The latest Democracy Corp report (pdf) on the beliefs of Republicans is highly depressing. It’s not only what they believe; it’s that they are just wrong about everything. Their brains have been marinated in a toxic stew of highly corrosive anti-science religion, Fox News, hate radio, and intensely targeted misinformation campaigns. It’s a wonder that they can still remember where the Sun rises and sets.
The study broke Republicans into focus groups and then categorized them as either moderates, evangelicals, or Tea Party members. The moderates sound like sane people who just don’t like paying taxes or dealing with government regulations. The evangelicals and Tea Party folks sound like they’ve been programmed by a malicious scam-artist oligarch/preacher. They are all totally paranoid. I mean “paranoid” doesn’t even do justice to what they believe. We need a stronger word.
But they do have one thing basically correct. They feel like the Affordable Care Act will be really popular in the sense that the people who receive a subsidy to buy health care will not vote for a party that wants to take their subsidy away. Now, they think that the only people getting subsidies will be lazy folks who don’t work, but that’s not really my point. I already told you that they are wrong about everything.
ObamaCare isn’t going to turn America into a country of lazy moochers. It’s going to turn middle class white folks into stronger supporters of the federal government, and therefore the Democratic Party. It’s the same reason a lot of retired white folks support the Democrats. The Democrats created Social Security and Medicare, and old folks know that.
The evangelicals and Tea Partiers seem to think this is a sinister plot to buy enough support to win elections in perpetuity. It’s not a plot, but opposing ObamaCare is going to be even less popular than opposing Social Security. So, yeah, it’s doom time for the old Republican Party.
And that seems to be what they’re all preoccupied with. They feel like Obama came in and enjoyed total victory over them and their way of life. Now that ObamaCare is enacted, they’ll never win another presidential election. The country will just get more tolerant of gays..it’s terrible.
Part of me insists on mocking these people, but I am actually angry that there are so many people who have been programmed to be this upset and filled with anxiety and basically unhappy. People aren’t naturally this mixed up. You have to physically damage people to get them to believe and behave this way.
There are a whole lot of folks who make people stupid for a living. And they’re screwing up my country.
That statement is quite interesting, and likely quite correct. It reminds me a bit of something that Alice Miller might have written. Her work examined, among other things, various forms of child abuse (physical, psychological) and acceptance of what might be best characterized as authoritarian attitudes. Our own authoritarian extremists have been groomed to be the way they are from the beginning of their existences.
Along somewhat related lines: I had to do a bit of digging through my bookmarks, but here’s an old article on attitudes toward corporal punishment and voting behavior during the 2008 election.
I’m reminded of George Lakoff and his strict father/not strict father view.
Lakoff’s work is pretty interesting and definitely relevant as well.
Actually, I disagree. Yes of course they are very messed up, but I don’t think Fox News or Rush Limbaugh made them that way. They already were that way.
This fringe group has always been with us. The peculiar circumstances obtaining today, such as the demographic decline and desperation of the GOP and the end of the Fairness Doctrine, have brought them to center stage, where they are more visible, more audible, and more powerful. But they’ve always been with us, and with pretty much the same geographic distribution.
Check out the right wing during the 1920s, when the KKK was so popular around the nation. During the FDR administration, when many considered the president a communist. After WW2, the Cold War started, and lots of people were itching to drop the bomb on Russia and China. During the Kennedy years, when many considered JFK a communist. They weren’t any different than they are now, and I don’t think they were any smaller percentage of the population either.
I look at Rush and Fox News as symptoms, rather than causes. I think what you are saying and I am saying may actually be fairly compatible, if perhaps from slightly different angles. Of course there has always been a subset here that has been, for lack of a better term, authoritarian. One of the questions that Alice Miller and a few other psychoanalytically oriented scholars (Adorno, and a few others from the Frankfurt School) tried to answer was: how does that pattern of living get started and how does it perpetuate? Their answers took them to those first few formative years, and then whatever cultural reinforcement is received afterwards.
