Quote:
Originally Posted by taxwonk
My last vacation at the local hospital I was paired with an avid fan of Fox News. I spent three days telling him how everything they were reporting was either slanted or outright lies. I looked up other references. I had visitors bring in books. He left as certain that Fox News was the only "patriotic" news service as he was that a glass of prune juice in the morning would get him going in nothing flat. It's like the whole "how to be a Playa" scam or fantasy camps. Tell people what they want to hear and it goes down so much easier.
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It has nothing to do with reality. Hence, O'Reilly gets a pass despite being clearly full of shit.
The most strident elements of the Right view reality through a lens approximating that famous Faulkner quote: "The best fiction is far more true than any journalism." The only difference, of course, being Faulkner intended fiction to demonstrate realities which journalism of the time failed to adequately cover. The Right of today wants to rewrite everything it sees to fit a narrative largely opposed to actual reality.
And a lot of them know they're engaging in fantasy and delusional perception. You can slam them with facts and, if cornered -
if you refuse to let them go and force them to admit they are engaging in falsehoods, which I have done numerous times - they will concede. But in this concession they will include the following defense: "We need to bend the truth to protect our way of life... It's marketing. We're trying to protect what we see as the essential character of the country."
The movement is more important than the facts. Cross-examining them misses the point. The more you do it - the more you try to punch through the layers of delusion and force the logical circuits of their brains to admit facts debunking their beliefs - the more they'll react like fundamentalists. And among the smarter of them, there is a very logical justification for reveling in unreality. The more people say a thing, the more it is believed. The more it is believed, the more actual decisions in true reality will be based on assumptions informed by these delusions.
"Just think it, say it, and eventually, it will be reality..." The Right lives in a series of Goebbel's "big lies," all in service to the notion reflexivity will drag us back to the perfect '50s culture they seek.
Good luck swaying those minds.
