The Bubble Convention

Ricardo Montalban and Hervé Villechaize are not the only residents of Fantasy Island. That far-off land of make believe is also the shipping address for many Republicans and the vast majority of the modern conservative movement. The ongoing Republican convention is the sort of evidence that would get Fred Thompson's D.A. on Law & Order to nod knowingly and drawl "go to trial".

Conservatives have spent a lot of time and money constructing their Fantasy Island. Some of it was planned, but much of it grew organically. From the think tanks propped up by rich lunatics and big business, the demagogic talk shows that blast out twenty-four hours of nonsense, to the television news shows and channels that regurgitate the propaganda and even the right wing blogs that were too pathetic to grow their own communities and instead had to be the product of GOP consultants, the conservative movement has a well oil machine that has sold the nation on ill-conceived wars, tax policy, and the like.

The problem the movement ran into is when it selected then re-elected a leader into the Fantasy that actually believed it. For all their faults, Ronald Reagan knew the religious right was simply his ticket to fortune, and George H.W. Bush recognized the economics as voodoo. On the other hand, George W. Bush actually believes this crap. And so do their followers and hangers-on. Why do you think they remain so loyal to the least popular president of the last two decades? Why, when every other American saw the Iraq War as a mess and the response to Katrina as a disaster and the idea that we should privatize social security in the same class as madness, do these people persist in holding on? Why do they wrap themselves in the death cult of Bush and conservatism? Because they surround themselves with media that tells them that's the way to think.

Objective reality never comes into play. Rush tells them it's a liberal plot of the drive-by media. Fox assures them that they are in the mainstream of public opinion no matter how fringe their beliefs. The Heritage Foundation and AEI show them cooked up numbers with "research" backing their assertions. It couldn't be phony, it says so right here in the editorial section of the Wall Street Journal!

The convention unfolding is the product of that bubble. A convention where the keynote speakers on night one were a failed president, a b-list actor who couldn't muster a single primary win because he thought he could campaign from a golf cart, and a senator who got drummed out of his own party and formed his own dishonest party to retain his seat. These speakers spoke in a poorly lit and laid out arena they could not fill. And when they spoke, they threw out red meat to the crowd that gained much applause - but out in the actual world it just looks like the fringe pandering to the fringe. They don't care, because Hannity will praise it, and Newsmax will legitimize it. They can't ever be wrong as far as the bubble is concerned.

The bubble leads to picks like Harriet Miers and Sarah Palin, both insults to American women by a movement that thinks shared genitalia is all that is needed to get women on board. They couldn't possibly think folks like Sarah Palin are grossly unqualified and out of the mainstream. Why? Because even though he railed against just such a profile a few weeks ago, the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol thinks she is magnificent too. The man was Dan Quayle's chief of staff, how could he possibly not be a good judge of vice presidential character!?

The enemy of the bubble is always reality. It is not a spin machine on the left that can counterbalance the bubble, just cold hard facts. In 2006 bubble pundits like Hugh Hewitt assured their followers that Republicans were on the verge of painting the entire map red. As late as election day the flock was assured that there was no way Nancy Pelosi could ascend to Speaker of the House. It was insisted that polls were skewed and not to be trusted. Reality, in other words, had a liberal bias. And even after the Democrats took the House and Senate, conservatives used the bubble to convince themselves that their losses were not due to their unpopular president and his policies that had led to the deaths of thousands and global instability. Nope. It was earmarks. As if.

Last week the bubble worked with its regular ally, the mainstream media (who is easily distracted by the shiniest thing and the loudest noise), tried to keep banging the drum for numerous falsehoods about the Democrats. They each dropped like flies as Michelle Obama spoke and was not a militant, the Clintons spoke and called for unity with Obama, and Obama went on the attack and gave specifics while still giving the sort of speech John McCain could not give half of on his best day.

No militant Obamas. No Democratic disunity. No aloof Obama. No weakling Obama. Now, like any rational being did they accommodate this information into their understanding of the world? No, like zombies they shut it out and proceeded to put on this freakshow in Minnesota which will go on for two more days and then on the road with McCain and whoever his running mate might be.

I'm under no illusions that the bubble might pop with a McCain loss in November. The bubble is resilient! It wraps the right up like a cocoon of ignorance (many of the bubble residents resemble the cast of Cocoon) and allows no enlightenment inside. At this point, they couldn't live without it.

I would say I pity them, but I'm not sure what positive purpose any of it serves. Good riddance.

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Comments

[thefirehorse]

Did anyone just catch the interviews on Morning Joe around 7:15 a.m. this morning? If you had you would have gotten a great example of how the media and the Republican Party are all about. The conversation had progressed to the subject of national security and whether Palin was ready to make or even be consulted on it because of her lack of experience. One of McCain’s spokesmen said with a straight face that Obama has no national security experience and not one of the people on the set called him on his un-true assertion even though that was what they were suppose to be there for.. Even with Eugene Robinson sitting there as part of the conversation, he didn’t even challenge the dissemination of this outright lie.

[StephenDedalus82]

This is what has been baffling me. Speaker after fascist speaker, they're only selling what the conservative right has already bought. To win, doesn't McCain need to appeal to the middle? This is not 2004 and I don't think he can win merely by drumming up votes by flat-earthers. One after another, Lieberman, Giuliani, Romney, Palin, all spew sarcasm and insults, yet no substance whatsoever. Mr. Maverick's campaign has become so so depressing. I only wish I had enough faith in the American electorate to know that it won't work.

[temptxan]

I was very surprised by the anger oozing out of the Republican party. For all their attacks of the "angry left" they proved no one can out anger them. They do have a reason to be angry. They have run this country into the ground. Let's see how their anger and bitterness work for them.

