ideology and ideologues

            One of the advantages of ignorance is you know so little you seldom get confused and decisions are easy to make.  One of the disadvantages of intelligence is that you know so much you often get confused and decisions are difficult to make.

            If all I know is that is that “it’s by God snowing in my front yard in March,” it’s easy to decide global warming is a hoax.  If I know about all the scientific studies that indicate wind patterns and temperature zones are changing at a far faster pace over the past 20 years than over the 200 years preceding that, it should be easy to decide that global warming is real—unless . . . I also know that the earth has warmed significantly, and cooled significantly, at least twice in the last 10,000 years, which could mean a warming is going to occur now no matter what we do.

            The sad fact is that the smarter you are, the harder it is to act with certainty; conversely, the less smart you are, the easier it is to be certain there’s only one way to go. As a result, the less smart are too often the ones who become the movers and shakers.  Unimpeded by consideration of consequences, or, too frequently, even consideration of all the facts, they can charge forward with an alacrity and a decisiveness that the more informed can’t match.

            A concept called ideology comes into play here, as do, of course, the ideologues who promulgate it.  The dictionary definition of ideology is “the ideas and manner of thinking characteristic of a group, social class, or individual.”  In practice, ideologies are almost always simplistic and dismissive.  They are simplistic in the sense that they seize upon a single fact, or a single moment in time, or even a single experience and use it as the prism through which everything must be viewed.  They are dismissive in the sense that anything that challenges their simplistic vision is denied, or, more commonly, just ignored.

            In themselves, ideologies are harmless.  When, however,  they are taken up by energetic individuals, they become forces to be reckoned with precisely because a simplistic vision offers easy answers to complex problems, which makes it very appealing to those who are unwilling or unable (or both) to think for themselves.  We call such energetic individuals ideologues, the dictionary definition of which is “an adherent of an ideology, especially one who is uncompromising and dogmatic.”

            Two concepts are alien to the ideologue: truth and logic. More specifically, the ideologue consistently chooses those truths that support his ideology and suborns logic to justify ignoring or denying the truths that don’t.  What’s remarkable about ideologues is the facility they exhibit for choosing whatever truth best suits their purpose of the moment.  As a too easy example, we can turn (as one almost always can) to Newt Gingrich.  On March 7, shortly after Gaddafi had begun using deadly force against demonstrators, Newt proposed his easy solution.  “Exercise a no fly-zone this evening.”

Two weeks later, on March 23, after President Obama had endorsed American participation in a no-fly zone, Newt said, “I would not have intervened.” 

            It should be noted that his original position was announced on Fox to what one could reasonably presume was an audience of hawks.  The March 23 flip-flop came on NBC, to what one could reasonably presume was a more moderate audience.  But that’s not the end of it.  On March 26, he insisted that we should “defeat Gaddafi as rapidly as possible,” and that to do so, we should use “all of Western air power as decisively as possible.”  Those remarks were in Iowa where, in a few months, the first Republican presidential caucus will take place.

            Since January 2009, the Republican party has reduced all political discussion to three ideological bases: government is bad, deficit is bad, and Obama is bad.  Since government is bad, taxes are bad, regulation of any sort is bad, and social welfare programs are bad.  There are a couple of exceptions.  The government shouldn’t be subsidizing Planned Parenthood or providing medical care for indigent women and children, but huge subsidies to Big Pharma, agribusiness and the whole defense industry are OK.  Again, that selective truth thing.

            The deficit is bad, so all sorts of spending should be cut.  Infrastructure projects should be postponed or simply scrapped, funding for education at all levels should be reduced or even eliminated, and for God’s sake, we must quit funding public radio.  What’s a conundrum for those who think of course is that while a deficit is the result of expenditures exceeding income, the taxes are bad plank of Republican ideology precludes narrowing that deficit by raising revenues.  Equally problematic for those who are not slaves to Republican ideology is that all the government programs (including education) that are on the cut list actually employ people.  Cutting those programs will increase unemployment (some estimates run as high as a million people losing jobs because of cuts).  More people out of work means fewer people paying taxes, meaning revenues go down, meaning deficits go up . . . you get the picture.

            Obama is bad so whatever he proposes must also be bad, even when he proposes things the Republicans had until then supported.  Health care, financial reform, Iraq, Afghanistan—and of course the Newtster’s gymnastics on Libya come to mind.

            The power of ideology has never been more apparent than in today’s Republican party.  Its ideologues were exultant when a moderate (relatively) Republican congressman, Bob Bennett of Colorado, was defeated in that state’s primary by a Tea Party candidate.  Grover Norquist swears that more than 75% of  Republicans in the U.S. Congress have signed a pledge NEVER to raise taxes.  Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin are being treated as legitimate presidential candidate possibilities.  Mitch McConnell is on record declaring that the party’s number one goal is to make Obama a “one-term president.”  Republican Senators were perfectly willing to cut off unemployment benefits for millions of American workers to insure that the marginal tax rate on the top 1% did not go up three points.  Republicans in both houses of Congress now appear ready to shut the entire federal government down if the draconian cuts passed by the House aren’t accepted.  They are also willing to force the government to default on its debts by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.  That of course will without question generate a world-wide economic collapse.

            They are working feverishly to insure that the big banks and Wall Street investment firms whose “make huge profits for me, the country be damned” practices nearly brought the world economy down have nearly total freedom to resume the same practices.  They are using the budget to insure that regulatory agencies from the SEC to the EPA don’t have the money to do their watchdog work.  They have already pronounced Obama’s recent proposal to close tax loopholes that allow corporations to avoid American taxes dead on arrival.

            Collectively, the Republican party has simply ignored the facts presented not just by America's best economists, but by the world’s best economists that draconian cuts in government spending now will  plunge not just this country but most of the world into an even deeper recession than we just muddled through.  The clear evidence from the recent cuts in Britain that “austerity programs” make things worse is likewise ignored.

            I could go on but it’s too depressing.  Here’s what’s more depressing however.   

Half the country, some polls suggest more than half, is simple-minded enough to buy without discussion the ideological pap the Republicans dispense.  It is as though we are a nation of beetles drawn to a dung pile. 

            Perhaps the most depressing thing is that it’s impossible to persuade an ideologue, or someone who has bought into an ideology, that they might be wrong.  Just as it makes no difference how many facts you give a teenage girl to prove that the boy she loves is a loser, you won’t persuade a plumber in Minnesota or a sales clerk in Ohio or  a construction worker in Alabama that Republican ideology is at base a war on each of them if they are willing to buy that ideology without thought or question.

            And it appears a lot of them are willing to make just that purchase.