It's almost tautological, but getting by on bullshit requires ignorance.
Treatises have been written on the subject, see, eg, On Bullshit, and bullshit is not always bad.
Nonetheless, a political party built on bullshit runs into trouble when it's followers are forced to lose their ignorance.
X-ray of aortic aneurism.
The proof comes from Robert Calandra at The Philadelphia Inquirer, Logger Learns Truth About ACA, Saves Own Life:
Dean Angstadt fells trees for a living.
He's a self-employed, self-sufficient logger who has cleared his own path for most of his 57 years, never expecting help from anyone. And even though he'd been uninsured since 2009, he especially wanted nothing to do with the Affordable Care Act.
"I don't read what the Democrats have to say about it because I think they're full of it," he told his friend Bob Leinhauser, who suggested he sign up.
That refrain changed this year when a faulty aortic valve almost felled Angstadt. Suddenly, he was facing a choice: Buy a health plan, through a law he despised, that would pay the lion's share of the cost of the life-saving surgery - or die. He chose the former.
"A lot of people I talk to are so misinformed about the ACA," Angstadt said. "I was, before Bob went through all this for me. I would recommend it to anybody and, in fact, have encouraged friends, including the one guy who hauls my logs."
Maddowblogger Steve Benen comments on the story:
We can talk about just how offensive it was for the right to urge American consumers to put themselves at risk and stay uninsured to advance a political cause, but stories like these also speak to a discouraging future for ACA critics: the longer the law is in effect, the more Dean Angstadts there will be, slowly realizing that conservatives were selling a bill of goods.
For the right, it’s a recipe for long-term failure.
This is part of the process leading to the GOP going the way of the Whigs. Bullshit works on ignorance, so a base ignorant about race, federal spending, taxation, and reproductive health is willing to believe candidates who lie to them about those subjects. But reality creeps in eventually, and when folks realize they've been conned, first comes denial, then comes acceptance, the comes the end of the GOP.
