In a year in which roughly half the population appears to be poised to vote against their own economic interests, the logical question that arises is: How can this be happening? It seems to me the seeds for this incredibly sorry state were sown when the George W. Bush spokesperson dismissed the "reality-based community" for its failure to grasp what the neocons were up to.
Fast-forward to this election cycle and we can now see the quaintness of that notion; the era of competing realities has arrived. The right wing (the Republican Party) realized there was no future in denying reality; it had to create its own. If the problem is science, find scientists (mostly from corporate America or from research institutions funded by corporate America) to question universal consensus.
If the problem is a candidate's position on Medicare, deny it and counter with false claims about Obamacare. If the problem is the explosion of the deficit created by the candidate's tax proposal, deny it and trot out ideologically driven economists and analysts from right wing think-tanks to defend it.
If the problem is a candidate's published position on the auto industry bailout, deny it and claim the candidate would have done whatever necessary to save the industry. If the problem is the candidate's expressed disdain for the 47 percent who rely on some form of federal recompense, deny it and offer the candidate as the best hope for the less fortunate.
If the problem is pesky fact-checkers, find your own "independent" operation. If the problem is the polls, do likewise and create your own momentum.
No need, however, for the right wing to concern itself with the media. It already has the pernicious phenomenon that is Fox News and its stable of alternate reality fabricators, and it knows that with a few notable exceptions the remainder of the media will never call the candidate on any of this duplicity for fear of being called "biased."
ERNIE AMABILE
Albany