May 2, 2010 8:12 AM

File this under "It wouldn't hurt if it wasn't true"

(For this one, I humbly bow in the general direction of Brian Kane, for I have shamelessly and wantonly appropriated the idea for this post from him. I can only pray that I’ve done it justice…and that he will soon forgive me….)

Chimpanzees are the closest living relatives to humans in the animal kingdom, so much so that legal scholar Steven M. Wise wrote a book a decade ago arguing that chimps and other primates deserved to be granted legal rights. Now, a new study about to be published in the journal Animal Behavior looks at how chimpanzees understand and prefer systems that promote a sense of fair play, which this post at Science Blogs by Eric Michael Johnson argues clearly demonstrates not only the advanced level of intelligence in chimps, but also their unambiguous moral superiority to the people who let America’s economy go down the toilet in favor of bullshit financial shenanigans.

I can understand that there are people out there who don’t think as I do, and who happen to believe that my beliefs qualify me as something akin to the spawn of Satan. If you’re one of those folks…well, knock yourself out. This is still (nominally, at least) a free country, and I will defend your right to hold and voice your opinions…however offensive and brain-dead I might find them. All I ask is that you grant me the same courtesy. Oh, and while you’re at it, you might try trafficking in truth, reality, and fact. Wanting something to be a certain doesn’t mean that’s what’s actually going on. I once heard a very wise man state that, while you’re entitled to your own opinions, you’re not entitled to your own facts. You can’t cherry-pick or invent “facts” to buttress your argument. Reasoned, rational debate depends on both sides of an argument dealing in the real world with things as the actually are.

Rule #1: you cannot make up facts; facts simply ARE. Rule #2: when in doubt, PLEASE refer to Rule #1.

I say this because not a day goes by in which I’m not left speechless by a Republican (or someone even farther to the Right) firing from the lip. It’s not so much that they’re getting facts wrong, it’s that they’re making stuff up as they go and swaddling their fantasy with so much faux outrage that low-information (this sounds better than “stupid”) voters accept it as Gospel. Facts (and fact-checking) be damned, if Sarah Palin says the health care bill includes a provision for “death panels” that will make life-and-death decisions regarding Grandma…well, it’s gotta be true, right?? Caribou Barbie wouldn’t lead us astray…would she??

I don’t mind being proven wrong (Lord knows that’s happened a time or six). Every now and again, I manage to learn something from people who think differently than I do. What I can’t stomach is people who knowingly and willingly spout half-truth, talking points, propaganda, and outright lies as if they’ve issued directly from the lips of the Almightly. Republicans in Congress and the media (you know who I’m talking about) make stuff up as they go along, each accusation and assertion more outrageous than the last, and I’m constantly astonished at the lack of integrity. It’s as if lies and propaganda are merely costs of doing business. Then again, when your business is political power, and you’re a Republican and in the minority, you know that integrity and intellectual honesty are for losers and Liberals.

If you think about it, all I’m asking for is some honesty here. If you happen to inhabit the Right side of the political spectrum, and you want to express yourself…well, go for it. Dissent is the mother’s milk of democracy, after all, no? Would it be too much to ask that you focus on facts, truth, reality, and things that actually ARE and can be demonstrated to be true? Would it be so difficult to actually support your arguments instead of propping them up with rage, anger, and things you make up as you go along? Wouldn’t it be refreshing to know that someone on the Right actually made an argument that wasn’t built on the soft sand of propaganda, half-truths, and Frank Luntz’ talking points?

Memo to Republicans: Lee Atwater is dead, y’all…and Niccolo Machiavelli is a lousy role model for lousy politics.

I realize that for Republicans “truth” may be a fungible concept. Nonetheless, when you live in a world where a scientist can make a convincing argument that chimps are morally superior to Republicans, shouldn’t that be taken as an indication that something is terribly out of whack?

Once upon a time, there were those who could reasonably and accurately be described as “Reasonable Republicans”. They understood that politics isn’t a zero-sum game, they recognized that (in the words of the late Tip O’Neill) “politics is the art of the possible”, and that bipartisan cooperation and compromise weren’t code words for “of the Devil”. Now Republicans reflexively oppose everything Democrats propose, they eat their young, and they burn heretics at the stake (figuratively, of course). These days, “Reasonable Republican” is the ultimate in oxymoron…and the country as a whole is poorer for it. Instead of working to move America forward, Republicans have dug in their heels in a “my way or no way” obstructionist redoubt. With each passing day, they prove Eric Michael Johnson’s theory that chimps are morally superior to Republicans. Despite what you make think, I take no pleasure in that reality, because all Americans are poorer for that. The truly sad thing is that it doesn’t have to be this way.

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on May 2, 2010 8:12 AM.

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