In my fresh, wide-eyed younger years, I built an image of government as being a place where two passionate yet rational groups would come together, argue the merits of their respective positions — using facts and stories and logic and other such things — and usually come to some kind of reasonable compromise based on some semblance of reason and concern for their constituents.

Boy was I wrong.

Take a depressing case in point: Arizona.  Far-right reactionaries in the state have been fanning people’s fears of nefarious deeds committed by shadowy illegal ne’er-do-wells to justify encroachments on liberty that are, at best, draconian, xenophobic and unconstitutional.

What supposedly undergirds the fear-train that all these respectable reactionary leaders are jumping onto?

They keep telling us: Violence and Crime.  They’re way, WAY up!  Be SCARED!

Here’s Old Man McCain on the issue:

“Why is it that Phoenix, Arizona, is the number two kidnapping capital of the world? Does that mean our border’s safe? Of course not.”

 Is this shocking claim true?  PolitiFact says nope.

True, “Kidnapping capital” is a headline-grabbing label. But so far, we’ve seen no evidence that it’s accurate, or even close. And since we first considered this claim earlier this month, no one has stepped forward with more information.

Phoenix has experienced hundreds of kidnappings over the past few years. However, we couldn’t find reliable around-the-planet evidence to confirm that only Mexico City experiences more of them. In fact, experts advise that such rankings can’t be made based on available information. If they could, they speculate, other cities would prove to have more kidnappings than Arizona’s capital.

Now, even more cravenly, here is Arizona Governor Jan Brewer telling everyone how Arizona is currently experiencing a terrible orgy of criminality and lawlessness:

“Border violence and crime due to illegal immigration are critically important issues to the people of our state,” Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said at the signing of the controversial bill, SB 1070. “There is no higher priority than protecting the citizens of Arizona. We cannot sacrifice our safety to the murderous greed of the drug cartels. We cannot stand idly by as drop houses, kidnappings and violence compromise our quality of life.”

So, this is obviously great rhetoric for attracting tourists to your state, but is it true?  Also, nope:

Yet, a look at statistics from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency and the FBI indicate that both the number of illegal crossers and violent crime in general have actually decreased in the past several years.

According to FBI statistics, violent crimes reported in Arizona dropped by nearly 1,500 reported incidents between 2005 and 2008. Reported property crimes also fell, from about 287,000 reported incidents to 279,000 in the same period. These decreases are accentuated by the fact that Arizona’s population grew by 600,000 between 2005 and 2008.

According to the nonpartisan Immigration Policy Institute, proponents of the bill “overlook two salient points: Crime rates have already been falling in Arizona for years despite the presence of unauthorized immigrants, and a century’s worth of research has demonstrated that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes or be behind bars than the native-born.”

First of all, I get it.  Cynical politicians have to stoke fears and lead the ignorant around by the rings in their noses — it’s just how the system works.

But how does one fight this level of fact-free irrationality?  How does one win?

It’s one thing to have two viewpoints on a set of policy proposals based on facts and genuine concerns.  You can weigh those and determine which you are more attracted to.

But when you’re fighting a position that is basically an amorphous soup of lies, fear-mongering and irrationality, what do you do when the voters are so easily cowed by this bullshit and let their fear drive them to vote for the cynical fuckers who are misleading and misinforming them?

I just don’t know what one is supposed to do…