When I see that GOP and Blue Dog politicians are embracing austerity when every single shred of evidence says that it will make the recession worse...
When I see that one of the leading candidates for the GOP nomination believes what some crack pot tells her about Gardisil over every major medical organization in the country...
When I see that the FBI has employed a racist who believes that every Muslim is - by definition - a radical intent on destroying the western way of life...
When I see prominent politicians dismiss global warming and freaking evolution as "theories" without understanding what a scientific theory is...
When I hear the GOP run against Social Security because they say it "won't be there for future generations" when that is simply a bald faced lie...
That's when I realize that we have abandoned an empirical view of the world. We have abandoned the Enlightenment's commitment to reason and thought and replaced it with emotionalism and dogma.
This is the heart of everything that troubles us today.
I am hardly sold on every decision Obama has made or will make. But he examines the evidence and makes decisions based on that and what the available options are. I no longer believe that's true for most Republicans. That is the single most terrifying part of our political process today. And that is what I mean when I say the one of the major political parties has gone insane.
Max Weber called the Enlightenment the "disenchantment of the world." We are being dragged back into the land of fairy tales and magical thinking.
And it will destroy us if we don't stop it.
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