The question is often asked why the claims politicians make about themselves or the positions they take are based in whole or in part on either a misrepresentation of the underlying facts or an outright lie. To be clear politicians lying in this fashion is nothing new but also to be fair the current crop of candidates running for the Republican nomination seem to have a particular predilection for lying. The latest two examples include Ben Carson who appears, at least to me, to be genuinely insane and is now receiving a heightened level of scrutiny because repeated statements in his autobiographies are proving to be, shall we say, "misleading", and Carly Fiorina who has been exposed for lying about her business chops and about a Planned Parenthood video. All of this brings us back to the question, “why”.
The answer, to some degree, can be found in the angry response of both candidates to the questions now being posed by the media; to the anger at the audacity of the media to ask difficult questions and, in effect, do its job. Their anger at the media is actually appropriate. Indeed, we should all be furious with the media though perhaps for different reasons. Those reasons are many but at their core is a seemingly successful attempt by the increasingly powerful right flank of the Republican party to inject into our national consciousness the notion that intellectual success or curiosity or a professional ethos that focuses on facts and the methods by which those facts are revealed is to be ridiculed as elitist and part of some sort of some liberal bias. Gone, or at least at risk of disappearing, is an acceptance that facts are not some inconvenient truth to be ignored but the basis for critical discussions about those facts and how to either develop strategies for altering the outcomes that those facts represent or developing strategies to live with an understanding of what those facts represent.
The consequence of this de-evolution of critical thinking in this country is most readily revealed by the preferences now being expressed by a Republican electorate that has been conditioned to question any fact not on an intellectual basis but simply as worthy of suspicion because it runs contrary to a narrative that they have been programmed to accept. That narrative invites the likes of a Ben Carson and any of his co-candidates to say and do anything that plays to the underlying narrative and to challenge with real anger any attempt by the media to raise questions that run contrary to that narrative. Their anger and utter surprise at being challenged itself should not come as a surprise as it is the challengers...the mainstream med now raising those challenges which, in no small measure, is responsible for promoting that narrative and its attack upon any facts which are inconsistent with that narrative and thus allowing this anti-intellectual narrative to become so much a part of the current discourse. The reasons for this failure are many and something to be addressed in a separate posting but it is certain that we find ourselves pushing back against a narrative that exists, in large part, independent from factual basis because the media ceased to serve its function as the so-called, Fourth Estate, maintaining vigilance over the political process.
There is, of course, real danger for all of us, not simply those who will be voting to select among the various candidates for the Republican nomination. The more facts and critical thinking are attacked as elitist and liberal the more vulnerable we become to surrendering ourselves to those who have created a narrative of an America based on intolerance, fear and isolation. While the Ben Carsons of the world must be confronted it is what his anger at being challenged represents and says about ourselves that must be confronted.
Facts matter. Laws matter. Rules matter. The very fabric of our society…the grand experiment that this democracy still embodies…depends upon those very fundamental truths. They cannot be surrendered. Professionalism and intellectualism must prevail and stand as a stalwart against a creeping narrative that puts us all at risk.
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