That incredible claim was made yesterday by Robert F Kennedy Jr. during an interview with Bradblog.
80% of Republicans are just Democrats who don't know what's going on. And my anecdotal conclusion was confirmed by a survey done immediately after the 2004 election called the PIPA report (PDF), which tested Bush supporters and Kerry supporters based upon their knowledge of current events. For example, 75% of the Republican respondents believed that Saddam Hussein bombed the World Trade Center, and 72% believed that WMD had been found in Iraq. And most of them believed that the war in Iraq had strong support among Iraq's Muslim neighbors and our traditional allies in Europe, which of course is wrong. The Democrats as a whole had a much more accurate view of those events.
Yeah, I think we do. The question is, just what should and can we do about a little lost subconsciously Democratic brethen, trapped in the Red-State of Mind?
Ok, first we have to answer - just where is all this bad information coming from? (As if we don't already know...)
PIPA went back twice to these same people. The first time it went back to the people that had these misinterpretations, and asked them where they were getting their news, and invariably they said talk radio and FOX news.
Yes, as I've said before - Faux News and Right-Wing Radio ensures that the Republican Party is populated with Mushroom People who are kept in the dark and fed nothing but crap.
And the truth is, 23% Percent of the nation is probably beyond reaching according to research uncovered by John Dean.
Oh but if they could be reached, wouldn't that be something?
What if?
PIPA went back a third time, and made inquiries about their fundamental values, and it started with a string of hypotheticals: "What if there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? What if Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with bombing the World Trade Center? What if the U.S. Invasion of Iraq had little support among Iraq's Muslim neighbors and was largely opposed by Iraq's Muslim neighbors, and by our troops and allies in Europe? Should we have still gone in?"
Roughly 80% of Dem and 80% of Rep said the same thing, "We should not." And so the values were the same. It was the facts, the information, it was the access to information that was different.
I actually beg to differ with RFK on this. It's not just access to information, I believe their is also a choice involved. Plenty of information which shows that the above hypotheticals are in fact - THE TRUTH - yet, these people continue to support policies and actions which are in direct contradiction to the facts. Classic neo-conism, as Lt Col. Karen Kwaitkowski long ago pointed out - "Neo-cons have a collective contempt for fact."
But it goes even deeper than that - facts are their enemies, as is reality itself. As New York Times Reporter Ron Suskind wrote in 2004 concerning his experience with Bush Administration insiders.
In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend - but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency. The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "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."
This is the mentality - that reality is maleable. A plaything for the bold to shape and change. These people are in the business of the recreative design of our daily lives and world. The facts are merely obstacles to be dodged or bowled over.
This is why you see the long and relentless litany of lies and distortions coming from the Right and their allies in the media - which David Brock's Media Matters dutifully documents.
If Kennedy were correct the facts revealed daily by that site alone should be enough to significant shift the electoral balance. But of course, the neo-cons have a strategy in place to blunt this impact. It's called "Blame the Messenger".
Just look at this current front page item from MMatters.
Fox News host Bill O'Reilly renewed his false attacks on Media Matters, claiming that we, along with the Democracy Alliance, an organization of donors formed to support progressive groups, and other recipients of funding from Alliance donors, represent a "left-wing Mafia" dedicated to "nefarious purposes." O'Reilly leveled specific attacks at Media Matters -- making the blatantly false suggestion that we "give directions to" the homes of O'Reilly and others in order to "intimidate[] good people who may want to come into the public arena as politicians or commentators" and calling us "character assassins" and a "smear website" that "lie(s)."
Even the most disengaged person should realize that is a total fucking lie - and that the people giving out people's home addresses are on the radical right. Those are the tactics used by organizations such as "STOP THE ACLU", who have used them to terrorize a Jewish Family who had protested extremely aggressive Christian prostelyzation on public school grounds. These are the methods of Randall Terry and his neo-terrorist organization Operation Rescue or for that matter - Michelle Malkin These are not the tactics of Media Matters.
But the point is - the facts don't matter. What matters is what people believe, and in this case those on the Right are desperate to believe that they are in the right. Like many people with abusive personalities, they have to find a justification and rationalization for their actions. They have to have a rationale, even if it isn't completely rational. Denial rarely is.
If you do manage to tell these 80% of Republicans what the facts are about the Bush Administration, the State of the Country, about Iraq and the Middle east or about our rapidly deteriorating Voting Rights - they will choose not to believe you.
23% of them will flat out never come around. But the remaining group won't be easy to convince. These people are married to the Republican Party. If the August 6th PDB, Bush's lack of response to Katrina and the continuingly dreadful state of our Militaries armor and mental state weren't enough - pratically nothing will be.
No matter how loud we scream, they aren't listening.
They. Need. An. Intervention.
Someone they trust, a friend, close worker or family member needs to take them by the shoulders -- and give them a hard high Truth Injection. The same way you deal with an addict or the spouse in an abusive relationship who simply refuses to realize - that the political party they married themselves to is just no damn good. Time has come for America to stop being battered.
"Oh, George isn't all that bad, you just have to get to know him..." But that's a crock. We do know him, and it's all "Cut and Run" and "Party of Death" from here on out. Bushco isn't going to play nice, ever. And it's well past time we reached that moment of clarity, that moment where we finally realize that Daddy is an Asshole. He's a Hater. A Racist. A Homophobe. A Xenophobe. Big Daddy Bush doesn't give a shit about you, he just wants you to roll-over so he can ass-fuck some more tax-cuts for himself and his cronies out of you.
And all his friends are Dickheads too.
It's time to leave, pack your bags, take the kids, grab the car and get the fuck out.
This won't be easy. It will be painful. Wrenching. But it has to be done, person by person, one by one.
For the sake of the sake of the Nation, the World - all of us. And the time to start is now -- before the November elections are upon us and it's far too late to finally hold this Administration accountable for all the shit they've pulled.
If we don't cut this Unitary Executive crap off at the knees right now - there's no telling what future Presidents who aren't as "restrained" as George might do with the ability to spy on anyone without a warrant, arrest kidnap anyone anywhere in the world without an indictment, hold them indefinately without a trial and subject them to torture, regardless of what U.S. Law and the Geneva Conventions say.
Just imagine how much worse it could get - if you can.
Vyan
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