Republican reality is a bit of a misnomer. Republican’s have a difficult time living in the reality the rest of us live in. David Weigel at Slate takes a look at A Patriot’s History of the Modern World, Vol. II:
In the Schweikert/Dougherty telling, Obama’s rise to power can only be explained by the compliance of a biased media. Where was he born? The authors don’t say, only noting that his “place of birth continued to be questioned in lawsuits two years after his election.” Obama’s 2012 re-election is noted as “perhaps one of the most unexpected political events of the last seventy-five years.” How did he win, they ask, when he told one Virginia crowd that the small-business owner “didn’t build that” infrastructure that allowed him to live his life? “Obama’s phrase by then encapsulated the Keynesian and even quasi-socialist views of the mainstream Democrat Party that economic growth emanated from government, not the private sector,” write the authors. “Astoundingly, the comment did not sink Obama’s campaign.”
Astoundingly! How astoundingly? “For the first time in recent memory,” we’re told, “the losing candidate carried the independent voters and by a solid margin.” That depends on how you define “recent,” as both Al Gore and John Kerry won self-identified “independent” voters. After the election, we are told that “the media and the Democrat Party” went on “a frenetic crusade in 2012 to eliminate firearms.” (Eliminate!) There’s no mention of Sandy Hook, which was the impetus for the winter 2012/2013 gun control push, but there is a mention of how “President Obama’s own daughters already attended a school with 11 armed guards.” There is no footnote for that fact, probably because it’s completely false.
This effort by the authors is obvious propaganda peddling. I guess they are hoping that enough people will read the book and believe it to be true just as those same people watch Fox News and believe that to be true. These not-so-bright people will unfortunately believe this alternate version of history.
My problem is that these lies become the argument and we can no longer focus on what is important and have an informed and respectful political discussion. Even when someone is presented with undisputed evidence to contradict the lies they so desperately want to believe, they refuse to disbelieve the lies. Republicans want to believe the lies they’ve been fed even though reality doesn’t support them. Republicans and those on the extreme right are creating an alternate reality where math, science and facts don’t matter. And that, my friends, is scary.
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