All Opinions Are Not Equally Relevant

The mainstream media has a tendency to talk about news sources as if they were just expressing opposing views of a given issue, even though it should be apparent by now that nothing of the sort is true. There are even those in the general population who acquiesce in some tortured sense of fairness to the notion that Sean Hannity on Fox is stating an opinion on the right just as Keith Olbermann on MSNBC does on the left.

The difference is, however, that on Fox opinion is propped up by opinion whereas on programs that maintain some sense of integrity opinion is informed by factual material. One may not agree with the conclusions or the political motivation but liberal substance trumps right-wing ideological interpretations every time, and anchors don’t sound as if they’re reading from prepared talking points designed to advance a particular partisan agenda

The conservative wing of the Republican Party is developing an unsettling brand of political activism that seems to be what the party as a whole has come to represent. Whether this trend is a harbinger of things to come will be determined in the coming months. But using the sorry state we are in to advocate for more of the same policies that brought down in the first place is a tactic unworthy of any political entity that wants to be taken seriously.

Still, a cadre of political provocateurs appear in print and on camera to repeat their tenacious rants. The Weekly Standard’s ubiquitous William Kristol reviews his past ill-conceived reasons for everything from invading Iraq to curing our economic woes as if they made sense. While he admits the Bush years were not perfect in terms of financial planning, his solution is to make a much greater commitment to familiar conservative views about lower taxes and free markets. And typically, perhaps because he  helps behind the scenes to formulate conservative policies, he articulates inaccurate bromides about “government managed” health, ACORN et al just to be sure Republican talking points he helps devise are hammered home once again.

Our economy must be governed by “marketplace solutions” Republicans in Congress say as if that were some brilliant new problem-solving  technique. But, really, how innovative is it to find ways to gamble with other people’s money? Is that the marketplace of ideas or just corporate influence run amok? Lately a great deal of attention has been newly attached to the philosophy of Ayn Rand who seemed to feel that the business community held a monopoly of brains and talent. In a review of a new book on Rand, Adam Kirsch writes: “Rand’s particular intellectual contribution, the thing that makes her so popular and so American, is the way she managed to mass market elitism - - to convince many people, especially young people, that they could be geniuses without being in any concrete way distinguished.” (NY Times Book Review, 11/1/09)

Indeed, that very concept is playing out among a confused, poorly-informed public. It is the culminating impulse that has been generated by a group of undistinguished candidates and propagandists who claim to be about saving America but who go about reaching their goals in the least patriotic, most perverse , manner - - Tuesday’s elections being perhaps the worst example of ideological overreach into the local election process this political season.

So anxious were the wannabe movers and shakers on the right to use Tuesday as a referendum on the Obama presidency they inserted themselves into elections in which they had no legitimate role to play. In the 23rd district in upstate New York Sarah Palin, Dick Armey and others supported the conservative, not Republican, candidate - - a man from outside the district who was uninformed about the region. When he was unable to answer questions from voters at a town meeting, Armey ridiculed critics of his performance as “parochial”, ignoring the long established tenet that “all politics is local” as election returns Tuesday night proved once again. Property taxes and personal financial concerns turned out to be the dominant factors driving voting patterns, and the 23rd sent a Democrat to the House for the first time in recent memory.

The fact is the right is turning what’s left of the Republican Party into a parochial organization that advocates against, more than for, anything. What, after all, does ‘taking back America’ really mean? Will the party reassert itself by denouncing gay marriage and the gay lifestyle, promoting so-called Christian values and pro-life positions and opposing social programs to help the poor and disadvantaged in the name of free markets?

Sometimes the loudest voices seem to represent many more supporters than they actually do, but fear and economic instability have often pushed voters into the arms of politicians whose policies didn’t serve them or their country well. Taking a ride on the wild side with the likes of a Michelle Bachman, buying into the media hype of a Hannity or Limbaugh or following the dictates of ideologues who keep pressing their narrow agendas only hinder the possibility of finding real solutions to the nation’s problems. No equivalence exists among points of view of any and every description. Some are just nuts.