A case that the Supreme Court just agreed to hear is a crucial turning point in the American conservative movement’s ability to assert that black is white and up is down, David Roberts recently argued in a stream of tweets. The case, sometimes referred to as “Halbig,” is a legal challenge to Obamacare. It asserts that, by virtue of what amounts to a typo — one section of the law carelessly refers to “an Exchange established by the State” — health insurance exchanges must be established by states in order to offer premium subsidies, i.e., federally established exchanges can’t offer such subsidies. That is an inversion of what the law’s authors intended. If the court sides with the plaintiffs, Obamacare will be crippled.
Hilarious watching conservatives argue, not only that the card says Moops, but that Moops is the right answer. Postmodernism lives.
— David Roberts (@drvox) November 9, 2014
1. Right has systematically and progressively destroyed the very notion of a nonpartisan arbiter of information.
Grist thanks its sponsors. Become one.
To support our nonprofit environmental journalism, please consider disabling your ad-blocker to allow ads on Grist. Here's How
— David Roberts (@drvox) November 9, 2014
2. The implications are epistemologically radical, but it has taken the right a while to truly embrace them. Held back by unspoken norms.
— David Roberts (@drvox) November 9, 2014
3. The Halbig argument, in my mind, marks the point at which the right finally & completely embraced postmodernism.
Grist thanks its sponsors. Become one.
To support our nonprofit environmental journalism, please consider disabling your ad-blocker to allow ads on Grist. Here's How
— David Roberts (@drvox) November 9, 2014
4. 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.
— David Roberts (@drvox) November 9, 2014
5. You have to convince yourself, not so much that an apple is an orange, but that there is no such thing as what the object "really" is.
— David Roberts (@drvox) November 9, 2014
6. Or rather, that on the question of what the object is, there are *only* competing answers — no objective fact of the matter.
— David Roberts (@drvox) November 9, 2014
7. As you get used to thinking this way, you get more bold, moving from highly contestable interpretations to flat matters of fact.
— David Roberts (@drvox) November 9, 2014
8. Halbig is endpoint of that process: arguing that a law says something that literally everyone involved knows it doesn’t.
— David Roberts (@drvox) November 9, 2014
9. The key is just to brazen it out, to be unaffected by social disapprobation or scolding.
— David Roberts (@drvox) November 9, 2014
10. The right has realized that if you just brazen it out, there’s no authority that can "settle the argument." No ref to make the call.
— David Roberts (@drvox) November 9, 2014
11. In this way every dispute, even over matters of fact, becomes a contest of power — loudest, best funded, most persistent voices win.
— David Roberts (@drvox) November 9, 2014
12. Most on left are congenitally unable to think this way; still vulnerable to scolding, to exhortations to "be reasonable" from VSPs.
— David Roberts (@drvox) November 9, 2014
13. Danger for the right, obviously, is that once you lose your mooring to nonpartisan epistemological standards, you are at sea.
— David Roberts (@drvox) November 9, 2014
14. There are no signs or markers against which to steer. Epistemology becomes competing tantrums. Projection & reality blur.
— David Roberts (@drvox) November 9, 2014
15. You start thinking you really can "make your own reality," forgetting there’s anything rigid in the world that can’t be wished away.
— David Roberts (@drvox) November 9, 2014
16. It can be a successful short-term political strategy, but governing a country that way is disastrous, as history repeatedly shows.
— David Roberts (@drvox) November 9, 2014
17. The dilemma the left faces: Cling to standards of reason & discourse the other side rejects, or "join 'em" — fight the same way.
— David Roberts (@drvox) November 9, 2014
18. Clinging to standards just seems to lead to sputtering losses. But jettisoning them leads to law of the jungle – fight left can’t win.
— David Roberts (@drvox) November 9, 2014
19. Default hope among smarter lefties seems to be that right’s strategy will just burn itself out – but it doesn’t seem to be happening.
— David Roberts (@drvox) November 9, 2014
20. Idea that tech+sci advanced society could be dragged down by what is effectively a large-scale cult seems unthinkable.
— David Roberts (@drvox) November 9, 2014
21. And I mean "unthinkable" literally — media/political elites do not allow themselves to consider it. Cling to idea of normal politics.
— David Roberts (@drvox) November 9, 2014
22. But it’s time to start thinking it. Can’t let the ship sink while we insist, "everything’s fine, this will work itself out."
— David Roberts (@drvox) November 9, 2014
23. Problem is, every institution & practice in US politics is designed *not* to acknowledge radical break in politics. Designed for normal.
— David Roberts (@drvox) November 9, 2014
24. Hard to even envision, at this point, what it would look like for elites to say, "enough." The both-sides mentality is so fundamental…
— David Roberts (@drvox) November 9, 2014
25. I trust it’s obvious how all this applies to climate change, but 25 is probably long enough for a tweet essay.
— David Roberts (@drvox) November 9, 2014
Oh hell, 26. Problem is, this is not a quirk of the American right but a feature of conservative psychology more broadly.
— David Roberts (@drvox) November 9, 2014
27. Modern science is all about probabilities; modern global problems all about uncertainties and risks.
— David Roberts (@drvox) November 9, 2014
28. But conservative psychology is notoriously averse to ambiguity. Likes clean lines, hierarchy, clear divisions of good & evil.
— David Roberts (@drvox) November 9, 2014
29. IOW, the very nature of global, interconnected, complex modern life rubs conservatives the wrong way (& will more & more).
— David Roberts (@drvox) November 9, 2014
30. So there will only be increasing impetus for cons to retreat into fantasy, into simple morality tales & ideological truisms.
— David Roberts (@drvox) November 9, 2014
31. And simple morality tales will always yield more motivated, organized constituencies than "it’s complicated" ever will.
— David Roberts (@drvox) November 9, 2014
32. All of this is why I think the Halbig fight is a kind of rubicon. If right can brazen through this, that’s it — no restraints left.
— David Roberts (@drvox) November 9, 2014
33. If US right is unique, it is only in that structure of US gov’t makes it virtually impossible for citizens to assign responsibility.
— David Roberts (@drvox) November 9, 2014
34. See: the way the right’s nihilistic oppositionalism has redounded entirely to Obama’s detriment. Low-info voters can’t untangle.
— David Roberts (@drvox) November 9, 2014
35. It’s really difficult to see how these trendlines stop or reverse, absent some serious exogenous shock.
— David Roberts (@drvox) November 9, 2014
A message from
Your support keeps our climate news free
Grist is the only award-winning newsroom focused on exploring equitable solutions to climate change. It’s vital reporting made entirely possible by loyal readers like you. At Grist, we don’t believe in paywalls. Instead, we rely on our readers to pitch in what they can so that we can continue bringing you our solution-based climate news. All donations matched for a limited time.
At Grist, we don’t believe in paywalls. Instead, we rely on our readers to pitch in what they can so that we can continue bringing you our solution-based climate news. All donations matched for a limited time.
