Several bloggers are now talking about how popular it has become to laugh at the errors of right wing politicians and to mock the intelligence of conservatives. Frank Furedi, www.spiked-online.com, complained about several studies and observations that stated that the less intelligent you are the more likely you are to be a conservative. Mr. Furedi said that the “manipulation of science to discredit political opponents … was strongly criticized by the intellectual community” when such tactics were used by Stalin and the Nazis. Now, he said, it is the “… self-styled intellectuals, especially the ones who refer to themselves as ‘liberal,’ who use such pseudo-scientific tactics to pathologise their opponents as a mentally and intellectually inferior political species.”
I think Mr. Furedi and many of the people who have made the observations he is complaining about are making the same error. It is not the traditional conservatives who exhibit the intellectual deficiencies observed; rather it is the reactionaries, wrongfully characterized as conservatives, who display those deficiencies. We correctly dismiss those reactionaries because their paranoia, gullibility, and ignorance make their political views ludicrous at best and dangerous at worst. They have the same mind set as the Birchers we laughed into irrelevancy way back when. I might add here that it is not the ignorance displayed by the likes of Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman, and Louis Gohmert that inspires our scornful laughter as much as it is the smug self-righteousness with which they display that ignorance as if it were a virtue. Their general attitude is “Up yours, Buster! I don’t need no stinkin’ facts; I got common sense!” The amazing thing is that there are so many people who seem to think you do not need to know anything if you have common sense. Anyone with any brains will tell you that common sense requires you to gather the facts you need to make informed decisions.
I still stand by my statement that the Republican Party is intellectually bankrupt. If you think I am being too harsh just take a look at what they are doing in North Carolina . The Republican dullards there actually buried an anti-choice provision into a bill prohibiting the establishment of Sharia law. What, did they think the pro-choice people would be laughing so hard over the absurdity of outlawing something already prohibited by the Constitution that they would not notice the anti-choice provision? This was piling stupidity on top of ignorance on top of paranoia. And North Carolina is not the only state in which the Republicans are showing such a blatant disregard for the knowledge and intelligence of the voters. But judging by the Republicans in Louisiana , under-estimating the intelligence of what has now become the GOP base would not be an easy thing to do. 29% of the Republicans polled there blame then Senator Obama for the poor response to Katrina and 44% of the Republicans polled there said they did not know who to blame. Do you really need to ask why I have no respect for the political opinions of the ignorant reactionaries and even less respect for the demagogues who so shamefully exploit such ignorance and paranoia?
Even though millions of people tune into the Fox disinformation factory and/or Rush, how low can you go, Limbo, those audiences only comprise a small percentage of the population. The problem is that it is the right wing media blowhards, such as Rush Limbaugh, who are defining the Republican Party and what it stands for. Because of this, Republican candidates are being pulled so far to the right that few of them can win a general election outside of the bible belt. The reason why the Republicans are now resorting to voter suppression is because even the people who do not pay attention to politics or government are finding the lies about the dangers of Sharia law and Obama care to be overblown and far too shop worn to have any appeal. In other words, the Republicans are running short of gullible idiots they can exploit.
