the “Free Market”. Their god has no conscience, no morals, and no regard for our air, water and planet.
Slavery and child labor were once in service to their Free Market God, just as science denial, environmental degradation, union busting, and opposition to minimum wage and job safety standards are today.
This is the unspoken truth in both our culture and corporate/government complex.
We who seek and share the truth now find we are out on the "Reality Fringe". It is the place not to be recognized, to be dismissed by the corporate media, ownership class, and extremist political culture.
Con-servatism is based on beliefs focused on self interest, but over-proportionally benefiting the economic elites, all under the banner of their false god.
Progressivism is based on facts and reason, focused on the common good.
While we reject their beliefs, they reject facts and reason. 'Twas ever thus.
==
In “1984” Orwell said, "Ignorance is strength". Electing a man who claims climate change is a Chinese hoax makes the case. We needn't continue down the long list of ignorant statements.
Americans have been long conditioned to revere wealth, and view the wealthy as morally and intellectually superior to the general population.
Remember when "personal responsibility" was the value conservatives claimed as their own?
That went out their "Overton window" when they embraced alternative facts.
Personal responsibility doesn't apply to our new con-servative authoritarian leader. "When you're a star, they let you get away with it". This boast of sexual assault is from the "law and order" candidate. We know just who "law and order" applies to, don't we?
==
The “Big Lie” wins again.
The voices from the far Right insist newspapers and broadcast media (AKA “Liberal media”) are "cheering sections for the most progressive elements of government".
They will ignore certain facts though. Today's corporate news media are owned by a small number of corporations. A very large share of it is owned by Murdoch’s Right Wing News Corp; Fox News, Wall Street Journal, etc.
"Liberal media" is the far Right's highly misleading propaganda term for corporate media. Unlike in the past, the news divisions are used for profit generation. Much has changed from the public service requirement of airwaves and print news.
Corporate media serve their bottom line, not liberal ideology. Their bias is always in favor of their corporate owners and advertisers.
Always.
They support the status quo because the status quo supports them.
Always.
Corporate media run stories the Right doesn’t like, so it is accused of bias against them. They ignore the fact the same corporate media virtually parroted Bush and Cheney’s Saddam/al-Qaeda ties, “nukular” aluminum tubes, and “biological labs” lies as news.
The radical Right’s war on truth is now getting dangerous for the entire world.
The Pentagon knows climate change is real. Why do Republicans disagree with both the scientific consensus and Pentagon on what is real?
How can that be sane, let alone reasonable?
They are rewarded by Big Oil and the Kochs to reject reason and science, and to deny climate change. Then they project unto science their own obvious “political agenda”.
This corruption is a threat to the nation, humanity and the planet.
Their lack of intellectual honesty clearly disqualifies them to lead any country.
The truth offers no comfort. The lies wrap it up and put them at ease. No more thinking about what they don't want to know.
====
From:
“Secrets of conservatives’ decades-long war on truth”
Deep on page 546 of his 1,839-page budget, Wisconsin’s Governor Scott Walker tucked in a crucial idea. He proposed to strip a principle from the mission statement of the University of Wisconsin, a school that attracts students from all over the nation and from 131 foreign countries. From the core philosophy that has driven the university since the turn of the last century Walker wanted to hack out the words: “Basic to every purpose of the system is the search for truth.” Rather than serving the people of the state by developing intellectual, cultural and humane sensitivities, expertise, and “a sense of purpose,” Walker prefers that the state university simply “meet the state’s workforce needs.” In the face of scathing criticism, the governor backtracked and, despite a trail of emails that led to his office, tried to claim the new language was a “drafting error.”
But Walker’s attempt to replace the search for truth with workforce training was no error. Since the earliest days of Movement Conservatism in the 1950s, its leaders have understood that the movement’s success depends on destroying Americans’ faith in the academic search for truth. For two generations, Movement Conservatives have subverted American politics, with increasing success, by explicitly rejecting the principle of open debate based in reasoned argument. They have refused to engage with facts and instead simply demonized anyone who disagrees with their ideology. This is an astonishing position. It is an attack on the Enlightenment principles that gave rise to Western civilization.
Make no mistake: the attack is deliberate.
... After an economic free-for-all of the 1920s that had pitched the nation into the Great Depression, Americans embraced the government regulation that reined in shady business dealings and protected workers. How could businessmen make inroads against such a popular program?
In 1951, a young William F. Buckley, Jr. articulated a strategy for opposing the consensus that supported New Deal policies. Buckley’s “God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of ‘Academic Freedom’” was a sophomoric diatribe by the Catholic son of a wealthy oil magnate, published by the small right-wing Henry Regnery Press. In it, Buckley rejected the principles that had enabled social progress for centuries and laid out a mind-boggling premise: The Enlightenment, the intellectual basis of Western Civilization, was wrong.
Rational argument supported by facts did not lead to sound societal decisions, Buckley claimed; it led people astray...
...When Governor Walker replaced “the search for truth” with “meet the state’s workforce needs” in the charge to the University of Wisconsin, he did not make an error. He was articulating the principle that has driven Movement Conservatives since their earliest days: Facts and arguments can only lead Americans toward a government that regulates business and supports working Americans, and they must be squelched.
====
And more recently we have a piece by conservative talk radio host Charles Sykes, admitting what went wrong.
He recalls Trump’s campaign surrogate Scottie
Nell Hughes saying, “There’s
no such thing, unfortunately, anymore as facts.” (Well, besides “alternative
facts”.)
====
====
From
“Why Nobody Cares the President Is Lying”:
Mr.
Trump understands that attacking the media is the reddest of meat for his base,
which has been conditioned to reject reporting from news sites outside of the
conservative media ecosystem.
For
years, as a conservative radio talk show host, I played a role in that
conditioning by hammering the mainstream media for its bias and double
standards. But the price turned out to be far higher than I imagined. The
cumulative effect of the attacks was to delegitimize those outlets and
essentially destroy much of the right’s immunity to false information. We
thought we were creating a savvier, more skeptical audience. Instead, we opened
the door for President Trump, who found an audience that could be easily
misled.
====
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