Modern Conservatism in a nutshell in the form of 36 tweets

Over at Grist (grist.org), David Roberts explains postmodern conservatism in 36 tweets. The most important to me are:

<snip>
4. It’s like pointing to an apple and saying, "this is an orange." It takes practice to train your mind to be able to do it.
(easy to to do when you willingly want to escape or deny reality and wrap yourself in an echo chamber cocoon.)

5. You have to convince yourself, not so much that an apple is an orange, but that there is no such thing as what the object "really" is.
(once you escape to your alter reality that is not hard to do)

6. Or rather, that on the question of what the object is, there are *only* competing answers — no objective fact of the matter.
(conservatives excel at this)

7. As you get used to thinking this way, you get more bold, moving from highly contestable interpretations to flat matters of fact.
</snip>

<snip>
9. The key is just to brazen it out, to be unaffected by social disapprobation or scolding.

10. The right has realized that if you just brazen it out, there’s no authority that can "settle the argument." No ref to make the call.

11. In this way every dispute, even over matters of fact, becomes a contest of power — loudest, best funded, most persistent voices win.
</snip>

These tweets capture clearly and succinctly current conservative thought. Especially among the ignorant rank & file and propagandist pundit and think tank class.

Read the rest: http://grist.org/politics/david-roberts-explains-postmodern-conservatism-in-36-tweets/