When Rick Perry falsely claimed that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 created “zero jobs,” the response of enlightened commentators was to point to easily accessible evidence to disprove Perry's claim. Liberal media perform similar rebuttals to patently false Republican and Fox News assertions. These rebuttals expect three things – that objective evidence will change fixed minds, that objective evidence will make public officials accountable and that objective evidence will inform public discourse. But evidence does not matter to Fox News or other fundamentalist fear promoters. They are engaged in a sophisticated strategy to package their controllers' and contributors' policy interests in claims that are immune to evidence.
This cynical fundamentalist strategy is employed with full knowledge that claims like government is bad, regulation is evil, climate change is a myth and the story of creation is scientifically true are evidence free. The strategic fundamentalists are fully aware of American evidence-based traditions. They know that Americans expect judges and juries to reach just verdicts based on admissible evidence, not pre-emptive and categorical doctrines. They know we expect our scientists to test theories by empirical evidence and objective experimentation, not by scripture. They know we expect our journalists to report corroborated facts, not political spin. They know we require academic research to comply with standards of scrupulous scholarship, not with the agenda of think-tank funders. They know American legislation must be based on investigated social need, not on fundamentalist ideology. Yet, these cynical fundamentalists defile American evidence-based traditions.
In “Federalist No. 10,” James Madison, the principal architect of the Constitution, expected American legislators to be enlightened statesmen who “will be able to adjust … clashing interests and render them all subservient to the public good.” Madison wrote that the regulation of conflicting policy interests is “the principal task of modern legislation,” and a republic form of government in which a small number of citizens are elected by the rest is more likely to produce a body of legislators “whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country.”
US high school civics classes teach the ethics of legislative statesmanship implicit in Madison's expectations for elected representatives. Students learn that, in the houses of Congress, policy interests collide and elected representatives resolve those policy conflicts through negotiation. And, as with all negotiation opponents, policy opponents are faced with the choice to compromise or not to compromise. The ethics of legislative statesmanship require representatives to forward think the beneficial and harmful consequences of their alternate choices. Legislators must ask: What are the immediate and remote impacts for the society as a whole of the policy in dispute? What harms will occur if a compromise is not reached? What tradeoffs are necessary to reach a compromise? Will a specific compromise do less harm or more good than not compromising?
Today's cynical fundamentalist strategy has made principled negotiation, forward-thinking consequences and rational compromise irrelevant to legislative governance. Their “true believer” position kills constructive debate and compromise. Their policy positions are based on evidence-free ideology. Their tactics in negotiation and debate are either to repeat fundamentalist mantras or to just say, “No.” The only thing that matters to strategic fundamentalists is their number of votes. Their conduct corrupts our evidence-based deliberative democracy.
The strategic fundamentalists are rarely exposed as policy grifters in the service of their controllers and contributors like the Koch brothers, Grover Norquist, and others. Rather, their risk of exposure is limited to easily forgotten sound bites that do not reveal their desire to transform the American republic into a factional dictatorship.
The first line of defense against the strategic fundamentalists and the coming tsunami of corporate money supporting them is to recognize their cynical work in all media. You will know them by their evidence-free hustles.
The second line of defense is to purge them from our system of constitutional governance. All responsible citizens need to vote in the 2012 election. All responsible citizens must vote to restore our evidence-based traditions.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy