The Republican War on Reality

Everett Dirksen is one of my heroes. The Senate Republican leader
from 1959 to 1969, he pushed strongly for Vietnam escalation and took
conservative stands that I'd have strongly disagreed with on economic issues.
But he joined Lyndon Johnson in going to the mat to pass the Civil Rights and
Voting Rights bills, and for that I admire him immensely.

Today's Republicans are far from Everett Dirksen, and that's
a shame. Beyond political differences with Obama and the Democrats, they've
been making war on reality itself, which should be a major issue of the
campaign's final days. Consider these examples:

The myth of Obama as secret foreign-born Muslim: If 45
percent of Republicans think Obama wasn't born in this country and 57 percent think
he's a secret Muslim, there's a reason. It's not just that Rush Limbaugh
and Glenn Beck have been spouting crazy lies, but that the overwhelming
majority of Republican leaders have been silent, so as not to damp the fervor those
outraged at Obama's mere presence in the White House. Yes, a few have bluntly
said it's nonsense, like Hawaii's
Republican governor Linda Lingle, South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham, and Colorado
Senate candidate Ken Buck. But most have responded with a wink and nod, saying Obama's
the legitimate president or that he's a Christian "as far as I know,"
or in Senator James Imhof's words that the birthers "have a
point." They've refused to publically challenge a belief that fuels
so much grassroots Republican energy.

Denial of Global Climate change: Dino
Rossi, Washington State Senator Patty Murray's Republican challenger,
recently told the Seattle Times
that he couldn't take a stand on climate change because it's still being debated
between "scientists and pseudo scientists." Agreed. On the one
side you have the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the
British, German, and Norwegian academies of science, the Japanese, French,
Indian, Brazilian, Australian equivalents, and the major scientific
organizations of every nation in the world, not to mention such dangerously
radical groups as the
American Chemical Society, American Meteorological Society, and the American
Statistical Association, all of whom say that human-caused climate change
is a real and unprecedented danger that's rapidly getting worse. On
the side of the skeptics you have a handful of scientists funded by Exxon, the
coal companies, the Koch Brothers and other corporate sponsors who want to maintain
business as usual. They claim the jury's still out, and do this in a year
when a fifth of Pakistan was
flooded, when Russians fled Moscow because runaway
forest fires made the air impossible to breathe, and when much of the US suffered both
record temperature levels and extreme weather events like massive floods,
tornadoes and ice storms. But Rossi sided with the pseudo-scientists, as has practically
every
other Republican Senate candidate on an issue that should cross political lines.
Sharron Angle, Ken Buck, Roy Blunt, Marco Rubio, Linda McMahon, Pat Toomey,
Rand Paul, Ron Johnson, Carly Fiorina, Christine O'Donnell, Joe Miller
and Rossi-every one of them has questioned the reality of the crisis and
therefore the need to act. Even some who once took strong stands, like John
McCain, have muted their voices to appease their hard right base. While
European conservative parties lambast their more left opponents for not doing
enough, the Republicans remain in denial on the ultimate issue of our lifetime.

Denial of our economic crisis and of its roots: The Republicans
are certainly talking about the crisis. It benefits them politically. But
they're also denying the urgency of doing anything to assist those who
cannot find jobs no matter how hard they try, or to acknowledge the roots of
the crash in policies spearheaded by Bush and the Republicans. They focus
particularly on the bank bailouts while refusing to acknowledge that they were voted
in on Bush's watch with major Republican support. They also near
universally parroted the talking points of the banks in trying their best to
stop or gut the Financial Reform Bill that makes such bailouts less likely in
the future I'd call a refusal to rein in tax breaks for
corporations shipping jobs overseas a similar fundamental denial of the
relationship between actions and consequences. Granted, Clinton
era deregulation and treaties like NAFTA have helped erode America's
industrial base. But it's still a major denial of reality to pretend to support
Main Street
while doing the direct bidding of those whose sole interest is protecting their
right to make as much as they can off predatory speculation.

Denial of the threats to our democracy by the power of
unlimited wealth: You could say Republican stands on this are just a question
of opposing government regulation. But it takes some massive level of denial to
claim that it does no harm to the public good to allow corporations to buy and
sell politicians of either party like baseball trading cards. In an even
greater affront to reality, Republicans who've long claimed that transparency
solves the problems of opening up the floodgates to unlimited cash have fought
unanimously against the barest attempts to impose this accountability through the
DISCLOSE Act, a bill that would have at least required ads to list the names of
their prime corporate backers. As a result, groups like the US Chamber of
Commerce, Karl Rove's American Crossroads, the Koch-funded Americans for
Prosperity, and new front groups that spring up daily have been flooding the
airwaves with commercials paid for by corporate donors whose identity is
masked. These ads will elect Republican candidates, or so their backers hope. They
will also provide a subtle or not so subtle incentive for Democrats to avoid
challenging corporate interests. Yet not a single Republican was willing to vote
for the DISCLOSE Act, which remains one vote short of passage.

If there's an antidote to this denial and to the paid
lies that fuel it, it's citizen participation . If enough of us knock on
doors, make phone calls, talk to coworkers and neighbors, and otherwise reach out
beyond the core converted (or at least get sympathetic voters to the polls),
there's a chance that this denial of reality will backfire, and that the
Everett Dirksens of the Republican Party will regain the upper hand. If we're
silent, we allow reality itself to become hostage to delusion, and our country
and planet to pay the price.