On a personal note, I probably fit a lot of the demographic patterns of someone who should be right-wing, but got lucky – for whatever reason, my parents were somewhat liberal for their time and made a very conscious effort to avoid a lot of the physical and psychological abuse that one of them in particular experienced to a rather horrifying degree. How they came to their particular epiphany is unclear, and I am not sure they would be able to explain it, other than they wanted to be better parents, and had read a bunch of stuff by Benjamin Spock in the early 1960s. I tend to view humanity considerably more benignly because of those experiences I had in those early years – and my vague understanding of the research on attachment and some other facets of developmental psych research would offer (I hope) the data to go along with this particular personal testimonial.
Long story short – I think you’re basically right on the money. I’m merely trying to go into what might might lie beneath the surface a bit. For whatever it is worth.
two things:
I don’t want that to become Dems new talking point. Health care shouldn’t be about personal responsibility.
Exactly. Health care is a human right, and one that is non-negotiable.
I guess you’ve never heard the phrase “with rights come responsibilities.”
I believe health care is a human right, but we all have a responsibility to buy into it to make that happen. Human rights don’t just fall from heaven fully realized with no effort. Healthcare is unique in that it doesn’t work unless everyone is in the system. We all have a responsibility to participate, because if we don’t, the system can’t work and that “right” remains only on paper. This isn’t something politicians alone can do.
The same, by the way, goes for public schools.
In any case, by skipping this rhetorical tool, the dems are seriously missing out on some indie and low-info voters.
Health insurance isn’t health care. We can agree we should all be plugged into the system, but I don’t agree with using the “you’re a dead-beat by opting out” rhetorical tactics.
This was a conservative plan; we shouldn’t be adopting their rhetoric, too.
Good lord, it’s not conservative rhetoric to emphasize that we all, as a community, need to buy into our own country and that we should take responsibility for each other and ourselves. That’s a progressive view. The conservative view is “abandon ship.”
Your example is puzzling: generally liberals are not in favor of “dead beat dads” more than anyone else. Conservatives usually go after single moms.
All universal healthcare systems involve a system of insurance, whether it be a single state entity, or private entities. Someone is gathering the equivalent of a premium – in some countries it’s a tax or a set of taxes paid by various stakeholders – and someobody is figuring out how those “premiums” will cover the costs of care. Always, everyone needs to buy in for it to work, and always, it’s a system of shared risk. Insurance. You can’t deliver health care without it.
Too bad democrats don’t understand this. The heart of progressivism is a vision of shared responsibility.
Conservatives go after single-moms because they’re misogynist assholes and believe the single-mom put it on herself for opening her legs and not marrying a man and knowing her place (run-on). Plus, keeping the hetero-centric view of what “family” means is essential to the conservative paradigm. Don’t rely on government, rely on “family.”
Obama’s rhetoric of “we’re in this together” is a progressive value. Yelling at people about “personal responsibility” is not.
I think both uses of rhetoric are legitimate but it really depends on the context. When speaking to society at large “we’re in this together” probably works better than a lecture about “personal responsibility” that might be more appropriate for your 27 son that thinks he’s invincible. Both can be used as reinforcement towards a positive goal but common sense and a knowledge of the target should dictate which gets used.
Besides, adopting their rhetoric would be counter-productive. Not only would it fail to win converts (I’ve seen right-wing rhetoric used to advance left-wing ideals in the past, and seen it fail miserably), it is intellectually dishonest and likely to turn off those whose support you are supposed to be able to count on for your cause.
“Healthcare is unique in that it doesn’t work unless everyone is in the system. We all have a responsibility to participate, because if we don’t, the system can’t work … The same, by the way, goes for public schools.”
Actually it applies to a lot of things in human society, and this is one of the points that is least understood in Anglo-American culture (because of a concerted attempt to undermine it for several centuries).
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/commons_as_ideas
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure
And google
“tragedy of the commons”
Got any ideas about how to put them on furlough without pay?
Keep winning.
That’s really it. You can’t eliminate them. Just drive them back to the fringes where they can do less damage.
Yep. Keep winning, and they’ll sort themselves out.
I’ve been waiting for winning and moving forward again for 45 years.
What does it take to win? Because for two generations Democrats apparently haven’t been doing it.
And I’ve not seen the turn away from moving backward yet.
I have. The Dems appear united here. The public is blaming the GOP. And time (read: demographics) is on our side.
