Blogger Digby ponders the dynamic behind the right winger's instinctive ability to just simply shut down their brains like a computer's power switch when confronted with irrefutable proof of their political leader's lies.
There are tons of people doing fact checks on Paul Ryan's unprecedented mendacity in a convention acceptance speech so I'm not going to bother. The Romney campaign has clearly decided that this is a base turnout election and the way to win is to throw red meat at their followers, regardless of the truth. They have their own media, after all, so it doesn't really matter if the other half of the country is screaming about their lies. Their voters won't hear it, and even if they do they won't believe it.
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/creating-their-own-reality-were-still.html
One entirely feasible possibility for this phenomenon, as Digby notes, is just plain old tribalism. One side, when confronted with a truth that doesn't fit their black & white narrative of the world, willfully retreats in to their safe ideological bubble and stares out of it blank-eyed at the faces of those outside the bubble pleading to reason with them. Only they are not hearing anything, because their bubble is vacuum sealed and no outside sound can penetrate it.
Former George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove once told writer Ron Suskind that people in the media, and anyone else who dared to disagree in any way with Bush's decisions and policies, were people who lived "in what we call the reality-based community." Darth Rove went on to explain, "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
And this is exactly what the modern day conservatives, spearheaded by the dizzying ignorance of the teabagger/birther crowd, have done. They have created their own fantastical, adolescent, paranoid, and warped view of the entire world and by God they just know that anyone who disagrees with them is a commie, pinko, socialist, Muslim loving, gun confiscating, America hating, evil liberal tool of Satan himself.
It is simultaneously tragic and fascinating to watch it unfold all at once. Unfortunately, the tragic aspect of it will end up adversely affecting not just the delusional wingnuts themselves, but everyone else on the planet as well via the ripple effect. And when it gets to that juncture folks, there is no uncomplicated and safe retreat to sanity and reality.
----TFG
**UPDATE**
The Rude Pundit sees what I see re: the inability of right wingers to experience the unfettered beauty of reality and accept it for what it is (reality), and sums it up only as the Rude One is capable of doing:
Imagine you have a friend who a few years back heard that if you feed poodles money they will shit out gold bricks. So your friend starts feeding his hard-earned cash to all the pampered poodles he can find, and they gobble those bills down. But, surprise, surprise, despite what he heard, the dogs end up shitting shit. Still, he clings to this bizarre, completely disproven idea: poodles shit gold. Now, after some time, he's low on cash. You tell your friend to stop putting out plates of money for the goddamned poodles. No, your friend says. Instead, he must cut back on other things, like doctor visits and food and more, just so he'll have the spare money to give the fucking dogs. "One day, these little bitches are gonna pay off," he tells you, sounding completely crazy, "and I'll be on easy street." But until then, he's just got hands that stink like dog shit. And there's your lesson in Republican economics.
KA-CHING!
----TFG
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