One of the problems that the Congress is encountering as it tries to raise the debt ceiling is that a significant number of Republican and Tea Party Members of Congress apparently hold the view that there actually would not be consequences for global markets or the US economy if we defaulted. This view is, of course, absurd -- but it illustrates a larger problem. Dramatic changes in the way we communicate with one another about issues affecting the common good have diminished the role of reason and fact-based analysis, encouraging ideological extremists to construct their own alternative version of reality and defend it against fact-based reasoning.
The same problem is found in the debate over the climate crisis. Notwithstanding the unanimous opinion of every National Academy of Science in every major country in the world, every professional scientific society in fields related to the study of the climate crisis and 97 percent of climate scientists in the world, many ideologues cling to the view that these facts are wrong, that scientists are perpetrating a hoax, that they are either greedy for more research dollars or secretly promoting the expansion of government, and that authorities such as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are more reliable than the global scientific community in analyzing the impact of global warming pollution.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/al-gore/debt-ceiling-climate-crisis_b_909461.html?ir=Politics
