The rage of the broflakes

From Forbes- the original Capitalist Tool- a Republican's summary of why the real world is so annoying:

It is easy to use delusions to obstruct and destroy. Building something is hard. Building something valuable means thinking about consequences and confronting weaknesses in an ideological framework. Building something invites consequences. Republicans cannot govern because Republicans lack any respect for facts. Tilting at windmills is much easier than constructing them.

This is not a new problem. Ever since the GOP began to absorb waves of southern conservatives fleeing the Democrats’ embrace of civil rights, the party’s hold on reality has been weakening. A white, religious base violently opposed to the faster, freer world of global capitalism has transformed the Republican Party into a bulwark against reality. They are determined to ensure that no government action of any kind will challenge the brittle, manufactured worldview on which their mental security depends.

In an interview with Ron Suskind in 2002, Karl Rove mocked the impotence of the “reality-based community, describing the basis of this new governing ethic:

Rove derided those who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality. That’s not the way the world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

When ideology rules all, acknowledging dissonant facts is treason. Reality, in that way of thinking, is a mere construct owned by history’s winners. This brand of cult reasoning explains why Republicans despise journalism, deride universities, and disregard the advice of scientists. Within the walls of the GOP cult, those who concern themselves with accuracy, who allow themselves to be constrained by empirical measures, are seen as history’s losers. They are destined to be forgotten, obscured in the shadow of The Great Men.