I feel like there’s a general unmooring of what you can trust that’s made people crazy. The right has long been victim to this with their dismissal of nonpartisan media but that sort of nonsense seems to be spreading to the left as well, although as you seem to allude to the left has a long way to go before it reaches the level of reality denial that the right routinely engages in.
Trump has made that much worse in a number of ways. One is that he lies so frequently and so egregiously about even small things. Partisans feel the need to defend this behavior because he’s on their ‘team’ even if that means ludicrously denying plain facts.
Second is that he’s corrupted our governing institutions in similar ways so we can’t trust them anymore. I mean we have things where the sitting president is accusing his own agencies of what amounts to a coup, declaring that the BLS was fabricating employment data under Obama but the same numbers while Trump is president are real. I’m not so naive as to think the government doesn’t lie to us when incentives are right but the work of professional agencies like the BLS has always been above that. Now...not so much.
When you have this much uncertainty it makes a lot of room for the crazies, something I imagine we will all come to regret even more than we already do.
It's another factor to add to the mix, another instability to take into consideration. We not only have political and authoritarian variations, but various degrees of consistency and stability to take into account. We've always had our questionable members of society but now it's worse. Look at the responses to my posts in just this thread. One might disagree with some points but the retreat into "both sides" is a shield from critical inspection. The Right would cover its rear against examination for a very long time and has gotten worse. Now many on the opposite side have adopted the same attitude but not yet (for the most part) reached that degree, but in kind it is real and increasing. "I don't care about them, I want mine" sort of thing being an accepted Liberal position as long as one hates Trump?
Trump has become a litmus test in some ways. You have to hate him in all things, Republicans in all things and even lie about some things and then maybe you will not get jumped on. Maybe.
As an example there was a report that a Republican wanted to limit access to ERs and immediately it was Trump this and Republicans attack the poor yada yada yada.
Well, no, not in this case. The stereotypical response of "it's people who don't have insurance who use the ER" isn't as true as some would like. It turns out that overutilization is mostly by insured whites nationally. In spite of copays they show up for a scratch. Poor people will use the ER instead of immediate care if they have public assistance as well. It just is. BAM, You think I'd burned the flag on a football field.
The intent of the legislation was this. If someone could go elsewhere for a trivial complaint the people at the ER could refer them to an immediate care facility rather than take up resources in a place where those are scarce. If the ER was the only resort then yes. If people didn't have insurance then yes, or at least that's what I found.
"Republicans want to kill the poor" Yep that was said and I got downvoted to oblivion as If I could give a toss. The point is that people even before they examine a thing have already determined intent and effect in complete ignorance and one had better not confuse them with facts.
Naturally someone might have pointed to confirmed points showing I was wrong. If I was then that's how it is, no biggie. But no one did. No application of reasoning was to be seen.
I find that troubling as the disease of unreasoning hate spreads.
Facebook
Twitter