Jonathan Bernstein Calls It “Lazy Mendacity” on Republicans’ Part — but Isn’t the Refusal to Use Our Brains Characteristic of American Politics, Generally? — We Have De-Evolved into Reptile-Brained Emotional States

15 October 2012

Citation — to the Jonathan Bernstein essay that I am referring to

Jonathan Bernstein, Substance-free Republicans default to lazy mendacity, Salon (12 October 2012)

What Bernstein said

Salon columnist, Jonathan Bernstein, noticed the same thing I did about Congressman Paul Ryan’s performance, during the 2012 vice presidential debate:

The hallmark of Republican thinking these days, especially as expressed in Romney/Ryan rhetoric, is just the sheer laziness of it. That’s presumably a consequence of having developed an amazingly efficient partisan press.

There’s just very little incentive remaining to develop actual policies or even a real critique of Barack Obama’s administration. After all, if the president is a Kenyan socialist intent on destroying the United States, it’s hardly necessary to explain exactly where his policies are going wrong or why.

That often shows up in the way that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan dissemble. Every presidential campaign lies, but what distinguishes this crowd is a lazy mendacity in which there’s not even an attempt to make their falsehoods plausible . . . .

Why put together a critique of Barack Obama’s foreign policy when they can just refer to unspecified disasters and know that anyone watching Fox News will nod in agreement?

And thus we get Paul Ryan’s astonishingly substance-free line that “What we are witnessing, as we turn on our television screens these days, is the absolute unraveling of the Obama foreign policy.”

Mr. Bernstein went on to make his case with specific examples of the candidate(s)’ unwillingness to provide any evidence at all for their assertions of looming disaster.

He concluded by saying that Republicans’ inability to think will prove problematic:

The major problem, however, is that all of this lazy thinking leaves Republicans ill-equipped to govern – as seen in the problems encountered by the Gingrich Congress, the George W. Bush administration and now the Boehner/Ryan House.

“But Pete, isn’t Mr. Bernstein being just as partisan as the Republicans?”

Yes. But his point is well taken, provided that we make the reasonable assumption that “governance” requires our political leadership to:

recognize national problems

formulate solutions

persuade people to implement these fixes

and

effectively manage the implementation processes.

None of these elements can be successfully accomplished, without first relying on evidence-based thinking and action. Bernstein’s invocation of the governance failures of the Gingrich Congress, George W. Bush administration, and Boehner/Ryan House of Representatives is rationally defensible.

Now, let’s take Mr. Bernstein’s observation about “lazy mendacity” up to the cultural level

Nearly fifty percent of American voters appear to support the Republican ticket, despite the candidates’ unceasing untruths and substance-lacking evasions.

After the first presidential debate, roughly half the public saw Governor Mitt Romney as “commanding,” “presidential,” and “strong.”

I won’t disagree, except that I would have added the seemingly necessary qualification that the Governor (literally) lied and evaded almost 100 percent of the time that his lips were moving.

Since the American voting public appears not to have embraced this caveat, we can conclude that roughly half the public appears to think that a “commanding” con man (who has “presence”) should become president.

The other roughly half of the voting public appears to support President Obama, who already has proven himself to be at least a part-time con man

Even Democrats (in their honest moments) will agree that the President more nearly imitated and surpassed his predecessor in office, than he did in implementing his campaign’s “hope and change” message.

For example, President Obama conclusively demonstrated that he is even less cognizant of Americans’ constitutional rights and foreigners’ human rights that President G. W. Bush ever was. Witness the Administrations’ attempts to:

punish whistleblowers,

engage in warrantless cyber surveillances,

and

drone murder and cover up in the complete absence of due process.

Another example of deceit-filled stupidity — campaign ads in the swing states

I live in Colorado, a political swing state. We have been bombarded with television and print campaign ads for months.

With the election looming, I have noticed that the televised media has taken to clumping Republican and Democratic ads back to back. Viewers’ brains are repeatedly back-and-forth concussed by evidence-lacking political positions and their opposites. These are presented in an inescapable parade of lizard brained reality avoidance.

This unrelenting nonsense has become the metaphorical equivalent of drunken mud wrestling. Featuring near naked “babes” and grunting male beasts in an effusion of uncontrolled hormonality, witless lust, and animal rage.

Cosmic aliens watching the swing states would be convinced that humanity lacks cortical function.

So — how did we get to the point where Americans think that it is okay for the office of Commander in Chief to have become Dissembler in Chief?

Culturally, our reptilian brains seem to have supplanted our higher cortical ability to gather evidence and reason.

I am reminded of my dear and intelligent past Oklahoma neighbor’s conviction that President Obama was going to confiscate citizens’ guns, even after the Supreme Court decision making that virtually impossible.

Even after years of non-action on the President’s part, he remained convinced that the socialist, Kenyan, Muslim Commander in Chief was determined to lead a firearms’ lacking citizenry. As a result, my neighbor literally populated his home with newly acquired military style weapons.

I was never successful in persuading him that the President was too astute a political creature to even consider implementing a weapons prohibiting program. He would lose too many votes.

Multiply my friend by millions, and you have the political state of America. A place where:

false issues obliterate real ones,

priorities are inverted (according to any reasonable survival standard),

and

reason and evidence don’t exist.

The moral? — The institutionalized cynical evasion of rationality standards hurts the nation

Our political system’s cynical emphasis on brainwashing (via untruths and non-thinking) does nothing to slow our national decline.

It is difficult to solve real problems, when we refuse to see and attack them in a rational fashion.

PeteFree.com

Jonathan Bernstein Calls It “Lazy Mendacity” on Republicans’ Part — but Isn’t the Refusal to Use Our Brains Characteristic of American Politics, Generally? — We Have De-Evolved into Reptile-Brained Emotional States