Next step: Dear God, I hope Hillary runs and absolutely steamrolls them.
The only way to make them listen is to beat them.
Also, the Tar Heels suck. 😉
Yes, part of me wants to mock them, too. And sometimes I do, but I have be very selective with what I say, how I say it and where I say it. And that is because I am surrounded by legions of these people who have been “marinating in this toxic stew” for a significant portion of my adult life. The depressing thing is that there does not seem to have been any ebb at all in this situation.
The doubling down on the crazy paranoia that we have seen occur on the national stage is also happening around here. The right wing information stream is wide open all the time, and it is as impervious to facts as it has ever been.
“People aren’t naturally this mixed up. “
Actually, I think they are. There is a huge diversity of human behavior, programmed in part by our genes. If you read Edmund Wilson, his thesis is that selfishness is a trait inherited from ancient species who lived alone and relied on their own wits to survive. The traits of generosity and altruism that we associate with “good” social behavior have been grafted into the genome more recently as we have come to live in groups. The fight between our selfish and social personal impulses is at the heart of the fight between repubs and dems, and this fight has also been going on in our genes for tens of thousands of years as we have evolved into social creatures who have learned to live together to improve our chances of survival.
TIL: Republicans are just not as evolved as Democrats
I suppose you’re joking, but I would never make a statement like that.
The genetic component that comes into play in our political views is something that is almost never talked about outside of academic circles. I find it a fascinating part of the larger political picture. But I’m just nerdy that way, I guess.
Yeah its obviously a very touchy subject, for good reason. But it’s fascinating stuff, and very informative, as long as you don’t take it too far.
We are still evolving, and that gives me great hope.
In large part, I think that is why trying to convince true Tea Party believers with factual arguments is a waste of time. They are likely hard-wired to hold their far right views. It isn’t something they have learned, it is something they were born with.
I’d have to agree. The best you can do is get them to stop bothering everyone else. They are a minority; if they were spread through the body politic more uniformly they would have little effect. I imagine that in Sweden, for instance, there is probably roughly the same percentage of people subscribing to a conservative point of view as here. Here the rethugs have concentrated them and given the really extreme minority antediluvian views a voice, which shifts them all rightward to some extent.
Yes, muting their ability to impact the machinations of our politics is probably the biggest victory one can hope for going forward. The genie has always been outside the bottle, but right now it is roaming among all of us and wreaking more havoc every day.
What the hell are you guys talking about? Sounds exactly like scientific racism to me.
Simply put, we are not born a blank slate.
I would never say we were born a blank state. But to go straight from that to what political views you hold, is extremely simplistic (and dangerous).
I think you are presuming that I am drawing a direct line in that regard. I am not. I am saying it is one component of what we are as a human being. There are many other factors that also influence what we eventually become.
BTW, not referring at all to racism.
Not intentionally. But the argument seems the same.
This stuff, I think:
logs.nytimes.com/2013/10/01/are-our-political-beliefs-encoded-in-our-dna/?_r=0
I’m saying there is a genetic component to human behavior. Is that politically incorrect?
There absolutely is a genetic component to human behavior! I see it to a striking extent with my own children. But to go straight from that to whom you vote for is a gross oversimplification.
I don’t think anyone went “straight from that to whom you vote for”.
What you said was “Republicans are just not as evolved as Democrats.” How does that differ, logically, from saying, e.g., “Jews are just not as evolved as Christians”, or “Blacks are just not as evolved as whites”? (Both of which have been said many times — as has the reverse, which is equally BS.)
Sorry, it was Clearskies that said that, I replied to the wrong comment.)
Clearskies said “Republicans are just not as evolved as Democrats.”
What you said was “Republicans are just not as evolved as Democrats.” How does that differ, logically, from saying, e.g., “Jews are just not as evolved as Christians”, or “Blacks are just not as evolved as whites”? (Both of which have been said many times — as has the reverse, which is equally BS.)
I share your frustration, however:
Here we go again– correct me if I’m wrong, but this appears to be a slam on reich wing media… “FAUX News is lying all the time and millions of people believe the lies!!”
Even if this baloney were true, there’s nothing anyone can do about it; it’s called the First Amendment.
