{"id":5482,"date":"2017-07-26T16:43:51","date_gmt":"2017-07-26T23:43:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/?p=5482"},"modified":"2020-10-18T11:45:31","modified_gmt":"2020-10-18T18:45:31","slug":"links-and-comments-conservative-authoritarianism-mysticism-and-selective-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2017\/07\/26\/links-and-comments-conservative-authoritarianism-mysticism-and-selective-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Links and Comments: Conservative Authoritarianism, Mysticism, and Selective History"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Right Wing Watch: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rightwingwatch.org\/post\/breitbart-editor-the-goal-is-the-full-destruction-and-elimination-of-the-entire-mainstream-media\/\">Breitbart Editor: The Goal Is The \u2018Full Destruction And Elimination Of The Entire Mainstream Media\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n<p>That is, an authoritarian, conservative government that determines the truth, and no one else is allowed to say respond or criticize, or point out evidence to the contrary. <b>Nineteen Eighty-Four<\/b>. (Except that it couldn&#8217;t work now, since the internet is beyond the control of &#8230; well, except authoritarian governments like North Korea. Hmm. Maybe it could happen.)<\/p>\n<p>\\\\<\/p>\n<p>Salon: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2017\/07\/21\/study-how-breitbart-medias-disinformation-created-the-paranoid-fact-averse-nation-that-elected-trump_partner\/\">How Breitbart media\u2019s disinformation created the paranoid, fact-averse nation that elected Trump<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>More about the Columbia Journalism Review <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cjr.org\/analysis\/breitbart-media-trump-harvard-study.php\">study<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nBreitbart not only led the right\u2019s obsessive, hostile focus on immigrants, it was also the first to attack professional reporting such as the New York Times and Washington Post. Breitbart\u2019s disruptive template fueled the political and information universe we now inhabit, where the right dismisses facts and embraces fantasies.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>\\\\<\/p>\n<p>Salon: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2017\/07\/19\/steve-bannon-and-the-occult-the-right-wings-long-strange-love-affair-with-new-age-mysticism-2\/\">Steve Bannon and the occult: The right wing\u2019s long, strange love affair with New Age mysticism<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nThere is a long-standing intersection between mysticism and conservatism in America. This marriage extends back to the late 19th century when globetrotting occultist and Russian noblewoman Madame H.P. Blavatsky depicted America as the catalyst for a revolution in human potential in her 1888 opus \u201cThe Secret Doctrine.\u201d \u201cIt is in America that the transformation will take place,\u201d Blavatsky wrote, \u201cand has already silently commenced.\u201d\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This strikes me as an example of how humans more susceptible to the &#8220;I&#8217;m so very special, and the place I live in and the religion I believe in are obviously the mostest special things in the world&#8221; mental bias are, of course, conservatives, prone to dismissing real world evidence and attracted to anything that confirms their biases. And lacking any understanding of the actual, physical world, are prone to fairy-tales about how it might work, as long as it they confirm those biases.<\/p>\n<p>\\\\<\/p>\n<p>Thus, yet again, David Barton&#8217;s selective reading of history: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/warrenthrockmorton\/2017\/07\/18\/david-barton-picks-history-likes-omits-rest\/\">David Barton Picks History He Likes and Omits the Rest<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Quoting lines from Thomas Jefferson out of context.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Right Wing Watch: Breitbart Editor: The Goal Is The \u2018Full Destruction And Elimination Of The Entire Mainstream Media\u2019 That is, an authoritarian, conservative government that determines the truth, and no one else is allowed to say respond or criticize, or &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2017\/07\/26\/links-and-comments-conservative-authoritarianism-mysticism-and-selective-history\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservative-resistance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5482"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5483,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5482\/revisions\/5483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}