GOP Tax Reform: A New Dose of Alternative Facts

PER DAILY-Probably the greatest mistake made today in liberal and progressive thought and in the political opposition to Trumpism is believing that, in the end, truth will out. Nothing could be less true. More and more, a dominant narrative composed of alternative facts (aka fake news) has supplanted the truth. In our present-day reality, truth is often labeled fake news by those unwilling to hear it. 

The problem with having blind faith that the so-called independent or scientifically verifiable truth will prevail is that most people tend to believe what they want to believe. It doesn’t matter what evidence is presented to them to repudiate mistaken beliefs. 

This is not a new phenomenon. Just look back at Galileo’s using the newly invented telescope to prove a heliocentric (sun-centered) rather than earth-centered solar system. All he got for his trouble was to be declared a heretic by the Catholic Church in 1616; he was then required to live in isolation until his death in 1642, even after he recanted his “heresy.” 

But one need not go back to the 17^th century to see the functional equivalent of fake news triumph over empirically verifiable truth. Staying with science, for instance, the fundamental question about the age of the earth is met with the same kind of rejection of rational thought by otherwise intelligent and supposedly well-educated people who persist in believing that, as proffered by the Bible, our earth is only 6000 years old. They assert this even though radioactive carbon dating and other scientific technologies place our planet's age closer to 4.5 billion years, not a negligible difference. 

So now we come to the end of 2017 and find the Republicans proposing a tax reform bill that will favor the uber-rich and fund itself on the backs of the middle and working class. It will also create a multi-trillion-dollar deficit to fund it. And this is from a Republican party whose core principle supposedly favors smaller government as opposed to the corporate captured entity it has clearly created.

(Leonard Isenberg is a Los Angeles, observer and a contributor to CityWatch. He was a second generation teacher at LAUSD and blogs at perdaily.com. Leonard can be reached at [email protected].) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

-cw