Interesting Times

Over the last few months it has become clear to anyone who cares to look over our political scene that the Republican party is going a little insane. The rhetoric over basically any initiative that Obama proposes has gotten to point that it seems impossible to accuse him of worse without bringing in the words 'pure evil'. They have elected a slew of new members that are, for lack of a better term, ideologues, and seem slightly unstable. The article in the New Yorker about Michele Bachmann drove this point home, she seems to have a warped sense of history, economics, and policy that is in large part driven by her uncompromising christian faith. It seems like the way in which many of these Republicans engage with the world is through a faith based mental process that reasons logically from divinely inspired universal truths, or said another way, truths that are not subject to verification by evidence or fact. This, I think, is the reason that it is so hard for our political system to reach any sort of compromise, one party is refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of the others position.

I try to read differing opinions on various issues, mainly libertarian because movement conservatives are offering basically nothing these days, and it has become almost impossible to talk with some members of the conservative movement. This inability to communicate is in large part because they refuse to budge on the starting premises, there is no amount of evidence that can sway them from their belief in the truth of their belief. So for example the meme that we don't have a problem with the deficit, we have a spending problem. Now if you believe that the government spends to much money that is a perfectly legitimate argument, but to convince others you are going to have to show that the US spends significantly more than other similarly situated nations, and that we also have tax rates that are on the high side. To say that there can be no revenue increases, even though we as a country are on the low end of the individual tax burden, while holding our nation hostage to slash spending that was enacted in a democratic fashion shows an ideological fanaticism that is terrifying to truly contemplate. These people are capable of convincing themselves that basically any means are legitimate to reach their objectives, and it is becoming harder to imagine a situation in which they act with some self restraint.

So to finish up quickly with what is the most troubling aspect of the Republican world view at this point in time, I think it has to be that the actually present reality bears so little resemblance to their ideological worldview. It is hard to argue with these charts which show that the policies that they enacted are the largest cause of the deficits that they now rail against. They drove the deficit to astronomic levels, their policies helped cause the financial crisis, and obstruction hampered the recovery, and then they choose the most harmful way to demand spending cuts to programs that they dislike. It is irresponsibility on an epic scale, and it should be called out by everyone with an ounce of sense.