The republicans are lost in their own world

[Denis 11]

https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/policy-and-politics/2017/11/2/16588964/america-epistemic-crisis
Mueller could have all the facts proving Trump criminally
unredeemable they won't care!

[ffr]

1. So? We know they're a lost cause. That shouldn't prevent justice from prevailing.

Lots of conservative anti-American republicans still believe Nixon was innocent and shouldn't have resigned. They still look at him as a victim. Doesn't change the fact that he was a crook.

[Denis 11]

12. They have to cooperate with the process.

The Dems don't have enough power to bring Trump to justice without enough republicans in Congress helping us.
Their constituents won't be easily swayed, by what I have seen of the Trumpists.

[ffr]

13. When the economy tanks, some will break off.

The hardcore ones though, like you say, they'll go down with the tRump ship.

[guillaumeb]

2. The GOP creates its own reality and facts.

It has been this way at least since Reagan.

[msongs]

3. they control congress the courts and the white house. sounds pretty good...for them nt

[Garrett78]

4. Everyone should read the article from the OP. Everyone.

The topic of that article is *the* crisis of our time, and something that has becoming increasingly worrisome (and why I think it's crucial that media literacy classes be taught in every school).

Climate change, institutional racism and sexism, the Mueller investigation...none of that can be properly addressed if we don't address the epistemic crisis.

[maxsolomon]

5. a RW troll on a different forum brought the "Antifa NAMBLA" BS up yesterday!

of course, I'd never heard of it, and it smelled like an Agent Provocateur, so I challenged him to link or explain.

he ducked, of course. "they won't let me link youtube". and a search revealed only RWNJ cesspool sources.

[Saboburns]

6. Yes Exactly.

This article is the on point. In my own small way I try to discuss this matter here but threads like this one sink like a stone.

It's why I am convinced, convinced, that in the next decade something truly frightening and terrible will happen here. Something Monstrous. Led by the angriest, loudest and most hateful elements the right wing contains.

I wish I saw it differently, but no, it will get much much worse before it gets better.

[Garrett78]

10. As I wrote above...

...this epistemic crisis is *the* crisis of our time. Everything else hinges on it.

[Va Lefty]

7. Nightmare scenario but I fear this is where we are

"What if there is no longer any evidently standard that could overcome the influence of right-wing media?"

"As long as conservatives can do something — steal an election, gerrymander crazy districts to maximize GOP advantage, use the filibuster as a routine tool of opposition, launch congressional investigations as political attacks, hold the debt ceiling hostage, repress voting among minorities, withhold a confirmation vote on a Supreme Court nominee, defend a known fraud and sexual predator who has likely colluded with a foreign government to gain the presidency — they will do it, knowing they’ll be backed by a relentlessly on-message media apparatus."

"...it’s just very difficult to imagine anything that could bridge the epistemic gulf between America’s tribes. We are split in two, living in different worlds, with different stories and facts shaping our lives. We no longer learn or know things together, as a country, so we can no longer act together, as a country."

[Initech]

8. That's what happens when you only attract the most uninformed of us for 40 years.

[maxsolomon]

9. they needed a majority

power justifies itself

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. Explanation of the OP: Republicans listen to far right fantasy, and ignore facts

(because it's really not clear from the OP what this is about). Here's an excerpt - they always help:

The US is experiencing a deep epistemic breach, a split not just in what we value or want, but in who we trust, how we come to know things, and what we believe we know — what we believe exists, is true, has happened and is happening.

The primary source of this breach, to make a long story short, is the US conservative movement’s rejection of the mainstream institutions devoted to gathering and disseminating knowledge (journalism, science, the academy) — the ones society has appointed as referees in matters of factual dispute.
...
But the right did not want better neutral arbiters. The institutions it built scarcely made any pretense of transcending faction; they are of and for the right. There is nominal separation of conservative media from conservative politicians, think tanks, and lobbyists, but in practice, they are all part of the conservative movement. They are prosecuting its interests; that is the ur-goal.
...
There’s always been a conspiratorial and xenophobic fringe on the right, but it was (fitfully) held in place by gatekeepers through the early decades of America’s post-war prosperity. The explosion of right-wing media in the 1990s and 2000s swept those gatekeepers away, giving the loudest voice, the most exposure, and the most power to the most extreme elements on the right. The right-wing media ecosystem became a bubble from which fewer and fewer inhabitants ever ventured.

His point being that Republicans in Congress may just say "we don't believe Mueller" and ignore any evidence he turns up. Rather like they ignore all evidence about climate change.

For America to fix this, the Republicans have to be voted out of office. So either the center-right must be persuaded to reject the far-right lunatics like Trump, or non-voters must be persuaded to turn out in large numbers for Democrats. If those things happen, some Republican politicians may be convinced there is mileage in being an 'evidence-based Republican'. But I don't think they'll change their minds until they lose in a big way.

How to persuade those voters? Aye, there's the rub. Anyone who knows a significant number of people in either category, please give suggestions.

[Denis 11]

14. Thanks Muriel.

I was hurrying to go to work when I posted. The article from vox intrigued me enough to link it here.

[JHB]

15. People who so quickly rail about things rammed down their throats...

...but swallow aaaaaaaaaanything as long as it despises the people they like to despise.