- Conservatives react to the incidents this past week in New Orleans and Las Vegas by blaming their favorite bogeymen. Immigrants! Diversity initiatives! Without evidence, or rationale.
- As conservatives reject reality, reality-based scientists are rejecting the coming conservative administration, by moving overseas.
All right, let’s see what the conservative loonies are up to this week. Conservatives just can’t help themselves. Whatever happens in the world — this past week, an ISIS-inspired truck driver in New Orleans, and a Cybertruck driver in Las Vegas — they’re sure their favorite bogeymen are to blame. (Without evidence.) Immigrants! Diversity initiatives! These people are motivated by mindless fear.
Salon, Amanda Marcotte, 3 Jan 2025: New year, same Trump: MAGA pounces on New Orleans tragedy to spread disinformation, subtitled “The president-elect’s barrage of lies encourages his followers to reject reality even harder”
In the hours after a mass murderer killed 10 people in New Orleans with a combination car and gun attack only hours into the new year, there was much that was unknown about the killer, his motive(s) or potential co-conspirators. However, one thing was as certain as the sun rising in the east: Donald Trump would take to Truth Social to lie about it, pumping as much disinformation as possible into the discourse before the facts had a chance to percolate. Wednesday morning, at least an hour before the name of the suspect was even publicly released, Trump sure enough was lying about it on his social media website.
“When I said that the criminals coming in are far worse than the criminals we have in our country, that statement was constantly refuted by Democrats and the Fake News Media, but it turned out to be true,” he ranted. It did not turn out to be true.
Later in the piece is this:
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., a self-described devoted Christian, ran toward the cameras to violate the biblical commandment forbidding false testimony.
These crimes had nothing to do with immigrants or open borders; both perpetrators were US citizens, and the cybertruck guy was an Army vet who “loved Trump.” But conservatives seem intent on living in a fantasy world in which bad people are out to get them.
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Or wait, let’s blame diversity! Diversity must be to blame because the attacker wasn’t white! (Their racism is so transparently obvious.)
AlterNet, Alex Henderson, 3 Jan 2025: Top GOP rep stumbles when asked for proof ‘diversity’ is to blame for NOLA terror attack
But when [New Orleans talk radio station WWL host Tommy] Tucker asked the Louisiana Republican [Steve Scalise] if he had “any proof that diversity, equity, and inclusion contributed to missing” the attacker or if he was “just speculating,” he didn’t cite any actual evidence to back up his claim.
They never do.
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And this, of course.
Media Matters, 3 Jan 2025: Fox News keeps linking the New Orleans truck attack to border security despite no apparent link, subtitled “The network featured future Trump officials who emphasized border security, even when they noted the suspect was American”
With a long list of examples, with links to sources backing them up. One example:
- Fox News initially reported during the 10 a.m. hour that “anonymous sources” claimed that the truck used in the attack had crossed the southern border at Eagle Pass, Texas, two days prior to the attack. Shortly after, Fox senior national correspondent Aishah Hasnie walked back the claim, posting at 11:55 a.m. ET that the truck “crossed Eagle Pass, TX on November 16th — not two days ago. The identification of driver that crossed border does not appear to be the shooter.” A Fox News article also quietly removed any mention of the border in an article which originally reported that the truck used “was tracked crossing the southern border into the U.S. at Eagle Pass, Texas, in November.” [CNN, 1/2/25; Twitter/X, 1/1/25; Fox News, 1/1/25, archived 1/1/25]
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As conservatives reject reality, reality-based scientists are rejecting the coming conservative administration.
Salon, Matthew Rozsa, 3 Jan 2025: Scientists debate fleeing America because of Trump — or risk their research being censored, subtitled “‘They use fear to silence us’: Two scientists express different strategies for surviving an anti-science agenda”
About Dr. Kevin Trenberth, leaving the US for New Zealand, who explains his problem:
“I cannot go to NSF [the National Science Foundation] for research funds because NCAR is base funded that way,” Trenberth wrote in a note to himself at the time. “Nor has it been fruitful to garner funds internally, and the external grants, especially with NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] dried up after 2012 when NOAA put forward a proposal for a climate service but thoroughly messed it up, and Lamar Smith [R-Texas, then-chair of the Science Committee in the House] not only killed it but cut research funds for climate by 30%.”
And puts the issue in the starkest possible terms.
America’s lack of support for climate science poses a serious problem for the survival of our species, according to Trenberth. Because the United States is both a leading world power and major contributor to climate change (along with China, the European Union and the United Kingdom), Trenberth says it must do its part to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As human activity dumps carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, fluorinated gases and water vapor into the atmosphere, the overheating planet will cause sea levels to rise, hurricanes to become more extreme and droughts and heatwaves to become more frequent and more intense.
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I do actually have a rationale for continuing to post items like these. It’s not about bashing Republicans. It’s evidence about the conservative mindset. Thus I alternate readings of writers like Lakoff with examples like these.
