The Sisyphean Art of Communing With Denialists . . . .

The Gadfly is sincere when he states that he is completely flummoxed as to what the solution is to having a rational dialogue with people who simply and intractably refuse to acknowledge reality and facts.

For example:

A national poll conducted for Bloomberg News in September shows that Tea Party Republicans are, across the board, more conservative than their fellow party members, more likely to be male, less financially secure, more pessimistic about the direction of the country and more antagonistic to President Barack Obama. The results illustrate why the schism, which has become so evident in the recent battles in Washington, between the Republican establishment and the Tea Party will be difficult to reconcile.

On the economy, less than a quarter of non-Tea-Party Republicans expect job growth to worsen over the next year, while 55 percent of Tea Partiers expect job growth to slow. While a bare majority of other Republicans see America's economic standing in the world worsening, 79 percent of Tea Party types do.

Two-thirds of regular Republicans believe the federal budget deficit has grown this year and 93 percent of Tea Party Republicans agree. Both are wrong; the budget deficit is projected to fall this year from $1.1 trillion to $642 billion.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-18/the-tea-party-by-the-numbers.html


Let's repeat that underlined part from the Bloomberg article above again:

the budget deficit is projected to fall this year from $1.1 trillion to $642 billion

The deficit has been falling for nearly a year and a half now.  If the Tea Partiers were to accept that fact and acknowledge the reality of it, then what is left for them to bitch about? The Affordble Care Act (ACA)? The CBO, a federal, non-partisan agency tasked with analyzing legislation and providing economic data to Congress, was created by Republican Richard Nixon in 1974.  The CBO has been providing apolitical economic projections to Congress, regardless of which party is in control, for nearly 40 years - and they have been pretty damn accurate over time.  The CBO is projecting that over the next decade, if the ACA is implemented as the law is written, not only will it provide basic health care coverage to 33 million Americans who currently have no coverage at all, it will also realize for the taxpayers, a cut in the deficit of more than $200 billion over that same decade.

So here we are - the deficit at present time is falling steadily.  The ACA healthcare law is projected to reduce the deficit another $200 billion.  At the sake of sounding repetitious -- If the Tea Partiers were to accept those facts and acknowledge the reality of them, then what is left for them to bitch about?





The Gadfly will tell you what their biggest grievance is . . . . .

This:

And The Gadfly does not feel he is exaggerating one iota when he states that he believes The Teahadists just might have a less antagonistic and vitriolic mindset if the fellow in the picture above looked like this instead:

Tell The Gadfly he is wrong.  Prove The Gadfly wrong.  Please do so!  That is not a boastful challenge.  It is a simple acknowledgement of reality based on easily provable facts.  And The Gadfly will tell you dear readers -- he passionately and genuinely wishes he were erroneous on this issue.  But when you look at the cold, hard facts and you analyze the Tea Partier's own words and actions, there is no other conclusion that can be arrived at.

And that is why The Gadfly berates the Teahadists so mercilessly -- because their discourse miserably fails the test of reality-based efficacy, and is inexorably infused with a dark strain of ugly and mean-spirited bigotry that is un-American --- and this irrational hatred needs to be confronted and marginalized to the point that their movement is impotent and powerless to inflict further damage on the great American experiment -- and that is what it is all about in The Gadfly's humble fucking opinion.


----TFG