On November 9, David Roberts of the environmentalist magazine Grist tweeted a series of thirty-six thoughts on the state of conservatism. The collated tweets soon were posted on Grist’s web site and have received attention from lefty outlets and personalities including Democratic Underground, AlterNet, and actor Mark Ruffalo, who sent a link to his 1.1 million Twitter followers.
In the tweets, Roberts contended that “nihilistic” right-wingers have undermined the idea of objective reality because it’s in their interest to have “every dispute, even over matters of fact, become…a contest of power — loudest, best funded, most persistent voices win.” He asserted that when conservatives launched the argument that Obamacare subsidies for federally operated exchanges were unconstitutional, it “mark[ed] the point at which the right finally & completely embraced postmodernism. It’s like pointing to an apple and saying, ‘this is an orange’…[They’re] arguing that a law says something that literally everyone involved knows it doesn’t.”
Highlights from Roberts’s tweets appear below (emphasis added):
“Hilarious watching conservatives argue, not only that the card says Moops, but that Moops is the right answer...”
“[Conservatives have] systematically and progressively destroyed the very notion of a nonpartisan arbiter of information.”
“The Halbig argument, in my mind, marks the point at which the right finally & completely embraced postmodernism.”
“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.”
“Halbig is endpoint of that process: arguing that a law says something that literally everyone involved knows it doesn’t.”
“In this way every dispute, even over matters of fact, becomes a contest of power — loudest, best funded, most persistent voices win.”
“Most on [the] left are congenitally unable to think this way; still vulnerable to scolding, to exhortations to ‘be reasonable’…”
“Idea that tech+sci advanced society could be dragged down by what is effectively a large-scale cult seems unthinkable.”
“And I mean ‘unthinkable’ literally — media/political elites do not allow themselves to consider it. Cling to idea of normal politics.”
“But conservative psychology is notoriously averse to ambiguity. Likes clean lines, hierarchy, clear divisions of good & evil.”
“…[T]he very nature of global, interconnected, complex modern life rubs conservatives the wrong way (& will more & more).”
“So there will only be increasing impetus for cons to retreat into fantasy, into simple morality tales & ideological truisms.”
“And simple morality tales will always yield more motivated, organized constituencies than ‘it’s complicated’ ever will.”
“All of this is why I think the Halbig fight is a kind of [R]ubicon. If right can brazen through this, that’s it -- no restraints left.”
“…[T]he right’s nihilistic oppositionalism has redounded entirely to Obama’s detriment. Low-info voters can’t untangle.”
