You have to see this to believe it: Darla Shine, the wife of ex-Fox News executive and now White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications Bill Shine, insisted today via Twitter that:
Darla Shine@DarlaShine
Here we go LOL #measlesoutbreak on #CNN #Fake #Hysteria
The entire Baby Boom population alive today had the #Measles as kids
Bring back our #ChildhoodDiseases they keep you healthy & fight cancer
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5:43 AM - Feb 13, 2019
Here's one more among way too many examples. It helps to illuminate 1) the fundamental position of the Trump voters; 2) the danger that Trumpism represents to the Republican party; and 3) the lethal weakness of Conservatism today.
This is a mistake by any rational standards, which is why it's impossible for people with common sense and self-interest to understand. It is endemic throughout the positions being taken by Trump and his people in law, medicine, climate science, the economy, etc. No matter what form it takes, there is just one stance: there is no such thing as a fact.
Trumpism is the rejection of the idea that anything is necessarily true unless they want it to be true. Their resistance to fact is a personal, visceral resistance to the authority of fact as it is ever wielded by people they detest, the ones who live in what one of the proto-Trumpists famously called the “reality-based community”. They insist that facts are coercive, and an attack on their liberty of thought. Any fact they must accept is an affront to them if it forces them to question their worldview, even their most casual assumptions. Any factual argument can require them to admit evidence and make concessions they don't ever want to make, so linear cumulative thinking and deductive reasoning must be attacked in principle and confronted on the ground with blatant lies. Their fundamental position is that facts are determined by power, not by empirical observation. They demand the right to reach any conclusion they want by any means they like (“Bring back our #ChildhoodDiseases they keep you healthy & fight cancer”). They demand that their thinking be accommodated, even given parity, regardless of whether it's correct, harmful, or denied by the evidence.
The Trumpists cannot permit themselves to accept any fact that is promoted by the people they hate. They'll subject themselves, their families and their communities to the effects of Trumpism just to make a gesture of defiance. The Right is fighting a war on the very idea of fact. Hence their willingness to lie and be lied to. Hence Donald Trump. Hence the fantasy wall. Hence the legal miasma Trump lives in. Hence the anti-vaxxers. Hence their willingness to suffer the consequences of willful stupidity if it hurts their enemies.
Hence the GOP's problem: they represent a voter base that will reject candidates who live in the reality-based community. They have to be insane to win nominations, and they can't win elections, or legislate, or represent adults in the 21st century, or escape liability by being insane.
Understanding them is this easy. They can’t make reality go away. They don’t deserve parity or accommodation. Arguing with them is a waste of time. Just compete with them.