So I’m reading the news this morning, and to add to my depression over the fact that a large percentage of Americans don’t accept evolution I run across this little gem.
Here’s the highlight from the article — the 63% of Republicans polled believe that Iraq had WMD. Let’s contrast this with the nation as a whole. In the panicked, drum beat to war of 2003 70% of American believed Iraq had WMD thanks to a relentless campaign of misinformation on the part of the Bush administration.
Self-identified Republicans only make up about 27 – 30% of the American electorate, but 63% of them will not accept facts and evidence.
And 64% of Republican’s have always believed or come to believe that the President was not born in the United States.
This is really scary. Not because they are nuts, but because the Republican party used to be a venerable institution. They occasionally had ideas with which I agreed. What has happened to this party represents a fundamental danger to our nation and democracy. When the only other viable political party lives in an alternate universe where facts and actual empirical evidence are not permitted to penetrate governance cannot occur.
There is no point of contact unless independents and Democrats are willing to accept fairy tales, scary stories with no basis in objective reality, and if we govern that way we’re doomed. We’s also doomed if we don’t govern. There are real problems in this country — collapsing infrastructure, clean water, education, a workable and just health care system, debt, etc. etc. (in the interest of not fighting with any conservative readers I’ve left out climate change, and just listed those thins upon which, I think, I hope, all of us can agree.
The republicans have to come back and reconnect with the real world if we are to have any hope.
Yes, it is as if a whole segment of the population has lost any desire/ability to use critical thinking.
Massive stockpiles were not there, but we did actually find some. They could not kill millions, only a few thousands in close quarters. Not really enough to worry about.
http://tinyurl.com/6ofcdvp
Having said that, I am no sad Hussein is gone. He was a monster of our creation (The US), and in a way he was our responsibility. We should have tried longer with the diplomatic options though
Should be ‘not sad’, not ‘no sad’. Darn it
The found a few rusted out old shells. Clearly overlooked after the first war. Yes, Saddam was a monster, and he was playing a dangerous game — pretending he had WMD to keep his neighbors off him, and unable to admit the truth until it was atoo late. but Bush and Cheney wanted that war, and nothing was going to stop them. And was it really worth a trillion dollars, 5000 american lives, and at least 100,000 iraqi lives to achieve that? Not to mention the loss of our American soul by embracing torture. I call the price too high.
Chris Mooney’s “The Republican Brain” is a very recent book that makes a lot of sense to me, perhaps for the first time, on this topic. I think it’s a fair book with a lot of insight based on scientific studies, pointing out strengths and weaknesses of the thinking of different sorts of people. I fall prey to one liberal fallacy highlighted: I believe that facts and logic should actually be convincing. Obviously, to a good fraction of us, they aren’t. A different approach is necessary, and I should stop getting so upset when otherwise smart people refuse to listen to facts that contradict their beliefs.
Wow, I have that fallacy too. I know so many scientists, and have such respect for them that it just seems crazy not to accept facts and logic. It’s why I wrote the damn Edge books because I just couldn’t deal with the superstition and the fantasies.