Most weekends, I watch Up With Chris Hayes on MSNBC early on both Saturdays and Sundays. On a recent show, one of the topics discussed was "the Conservative Bubble" which lead me to post this blog. The guests included Republicans Josh Barro of Bloomberg.com, Linda Bair, former Chairwoman, FDIC, and Joe Weisenthal of Businessinsider.com. Host Chris Hayes lead the group in a lively discussion, starting with the recent conservative chatter railing against the polls which report Gov.Mitt Romney trailing President Obama. During the course of the conversation, several "alternative realities" embraced by many Republicans challenged my personal sensibilities.
Chris presented an interesting concept called "epistemic closure" from blogger and commentator Julian Sanchez explain how Republicans dismiss information that comes from the liberal media that conflicts with their reality. The term "epistemic closure" has been used in US political debate to refer to the claim that the belief systems of political conservatives are closed systems of deduction, which cannot be affected by empirical evidence.
"One of the more striking features of the contemporary conservative movement is the extent to which it has been moving toward epistemic closure. Reality is defined by a multimedia array of interconnected and cross promoting conservative blogs, radio programs, magazines, and of course, Fox News. Whatever conflicts with that reality can be dismissed out of hand because it comes from the liberal media, and is therefore ipso facto not to be trusted. (How do you know they’re liberal? Well, they disagree with the conservative media!) This epistemic closure can be a source of solidarity and energy, but it also renders the conservative media ecosystem fragile."
Here are some of the amazing statistics on conservative beliefs:
- 52% of Republicans believe ACORN stole the election for Obama. Only 27% of Republicans believe President Obama actually won the race. (That would mean that ACORN stuffed ballots with 9.5 million votes, Obama's national margin).
- One in six Americans believe Obama is a Muslim, including 24% of white evangelical Protestants, 18% of Republicans, and 11% of all Americans. The President is a Christian.
- 64% of Republicans believe that President Obama was born in another country he was not. He was born in Hawaii, the 50th state.
- 63% of Republican respondents in a recent Dartmouth poll still believe that Iraq had WMD when the U. S. invaded in 2003, along with 27% of Independents and 15% of Democrats. WMDs were never found in Iraq.
- 70% of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11 terrorist attacks, even though he was not involved.
0 comments:
Post a Comment