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Esquire's Charlie Pierce echo's The Gadfly's resigned frustration at the phenomenon of conservatives instinctively slamming the door shut on reality and facts when they don't conform to the misinformation bubble of existence which they have imprisoned themselves in:
This may be the saddest quote I have ever seen in a newspaper.
When advised of the details of her Blues' plan, Boonstra said the idea that it would be cheaper "can't be true." "I personally do not believe that," Boonstra said.
Even granting that the administration did a rotten job selling and/or explaining the Affordable Care Act -- Get Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick started on that sometime -- this quote is immeasurably tragic. It represents a kind of final victory for mean-spirited and uncharitable propaganda over reality, a triumph for misinformation, sabotage, and arrant bullshit in the service of a cruel ideology and faceless oligarchy. It is a measure of the failure of all of our institutions, which definitely includes my own, which allowed charlatans and frauds to hijack too much of the public debate.http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/cost-of-health-care-031114
The Gadfly talked about the delusional woman that Pierce is referring to here in an earlier post - the one who had to go out on the ACA exchange because her insurance carrier's plan was substandard. She ended up with an equal or even stronger plan, at a much cheaper yearly, out-of-pocket cost, and yet she refuses to believe it simply because Obama is Satan and ... FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEDOM!!!! or some such other cockamamie lunacy.
Pierce is asking the same question that the The Gadfly has been asking for years -- how do you have a rational, productive debate with people who just flat out and out reject facts and reality and have hitched a ride on the Crazy Train Express to paranoid schizophrenia? How does the country move forward when a lot of the people that Julie Boonstra, and those who think like her, elect to Congress - are just as equally unhinged as they are?
It's a conundrum in dire need of a solution.
----TFG
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