Ted Cruz Isn't an Idiot -- He's Delusional and That's Far More Dangerous

[Zen Ben]

Ted Cruz Isn't an Idiot -- He's Delusional and That's Far More Dangerous https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-po...more-dangerous By Sophia A. McClennen AlterNet April 1, 2015:
"That means that for those who think like Cruz, there is virtually no amount of data, reality checks or facts that can persuade the deluded citizen to give up their false ideas. This is the mindset of the Tea Party, the Koch brothers, and many on the far right. Nyhan and Reifler refer to this as “motivated reasoning.” What they find is that people who are attached to falsehoods perceive any correcting information as partisan and flawed. So conservatives don’t perceive science as information. To them, it’s just a liberal agenda. In other words, they don’t believe the truth."
That's a pretty clear analysis of the problem.

I've been trying to tell my liberal friends for the last few years that they are wasting their time arguing with tea-baggers. Fox News and right-wing radio have created a fully immersive 24/7/365 alternative media that tells the ditto-heads that they are the only trustworthy source of information. Any appeal to facts, science, or reason is rejected as biased, since it did not come from Fox World.

I have become a big fan of a podcast called The Professional Left (https://professionalleft.blogspot.com/ ). They are two really funny and smart progressives, a husband and wife duo, who have really drilled down on this threat to democracy and an open society. Check out a few minutes of episode 277 (Ted Cruz and Republican Tribalism). They nailed it.

Their main point is for the rest of us not to use up valuable energy tut-tutting over the increasingly over-the-top weirdness from the tea party Republicans by trying to talk sense to them. Go after the MSM [Main Stream Media] outlets that keep giving them airtime (and refusing to give time to real progressives. Mark Shields on PBS is the best we can come up with as a representative for 'the left'?). The MSM gatekeepers prop these crazy clan characters up by playing the "both-sides" card, even when one party has clearly lost its damn mind.

Why are Bill Kristol, David Brooks, Paul Wolfowitz, John McCain and Chuck Todd still on heavy rotation on TV, sucking up the oxygen on the premier MSM political shows like Face the Nation and Meet the Press. They are the enablers to the theocratic fascists. We can take them down and get better voices in the news. I'd like to hear more from Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders. Let's have the beautiful, brilliant and elegant Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation magazine, hosting a Sunday talk show (https://www.washingtonpost.com/katrina-vanden-heuvel/ ). There are better options. We are settling for TV dinners in place of a four course meal at a four star restaurant. Going after the mushy centrists is where we can get a payoff. The MSM outlets would respond to concerted public pressure.

The main point is that we need to go after the MSM enablers instead of banging our heads against the brick wall of mocking the stupidity of the Republicans. The bigger question to ask is: how did a buffoon like Ted Cruz become a national figure who can go on MSM outlets and be treated like just another flavor of political ice cream rather than the toxic waste dump of swamp-fever right-wing ideology that he is? That is the weak point in the system.

Zen Ben

[podfish]

...I've been trying to tell my liberal friends for the last few years that they are wasting their time arguing with tea-baggers..... Any appeal to facts, science, or reason is rejected as biased, since it did not come from Fox World.

+1 but one thing I try to keep in mind is that my liberal friends aren't likely to be free of the same impediments to reason themselves. At least there's some research that does support the idea that liberalism does indeed correlate with openness to rational argument. Many conservatives disagree, which I suppose supports the premise even more!

Anyway, that's one thing, and the other thing that goes with it is to stick with making rational arguments anyway. Completely disengaging from debate is a bad idea. I see people talking to their dogs (no slur intended to conservatives) when they have even less hope of rational response. It's the least we can do to promote a shared public policy. It really isn't only about winning and losing - we need to do everything we can to make everyone feel engaged in the process, 'cuz they're going to still be here too.

[Zen Ben]

Podfish:
My main point is not that we shouldn't engage politically in our daily face-to-face encounters, but that we should concentrate our energies where we can move the needle to forward the progressive agenda. I have become acutely aware of how the MSM centrists, for whom politics is an inside-the-beltway game, are the enablers of the increasingly unhinged discourse from the inflamed Tea Party base of the Republican Party. The centrists practice an intellectually dishonest form of moral equivalency, which places extreme and immoral views that used to be on the fringe on a manufactured parity with fact-based and morally sound perspectives. That's why we keep getting pushed to the right. We have defined political deviance downwards with the "both-sides-are-the-same" mind-set. I want to put pressure on the centrist enablers, not just do battle with factory-issued Fox talking points.
Zen Ben

+1 but one thing I try to keep in mind...