Here's the baffling thing about modern conservatism. Yes, I know I've said it before, but until the media starts calling it out as the obvious pathology that it is, we just have to keep pointing it out.
Modern conservatism is anti-reality. It's not merely about political ideologies, it's about baldly denying facts so basic that it would take a sane person all of ten seconds to look it up. If you're conservative "enough", you're not allowed to look them up. And you're supposed to get very, very angry when someone else looks them up, too.
All of this is in service to some notion of magical fairies that, if only you just properly believe in them, will alter time and space so that you don't have to tax your brain with anything that might make you sad:
In what was overall a pretty softball [60 Minutes] interview with Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, there was one pretty telling moment to illustrate the type of toxic political environment we're living in, due primarily to Congressional leaders like Eric Cantor and that is the unwillingness to even admit facts.
When asked about his image of being someone who is unwilling to compromise and the fact that the man he claims is his hero, Ronald Reagan, was willing to compromise on taxes and work with Democrats, Cantor denied that Reagan ever "compromised his principles." When Leslie Stahl pointed out the obvious, that not raising taxes was one of his principles, Cantor's press secretary interrupted the interview, yelling from off camera that what Stahl was saying wasn't true.
Now, you might know that Reagan did in fact raise taxes on multiple occasions. You might know this because, well, people have been repeatedly noting that basic goddamn fact of history throughout the past few years, pointing out that even Conservative Saint Ronald was better attached to the realities of governance than any of the current clowns that demand adherence to his scriptures. You might also know this because it happened not during the European Dark Ages or as apocryphal backstory to one of Genghis Khan's less famous campaigns, but only back in the 1980s, when most of these current politicians were still alive, when many of them were actively paying attention, and long after the invention of videotape allowing all of it to be effing goddamn recorded to be effing goddamn played back anytime anyone wanted to know the effing goddamn honest answer to the question of "what the effing hell did Saint Ronald Reagan do, during his term in office?"
So what, then, does it take for any top member of Eric Cantor's staff to earnestly believe that none of those unpleasant tax-raising days or episodes of Very Serious Scriptural Saintly Compromise actually took place? Just how badly devoted to the magical fairy version of recent history do you have to be to work in Eric Cantor's office? And more importantly, why the hell do conservatives continually elevate believers in magical fairy versions of history, rather than do the decent thing and put them in homes for their own protection, away from knives and scissors and hot stovetops and the like?
Here is how this started, as far as I can determine. Conservatives vowed they would not raise any tax by any amount of money, ever, because it would make Reagan and the Conservative Baby Jesus cry. Democrats and others began to rightly point out that this was, historically, simply an untenable position to have, and that even the most conservative conservative who ever conservatived, Ronald Reagan, raised some taxes on some things in order to not have government auger itself into the ground. This caused a bout of cognitive dissonance within the conservative hive mind, first manifesting itself as profound irritation that anyone would ever bring up such a thing, then transforming to a full-fledged demand that anyone saying such things shut up already, and finally morphing into the rather impressive psychological feat of simply denying that any such thing ever happened. History itself, apparently, had to be changed to accommodate the grand conservative need to believe unambiguously in the absolute truth of their own ideological pronouncements.
These people are profoundly nuts. It's not the same thing as Reagan Conservatism, which was rather transparently the desire to give rich people buckets of money while punishing poor people for being lazy and poor and stuff. It's not even the same as Bush conservatism, which more aggressively explored the premise of spreading "freedoms" via one metric crapload of clusterbombs and the like. This new version is the combination of those two, plus a new cultism that is something to behold. In this new version, not only are those old beliefs sacrosanct, but belief in them is a matter of religious requirement. You are not allowed to question them. You are not allowed to challenge the math or other basic assumptions, and you are never permitted to bring up instances in which those beliefs failed, or were abandoned by their practitioners, or were, heaven forfend, compromised.
Thus, we get these bizarre episodes—and not just once in a while, but repeatedly—of conservatives angrily denouncing Actual Fucking History because they don't like what it has to say.
This isn't normal. Well, it may be normal, now, but it certainly isn't something that should be met with bland acceptance on the part of the press. If someone is such a nutcase that they demand adherence to alternate past histories, then you should either report that they have gone completely wacky and that people should perhaps consider taking their scissors away from them, or you should change your name to Pravda and start brushing up on your Photoshopping skills.
To her credit, Leslie Stahl did mention the obvious incoherent wrongness of Cantor's interrupting Jiminy Cricket:
Stahl: And at that point, Cantor's press secretary interrupted, yelling from off camera that what I was saying wasn't true.
[Reagan: My fellow Americans...]
Stahl: There seemed to be some difficulty accepting the fact that even though Ronald Reagan cut taxes, he also pushed through several tax increases, including one in 1982 during a recession.
Sadly, however, the current conventions of the press do not allow more appropriate reaction. It is edgy to note that someone has "difficulty accepting" a basic effing fact of effing recent history, as documented on an effing videotape. Edgier still, to play said tape, which would be seen as humiliating to the political operative in question, at least if they retained any residual sense of shame, which is unlikely.
But what is not done is the obvious next step. If a student baldly asserted a flagrantly untrue version of history, you would flunk them; if a researcher decided to make up experimental results wholesale to prove his own perceived notions, you would fire him. If a politician makes up historical un-facts in order to prove the greatness of their ideological stance, I think the more appropriate reaction would be to tell the viewing public: "Dear viewers, at this point Mr. So-and-So lost his marbles, began making up things, demanded we change the historical record, and in general had a frothing temper-tantrum that the realities of the world did not conform to what he wanted to hear. As a result we called an ambulance, fearing for his safety, and canceled the rest of the interview. Should Mr. So-and-So regain his senses, we shall inform you, but until that point flowers and care packages can be sent to him care of the St. Ronald Reagan Center for the Politically Deluded, Ward Two. Please do not send books or magazines, as these may upset him."
No? All right, we could at least compromise. It is probably not necessary to institutionalize magical-fairy believers. It is, however, probably important that we still retain enough self-dignity to mark their pronouncements as what they are: either lies, or fever dreams, or worse. Things have a tendency to get a bit nutty for countries that demand the basic facts of their own history be changed in order to more comfortably fit with the beliefs of their ruling class; I would prefer it if our own country experimented in this area as little as possible.