The Conservative 'Reality', or Facts v. 'facts'

There is a real problem in the news and political discourse today. There is what Rachel Maddow calls a 'self contained conservative media universe'. It's no secret that have a deep brain-love for Rachel Maddow, and although I don't trust her implicitly, she is in my opinion the most reliable pundit anywhere on the air. Now I'm a huge fan of Anderson Cooper and some others, but as a pundit, even with the clear political perspective with which she presents new stories, no one is as faithful to checking facts, to correcting herself when she gets it wrong, and despite having a clear progressive opinion she gives as fair of an interview as anyone on the air anywhere.

So, when I listen to Real Time with Bill Maher and she is on the panel I get excited. When, however, the guest who was a Republican strategist and Washington Post columnist calls one of Ronald Reagan's economic advisors a lapsed Republican, that is disturbing and a problem. It goes a long way to show how comically irrational the politics of the party has gotten. What maybe even more disturbing, and a trend that may have been going on since politics began, is the use of completely different statistics and facts by opposing sides of the political discourse. While facts from the Huffington Post or Salon.com may be questionable because of the habit of those two news organizations for using propaganda. When Rachel uses facts, however, and they are clearly verifiable and from relatively non-partisan groups like the Congressional Budget Office, and then someone refutes those facts, denies them, calls them illegitimate, that is a problem. Using different statistics, citing different polls, that is one thing. Claiming completely different numbers as from the same source is a problem.

It is incredibly irresponsible and completely unacceptable for members of legitimate media outlets to use erroneous facts or making up facts of their own undermines the entire arena of discourse. We cannot have any kind of discussion which results in solutions, nothing constructive and only rhetorical clashing if there are no facts that are considered solid, and specifically when there are no sources above dispute when their facts support one side or another. With Rachel, at least, I have seen her support conservative positions and respecting facts that dispute positions some consider progressive positions. When sources are delegitimized just because they are sources cited by Rachel or other progressives, then there is no way to have dialog.

Something that deeply angers and frustrates me is that the 'false equivalency', when conservatives represent their lack of action against the dangerous elements of their political parties as equivalent to the lack of action among progressive or liberal political parties. The same things happen when we discuss campaign funding, saying there is just as much if not more money funneling into Democratic campaigns as there is funneling to Republicans. That is just not true. The facts are not true, and we can see it in ways that don't revolve around the party reporting figures, we can track the actual spending of the campaigns, we can also track the ad space in print, radio or on television airing conservative ads. Moreover they identify themselves as victims of attacks from the left, they claim that they are seeking collaborative efforts and bipartisan conversation, but when you watch where their positions are, they refuse to budge, refuse to compromise, and refuse to even have discussions unless their opponents compromise their position or agree to major concessions before discussion can begin. That is not compromise. We saw it with a number of aspects of the health care legislation, and even more obviously in the tax debate.

Do we have rhetoric on all sides, yes. Is the rhetoric as vitriolic on all sides, perhaps. Is there a side whose media representatives are clearly more interested in reporting on and representing true facts, empirical data, and true realities, yes, and it's not the side that sides with FOX News or Republicans.