The second piece of meta-context to always keep in mind when reading about U.S. politics is how deeply the contemporary right wing is embedded with the enemies of democracy, including its murderous dictators. It’s not just that CPAC is having its convention in Victor Orban’s Hungary. Nor is it just that Fox News is a more effective propaganda tool for Vladimir Putin than RT ever was. It’s also that the Republicans keep nominating candidates who are either personally, financially, or via their staffs playing for Putin’s team as well. It wasn’t just Trump and the people with whom he peopled the government.
The third and among the most important meta-media-related factors never to forget in contemporary political reporting is the mass addiction of contemporary conservatives to the practice of “bald-faced lying.” (I’m using the term in its philosophical senses.) This compulsion is evident even among many who profess distaste for Trump’s brand of dishonesty.
That’s the beauty of the bald-faced lie. The truth doesn’t matter. What matters are the politics and in this case, it’s a neat combination of racism and anti-feminism tied together by know-nothingism: a pretty good, albeit partial, description of the contemporary Republican Party.
Republicans know they cannot win without lying. And they know that most of the time, the media will “both sides” their lies to the point where citizens cannot discern what’s true and what’s not (to the degree that they are sufficiently engaged with old-fashioned politics even to care). And so Republicans resist all attempts to address the issue, no matter how vulnerable it leaves the rest of us to violent extremists, both from within and without. It’s actually amazing to me, as I write these words, the degree to which conservatives have become virtually carbon copies of the enemies that so excited them during the Cold War. I haven’t watched this crappy movie for a long time, but if it were being made honestly today, it would be called I Was a Republican … well, the FBI is not allowed to look into this kind of thing either.
We are really screwed.
https://prospect.org/politics/altercation-how-republicans-argue-they-lie/