Believe me, the GOP needs to open itself to rational debate
The Grand Old Party has created a monster and now it has turned on them.
It would be tempting to simply call the monster Donald Trump, but the unnamed monster has many aspects: Trump, conservative media, anti-science, rejection of adult debate, corporate corruption, climate change denial, racism, fear.
One reason to call the monster Trump would that Trump has taken the syndrome to such extremes. A second that many prominent conservatives have started to realize that the monster threatens their party. This threat becomes visible in the list of Trump positions that are far from Republican and he has started attacking conservative politicians directly.
To solve the problem the GOP will have to return to rational debate, rather than ending every second sentence with "believe me". Conservatives, did you notice that "believe me" did not work when you thought you should believe me? It is just as stupid coming from your side. Given people reasons to accept what you are saying.
The GOP had rational debate in the past, like non-US conservative parties do. What makes rational debate hard is that US politicians now take position based on what the donors want. The incoherent mess you then have to defend cannot be defended rationally. Rational debate thus needs to be replaced with misinformation. To make the misinformation palatable politicians need to stoke fear to suppress critical thought and fuel tribalism....
... John Ziegler naturally searches for the problem in conservative media:"We've ... reached the point, I say, we've left the gravitational pull of the rational Earth, where we are now in a situation where facts don't matter, truth doesn't matter, logic doesn't matter. ...
The conservative establishment that needs to be gotten rid of is the conservative media establishment. Sean Hannity needs to go. Bill O'Reilly needs to go. Sadly, Rush Limbaugh needs to go.
Here's what I'll be very disappointed in: If Trump does lose, as I am very confident that he will, and let's say it's not super close, if he loses by a significant margin and Sean Hannity and people like him have not experienced some significant career pain, if not destruction, because of their role, then it's over. It is over.
Because if there is no price to pay for conservative-media elements having sold out to Donald Trump, then guess what? It's going to happen again and again and again. ... If that doesn't happen, then I think we're done. It's over." variable-variability.blogspot.com |
