Our Factually Deprived Society

You can’t be too careful about your information gathering. Wading through conflicting details to arrive at a fact-based rationale for one’s opinions can be a chore.  But without reliable input one is hard pressed to make informed judgments. As computer techies put it, “garbage in, garbage out.” Unfortunately, in today’s heated atmosphere, the facts about health care, the stimulus package, bailouts or national security don’t always seem to matter.  Opposition forces create their own version of the truth and assail anything that doesn’t meet their ideological specifications.

In support of fact-starved partisan agendas conservatives like Pat Buchanan and Erick Erickson, of Redstate.com, explode into loud guffaws during discussions , as if laughter could neutralize the relevance of a question or view - - a response that epitomizes the weak formulations articulated by ideologues with a mike. Buchanan announced on Saturday that his side was ‘winning the war’ with respect to health-care reform, as if that were a worthwhile goal, when the dip in the president’s ratings on the subject represents a triumph of an insensate minority that fails to grasp fault lines in the current system - - a rush not of informed opinion but of non-ideas animated by inchoate anger.

As a guest on Washington Journal, 8/14/09, Mr. Erickson laughed his way past negative comments from callers and stuck to the partisan line that Republican reform should hew more closely to conservative principles. He observed that the vituperative Michelle Malkin’s blog is widely read and said President Bush would have been better off if he been more supportive of Vice President Cheney’s vision. There is hardly a groundswell of support for Cheney despite the efforts of party stalwarts and ubiquitous daughter Liz to burnish his reputation, so it’s curious that Erickson would choose to lionize him.

Typically enough, Cheney chose to have TVs in his hotel rooms tuned to the Fox News Channel. That many of the nation’s leaders find Fox the source for news and views is either a case of flawed judgment or simply a willingness to let partisanship guide the ship of state. It can’t have been accidental that, when the scandals involving Senator Larry Craig and Governor Sanford broke, Fox labeled their party affiliation with a D. And in illustrating a news story Fox put up a map that showed Egypt nestled between Saudi Arabia, Iran, Jordan and Syria, right where one might have expected to find Iraq. Oh well, ‘they report, viewers must try to separate fact from fiction’.

It can be a thankless task trying to refute lies and deliberate obfuscation. Truth and logic have devolved into a tortured mindset that saves folks the trouble of reading or seeking out balanced media sources. Partisan hacks rise time and again - - a speaker at the conference of “Americans for Prosperity” for example and former GOP chairman Ed Gillespie on ABC’s This Week - -  to accuse Pelosi and Hoyer of saying protesters at town halls were “un-American” when they were, rather, objecting to protests that ‘drown out’ opposing views. The original remarks of the two Democrats are ignored by partisans for whom reality is turned on its head to suit the political needs of the moment.

There is no shame on the part of such dissemblers and no end to the information-light audiences they attract. As the president pointed out, suggestions by those who have turned end-of-life conversations with doctors, and family into “death panels” were “simply dishonest.” He found it particularly disturbing that members of Congress, who absolutely know better, feed the beast of deception in their quest for adulation from constituents, especially since some of them supported similar provisions in the past.

Republicans insist on waging a battle for smaller government and deficit reduction in the midst of a recession as if this were just another left-right turf war. Their cries of ‘where are the jobs’ serve no purpose other than to stir the national pot of discontent without offering alternatives, suggesting the economy would recover by itself if only government spending were reduced, leaving everything else pretty much the way it is and with the huge profit-making engine servicing our health-care system still firmly in place.

It may be worth taking some time to study reports that France and Germany appear to be pulling out of their recessionary spiral and to consider whether the security both countries provide with national health-care plans could be a contributing factor in re-establishing economic equilibrium - - absent fears of the medical-expense bankruptcies people in this country experience.