[longislandlol]

We Americans are sick of all this fighting-- whether it's in Iraq, with Washington, on school boards, in PTA's, with our kids teachers, with the supermarket clerk, CHILL SARAH__ CHILL--

[hrayovac]

I wouldn't jump to any conclusions that G W Bush is NOT fully aware of the charade and its component parts ..how and why it's done the way it's done. If you've sat at the feet of, or even fallen down drunk in front of one of America's worst liars and manipulators, his father, you learn things along the way. How to maintain power which is what tonight was all about. Completely in the dark journalists were fed a serious of rumors by the Group, which when blamed on the left, gave media permission to repeat them as news...eve­ry one including the Huffpost helped ...to allow creation of an attack-defense mode for MaCster. Control the ball. It sucks when this happens...­it brings back memories of those terrrible smells we've had to endure..Ca­n't have this any more, this must end.

[burndtdan]

Great article. I can't wait for the bubble to pop. Their fantasy world is moving farther and farther from any resemblance to the world they live in.

[TimeJumper]

Correct me if I am wrong, but when the last Democratic president left office, we actually had a balanced budget and a surplus. Now after 7+ years of a Republican presidency and a Republican controlled Congress for six of those years, we now have budget deficits -$480billion, a record nine trillion national debt and an economy akin to the 1930s than the 1990s. Seems that the Republicans do not want to take responsibility for our great economy let alone address the existence of the course of actions that they initiated and augmented through their executive and legislative expertise. But yet again, according to them, we are just in a “mental recession” so we should not worry and just be happy.

[BADEN]

Call them what they are

EXTREMISTS.

Call them out

End of Dayers, Christian Dominionists, Opus Dei, Knights of Malta, Unification Church

Call them what they are.

EXTREMISTS out to start Armageddon.

[avicenna]

or they simply can be people who have learned to live with cognitive dissonance.

[PumaAnn]

Many people simply do not agree with Democrats, and then there's a bunch of us who agree with some Democrats and some Republicans.

[1will]

Lefties can speak for 2 minutes straight without somehow praising abortion and the Right has a death cult? Do you get the irony of your statement?

[ajaye]

Do you get the irony of this statement? The Republican party has shown itself to be smug, meanspirited, inhumane and bordering on fascist in its preoccupation with jingoistic posturing and "honor." How many lives does it take to satisfy YOUR need for "honor." Or for oil? Or for more spending money in your pocket? Why so little concern for the planet future generations will inherit?

There is very little compassion underlying an anti-choice stance coupled with a constant drum for war, making abortion illegal, cutting social spending on things like health care, support of the death penalty, support for torture, demonizing illegal aliens and all Muslims as "Islamofas­cists." Deregulation and gutting regulatory agencies, replacing scientists on commissions with no nothings..­.all those things lead to illness and death. Death in the workplace. Death due to increased pollution and environmental disasters. Death due to lack of proper governmental response to natural disasters.

When Dana Buchman says with an icy smile on her face to a well receiving crowd...Go­vernment is not a philanthropic organization, that says it all. That is the attitude that informs a health care policy touting the emergency care room as national health insurance for all. That is a policy that leads to suffering and preventable deaths.

So, yes. The Republicans do represent the party of death. If nobody ever had another abortion again none of those other things would change.

[RRK70]

The bubble is self perpetuating, I doubt it will ever burst. Some people have an almost limitless ability to believe what they are told.

[arthur2008]

Well, I am convinced: John McCain is ready on Day One -- to be George W. Bush.

[veteran1964]

The only way Republicans win are by lying, creating deceit and hatred and changing the subject when they are confronted­.....Remem­ber this. This is sad for America to see how far right the Republican convention went tonight. Obama has not talked about anyone's family and Palin and Romney did just that....It is time for all of us to go VOTE and get our friends to VOTE and get more people to VOTE and let the Republican rhetoric go down the toilet. We need to take McCain and Palin out of this situation and show them the road home. McCain can go back to very HOT Arizona and Palin can take her Snowmobile and ride back up to Alaska and run her little country.

[Sweet-Marie]

Oh dear, well I hope you're right about November. I am actually frightened (like the thought gives me a panic attack) at the thought that McCain, with Sarah Palin as VP, may be president. I do not have that much faith in the American people. It seems that the lower the IQ, the more popular the politician. I am actually in shock that an intelligent and educated person like Barack Obama, has come so far.

[veteran1964]

Frightened? The way to beat these people is go VOTE. There are more Democrats than Republicans but Democrats don't all vote...Get off the chair and VOTE EVERYONE. Get your friends and family out to vote...Kno­ck on doors and make phone calls and get people to vote....Th­e only reason Republicans win is because some democrats sit idley by and don't vote because they think it is over....GO VOTE.

[angelrunning]

No kidding, I am getting more and more frightened each day. Urge your friends to vote!

[ld]

Be careful! We have reality but they have the money and the media, so don't count them out just yet.

[petekwando]

Excellent piece, Oliver. This is what so many of us who have been thinking, but you've said it best. I have tried many, many times to reach the right-wing members of my family with reason and facts, but anything that violates their biases is dismissed as liberal conspiracy.

As a recent developmental study found, fearful, insecure children tend to grow up to be conservatives. I guess that's where we should fight the battle, in early childhood development. Lord knows its hard to argue with people who think that they are the only "true" Americans, and that everything we say is a lie.

[bascombe]

sorry ollie,
it's the other way around.
the press gets their marching orders.
pat buchanan is a perfect example. he flipped in two days from scorn to effusive praise.