Thursday, September 17, 2009

Making Up Their Own Facts

Yesterday I had an interesting conversation with a Conservative acquaintance, one in which he claimed that one's political affiliation determines which "facts" one chooses to believe. We were speaking in particular about the current health-care-reform debate, and, essentially, his assertion was that there is somehow an equivalence between the latest Glenn (The University of I Don't Remember) Beck fabrication and actual, real-world statistics compiled by organizations such as WHO.

And so it goes with the Radical Right. If reality is too difficult or inconvenient, then they truly believe that they can simply make up an alternative set of facts that better fit the way they want to see the world.


Just look back to those heady days of the Bush Administration's first term, when the Neocons so arrogantly proclaimed that "...we create our own reality." Those of us in the "reality-based community" were passe, hopelessly mired in a non-fantasy-based past.

I think we all can recall how that worked itself out in Mister Bush's second term.

Because, no matter how much one might want want to believe, say, that America's health-care system provides the best results in the world... well, that pesky reality does keep getting in the way. We don't cover as large a percentage of our population as, get worse results than, and still rack up more money spent per capita than, any other Western democracy. And no amount of made-up drivel about "Death Panels" or "Socialism" is going to change that.

Monday, September 14, 2009

A Picture Worth A Thousand Words


This says more about the teabaggers than I ever could.