Feelings over facts

As expected,  facts were moot in forging perceptions of guilt.

Conservatives & I are of one mind about the various committees investigating Hillary Rodham Clinton's culpability in (you pick the issue) - it was a given that she'd be held guilty, a conclusion that was in the bag before the opening gavels rang in the proceedings.  And she has been.  Okay, she was exonerated of any wrong-doing in each & every situation, over & over & over (at staggering taxpayer expense), but the court of public opinion (ok, the conservative court of opinion) found her guilty as vacuously charged.

There are many times that John & I are profoundly grateful to NOT have a television set, to not use our pc as a monitor (except for NCIS & clips of Colbert, John Oliver, Samantha Bee).  Last night was one such occasion - no temptation to watch the Republican Convention.  Reading about it this a.m. was enough of a stomach turn. 

Last night, the GOP finally got to openly hang, draw & quarter Hillary Clinton's character.  The mother of one of the four men killed in Benghazi holds HRC personally responsible for his death. Personally.  She wants to see Hillary in prison for what she did, lying to her face about the reason for her son's death.  For her inability to save four men at the consulate, for lying to a grieving mother, Hillary "deserves to be in stripes.”  For failing to secure the safety of the four men & then misrepresenting what happened to families & the American public. 

What retribution would Mrs. Smith have demanded from Ronald Reagan if her son had been one of the 241 US servicemen & personnel who died in a terrorist attack on their Beirut barracks? 

For months after an attack on the US Embassy in Beirut (63 dead), Donald Rumsfeld had beseeched the president to allow the marines to pull back to a safer place - the president said no, because marines don't retreat.  

Four months after the deadly attack, all US troops were withdrawn  - by presidential order. 

The facts about Beirut 1983 clearly condemn the president's actions;  multiple GOP-led special committees came up with nothing that would place the blame on Secretary Clinton.  Yet President Reagan is beatified by conservatives, while HRC is damned

Other speakers presented as facts claims that none of the GOP-led investigations found credible, including the claim that the State Department ordered potential rescuers to stand down.  Republican legislators thirsting for Hillary's political blood weren't able to find any collaboration of this claim, but it was presented last night as true.  Is it any wonder that the party's fevered base believe such unsubstantiated claims to be gospel?

A pesky fact: apparently the CIA - not State - officer who is accused of issuing the stand-down order was apparently trying to pull together a more coordinated response.

But that's an irksome fact - red-blooded conservatives scoff at such elitism, preferring what they feel in their gut & believe in their heart.  It was to those true Americans that two men who were on the ground in Benghazi at the time of the attack spoke, holding the vast audience in the palms of their patriotic hands as they described the horror of that night. 

Today's Republicans, a brand of conservatism that my mother & her political buddies would find chilling, never let facts stand in the way of great storytelling.  The wilder, the better. 

At the end of the The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, a newspaper publisher, given the truth about a key moment in a beloved political figure's life, says that given the choice of printing the truth or the legend, print the legend, the myth, the better story.

Republicans take that very much to heart - faced with sharing what actually came out of all those endless hearings, which exonerate Secretary Clinton, OR a soothing pack of lies that speak to what they most passionately want to believe, stick with the iies. 

The GOP's Foxified motto - Feelings over facts.