Thread by @kurteichenwald

1. Recently read a book about Soviet Union in the mid-to-late 1980s. Page after page, things grew ever more familiar. Then, the shocking realization hit me:

The modern GOP, in thought and action, is identical to the apparatchik Soviet ideologues. Science denial, spinning of...

2...reality to fit with ideology, absolute refusal to ever acknowledge error, whataboutism, attacks on the (western) media as purveyors of fake news, denial of facts when they contradicted belief. It made me realize that what we are seeing with the modern GOP....

3...is not some freaky outcome that is limited only to them - it is the behavior of people in a closed system where any dissent from the beliefs - and false representations of reality - have enormous consequences. Loss of party, loss of position, loss of prestige. And so....

4...even when the Soviet officials KNEW what they were saying was not true, they continued to push down that path - saying the same things even to their friends - because the truth had such enormous consequences. The enforcer in Soviet Union was the Communist Party. In the US...

5...the enforcer is Fox News. Look at what happens to anyone who diverts from the accepted truth. John McCain went from an American hero who was selected as the GOP nominee for president a few years before to a traitor. Fox pushed it a little bit, and the party members jumped...

6...as far as they needed to go. Fox is the Pravda and state controlled television of the right wing. Reality is not part of its brief. The science denial, however, was the most striking. The reactors used across Russia were ticking time bombs because of bad construction. That...

7...is why Chernobyl Reactor 4 melted down. It was only a matter of time. When the meltdown occurred, scientists said "this is a huge design problem." But that would require upending an energy platform, abandoning a major business, and admitting error. No way that would happen...

8...so instead, the Soviets took the ridiculous position of blaming human error - as if the fact that a small human error could cause a meltdown made it any better. Science did not fit ideology, so science was belittled. Scientists were deemed wrong, stupid, not good Russians...

9...and people who were not patriots to the country. The lawyers and politicians were instead held out as the experts, who in turn trotted out a few mediocre scientists - or ones devoted to Communist Party - to contradict the truth.

Doesn't this sound familiar? This is where...

10...we are. We cannot expect reason, facts or science to penetrate the GOP leadership. This is about ideology, belief and preservation of power and position. This is not a Soviet failing. It is in the realm of human failing. And it has infested the GOP.