The present obsession over religiousness in politics was, in the weeks before the election, somewhat predictable. Several detailed and insightful articles sprung up during those last days, valiant attempts at encapsulating and exposing the role of faith in the Bush presidency before the voters went to the polls.

Chief among these was Ron Suskind’s “Without a Doubt,” published on Oct. 17 in the “New York Times Magazine.” If you haven’t read it yet, go to the library, look it up and do so immediately. It is an essential guide at understanding how this administration works.

The crux of the piece is the idea of a “new reality,” espoused by a senior Bush aide to Suskind in the summer of 2002. According to the aide, the Bush administration has brazenly set out to construct reality through its actions – as opposed to the reverse course, favored by journalists like Suskind, among other naive and radical dissidents.

What does the new reality look like? In sum, what it comes down to is an utter contempt for the most basic standards of argumentation: that is, that when you assert something, you are also obligated to provide evidence for your claims. Witness Afghanistan, Iraq, the treatment of suspected terrorists – the list continues and is by no means limited to foreign policy alone.

So far, both the media and the Democratic Party have proven ill equipped to respond effectively to the new reality. The press’s failure rises out of a larger problem: the death of journalism.

Over time, journalists have forgotten how to ask questions. These days, they simply print what they are told to by those in power. The Washington Post, for example, in its mea culpa over prewar reporting on Iraq, was unrepentant toward fulfilling its role as a “mouthpiece” (their phrase) for the White House. If the President said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, then that’s what made the front page. The media’s lack of skepticism works incredibly well with an administration fueled by faith.

Columnist Paul Krugman (incidentally, also of the “New York Times”) sums up the current state of the media as follows: “If Bush said that the earth was flat, Fox News would say ‘yes, the earth is flat and anyone who disagrees hates America,’ and the mainstream media, for the most part, would run articles with the headline ‘Shape of the Earth: Views Differ.'” In other words, equal time to both positions, regardless of how absurd a given argument might be. In the name of objectivity, of “fair and balanced” journalism, anything goes in this new marketplace of ideas.

Anything? Well, not quite. If I were to call up Fox News, for example, and argue that everyone who voted for Bush ought to be deported to a Muslim theocracy as anti-American traitors, I doubt they’d put me on the air. Needless to say, the people they do put on the air would never say that. John Kerry could barely get away with saying that the war was being “mismanaged,” and when a Democrat came along who actually did have the courage to challenge mainstream conventions (give Osama bin Laden a fair trial when he is caught? Go back to Soviet Russia!), he was effectively crushed by the media’s obtuseness and by his party’s mediocrity and sent home to Vermont with his tail between his legs.

These problems have been endemic in both the press and the Democratic Party for some years. The genius of the Bush administration seems to lie in its ability to exploit them so successfully. Like many of the administration’s vices, the primary distinction between Bush and his predecessors is one of style: preventive war is hardly a new concept; explicitly reserving the right to wage one at any time, anywhere, is. The same is true with regards to the contempt for those who would dare to question the powerful.

But just as with preventive war, the openness of this new war on doubt makes it far more dangerous, especially when the problem is framed as “moral values” or “faith,” as has happened in the wake of the election. Hopefully, Democrats will resist falling into the trap. If anything, they ought to have learned by now that they can’t out-Republican the Republicans.

But that’s for them to decide. As for us, if we wish to withstand another four years of George Bush, then the strategy might be easier than we thought: respect facts, ask questions and continue to speak out for what we believe in. In other words, do as much as we can to adopt the responsibilities that have been abandoned to us by the press and by the “liberal” opposition. Because what these people really hate, what they truly fear, is to be doubted. Acknowledging this reality, questioning it, will be the first step toward defeating it.

Mike Sances is a Collegian columnist.