When Data and Science Are Trumped by Politics -- as a Methodology.

When the facts don't serve you, don't let the facts serve anybody. Ignorance for the win!

The height -- or depth -- of bamboozlement. (Repeat a lie often enough...)

Greg Sargent, via Paul Krugman:

The White House and Republicans are bracing for bad news in the Congressional Budget Office score of the new GOP health plan, which could come as early as Monday. It is expected to find that the GOP effort — which President Trump has endorsed — could leave many millions without coverage, and on the Sunday shows, top Trump advisers sought to discredit the CBO’s finding in advance.

But all of this should be seen in a much larger context. We’re seeing a broad White House effort to corrode the very ideal of reality-based governing, something that includes not just a discrediting of institutions such as the CBO but also the weakening of the influence of science and data over agency decision-making and the deliberate misuse of our democracy’s institutional processes to prop up Trump’s lies about his popular support and political opponents.

Reality-TV was always highly scripted, though entertaining, nonsense. Trump's Reality-Politics is highly scripted, though dangerous, nonsense. It's called propaganda. We didn't like it when Goebbels did it, we shouldn't like it now. But it's how the GOP rolls nowadays, and they hope to get their agenda through using it.

Fact-free doesn't mean the truth disappears. It reappears as failed policy. And with failed policy, you don't get hot-fudge sundaes. You get egg on your face. The GOP, though, will endure that because the donor class gets their tax breaks and will keep giving donations to the GOP to help them remain in power. And that, friends, is what this is all about.


Update. Paul Krugman amplifies Sargent's point with Facts are Enemies of the People.