Paul Krugman has a good one today and you should go read it, but I especially liked this part:
Now, everyone makes predictions that turn out to have been wrong; it’s a complicated world out there, and nobody’s perfect. The point, however, is that Congress is now controlled by men who never acknowledge error, let alone learn from their mistakes.
In some cases, they may not even know that they were wrong. After all, conservative news media are not exactly known for their balanced coverage; if your picture of how health reform is working is based on Fox News, you probably have a sense that it has been a vast disaster, even though the reality is one of success that has surprised even the law’s supporters.
The main point, however, is that we’re looking at a political subculture in which ideological tenets are simply not to be questioned, no matter what. Supply-side economics is valid no matter what actually happens to the economy, guaranteed health insurance must be a failure even if it’s working, and anyone who points out the troubling facts is ipso facto an enemy.
And we’re not talking about marginal figures. You sometimes hear claims that the old-fashioned Republican establishment is making a comeback, that Tea Party extremists are on the run and we can get back to bipartisan cooperation. But that is a fantasy. We can’t have meaningful cooperation when we can’t agree on reality, when even establishment figures in the Republican Party essentially believe that facts have a liberal bias.
“Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He lives…….by make believe.” Somerset Maugham.
Let’s talk about fantasy, reality and politicians.
Today Netanyahu called for a “broad-based assault on radical Islam.”
We have fought two full-blown wars, one in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, which changed nothing.
We’ve killed countless “terrorists” with drones and nothing has changed.
We’ve supported murderous dictators in Egypt, the UAE, Yemen and elsewhere and nothing changes.
We’ve started civil wars in Libya and Syria that aren’t working.
The fact is that all of our actions are only making matters much worse.
Just look at Paris.
Every sane human being knows that we can’t kill our way to peace or practice austerity to riches.
So what do Netanyahu and the rest of the warmongers have in mind going forward?
What are our idiot politicians on both sides of the aisle going to offer us?
The answer is……more of the same.
Krugman comes close, but it’s not that facts have a liberal bias. Republican epistemology holds that anything inconsistent with a sacred theory can’t be a fact. Therein lies the war with science and economics.