GM and the Collapse of the Republican House of Cards

GM’s stunning announcement that it will cease producing gasoline and diesel vehicles by 2035 may have pulled the first few cards out of the rickety house that conservatives have built in their anti-science world.  The announcement is a symbolic admission by the most conservative automaker that the threat of climate change is real.  And once the 'drill baby drill' nonsense is totally discredited, maybe the rest of the republican anti-science universe will start to disintegrate.  It doesn’t bode well for conservative political credibility.

The republican party, now perhaps better named the Trump party, has built a Maginot line of denial against science across several fronts for many years – climate change, COVID-19, evolution, abortion, gun-control, sexuality – to name a few.  It has rallied its followers with absurd claims and conspiracy theories. It has based policy on fabrications and fantasies rather than conducting a good faith analysis of scientific studies. 

The world began to finally recognize the craven duplicity of republican tactics during the COVID-19 pandemic, as Trump and his allies refused to acknowledge the gravity of the pandemic, abdicated responsibility for leading the national effort to respond, and willfully disdained scientific recommendations on mask-wearing, social distancing and shutdowns.  The crackpot theories – just another flu, it will disappear, hydrochloroquine, too many tests, the deaths are over-counted, masks are unnecessary, go for herd immunity, etc. – were debunked one by one but sadly forgotten in the sheer massive scope of the failure.

Perhaps climate change is the hill that the martyrs of republican idiocy will make their last stand on.  The conservative ship of fools is foundering on the rocks of the environmental crisis that it has refused to acknowledge.  When GM and other corporate giants, the former bedrock allies of the conservative movement, abandon ship, that leaves only the rats aboard.

Will the republicans be able to mask this new proof of their ineptitude by a barrage of conspiracy theories, red herrings and social media absurdities, as they did throughout the pandemic?  That ploy may finally be losing its power to delude the masses.  Hopefully only the most extreme and ignorant will fall prey.

Perhaps then the republican party can be led again by people who respect science, data, intellectual rigor and dialogue.  There is a place for a principled opposition that argues for moderation and careful progress in meeting our many national challenges.  But the charlatans who are now in charge need to go.