The bigger problem than right wing, corporate media is the fact so many people are stupid and gullible enough to buy into their propaganda. I contend teh stupid was always there in our nation; it was not “created” or caused by right wing media.
One can argue right wing media reinforces teh stupid, but it does not cause it.
Yeah, it’s not just the right-wing media. It’s also political operatives like Karl Rove, Ralph Reed, etc. It’s a whole set of political institutions as well.
Yes, but let’s be clear: Tens of millions of people do not care about politics. they just do not. they do not vote. Thus whether or not they are brainwashed by media or political institutions is irrelevant.
Next, of the people who do, sort of care about politics, millions of them do not participate in bloggo world, they are not influenced by political institutions, because they don’t pay attention to them in the first place.
Finally, all of the “progressive” bloggo world hysteria/hyperbole over right wing media in 2012.. the notion hundreds of thousands of voters were being “won over to the dark side” by Faux News turned out to be total and utter BULLcrap.
the proof? Obama crushed Romney.
so let’s stop with the nonsense and hand-wringing about the “vast power and influence” of right wing media and political instituions. it’s the opposite side of the same stupid coin, i.e. clownservatives whining about “liberal media”.
I can offer you a different view. I live in Indiana and when I was in college in the late 60’s and early 70’s we had two WONDERFUL liberal senators, Birch Bayh and Vance Hartke. Vance was against the Vietnam war when he ran. It was close but he won. That is not a conservative state. I lived out of state for 30 yrs and now I’m back. I felt like I was entering a 3rd world country. I don’t know how long Fox and Limbaugh have been on the air, but they rule here and have shaped the minds of a generation of adults. There are real AK-47 toting loons around here. Indiana leads the charge on most of the conservative, stupid crap that states are doing. In the last local election there were only 4 Democrats running for ANY position. None for mayor. President Obama worked incredibly hard for this reelection and ran a brilliant organizing game. He’s dearly loved and positive people believe in him and work for him. At the state and local levels its a different story than national. It is not hand wringing. It’s absolutely sickening. I’m not telling you to be afraid at all. They are idiots. I’m saying it’s the platform of reality. See it and turn away to create what you want, but you are in a fantasy world if you don’t believe it doesn’t have an effect. You must live in a blue state or a blue area. Enjoy it a little bit extra for me would you?
Thanks for your take.. very well put. it just so happens I was born and raised in Indiana and live in an adjacent state now. So yeah, I know what Indiana conservatives are like.. my best friend’s mother was a classic example.
I remember the elder Bayh well and even wrote to him a couple of times when I was a kid. BTW, Evie Bayh is not the progressive his father was.
First, why would you come back to Indiana?
Regarding how conservative IN is now, I would say the bottom third/half of the state (possibly excluding Bloomington) are totally conservative and always have been. the northern half, northwestern corner of the state, in proximity of Chicago, is more progressive.
But yeah, I get it.. in 1992 Clinton won all of the Great Lakes states, except Indiana. they voted for Bush.
Regardless, I’m not buying that Faux News is solely responsible for growth of teh stupid/racists in Indiana or anywhere else. there are other major factors contributing to this, one of the major ones being our crappy economy and the death of the middle class, which actually began 25-30 years ago when middle class wealth stopped growing and started heading in the opposite direction.
What Suzanne said. Check especially the last paragraph.
And I think I get what you’re saying. Faux News is not solely responsible for what is going on. They, and other media outlets like them, are just the megaphone. There is a very well organized, very well funded propaganda campaign behind them. It’s been in place and working very hard since at least Reagan, and probably before that.
Literally. Propaganda. I’m not exagerating or speaking figurately. The Big Lie. Endless repetition and reinforcement in large segments of the media. All of the signs are there. Funded by people like the Koch brothers. I’m not sure who the real organizers are. Maybe some in the infamous think tanks, but I suspect most of them are just puppets. Like Rush and Beck and the talking idiots at Faux.
If you read what I wrote a little more carefully, you’ll notice that the toxic brew I describe involves their ministers as well as highly-targeted misinformation campaigns, so it isn’t all passively ingested through the media they choose to consume.
Understood, however– let’s say tomorrow we woke up and the “toxic brew” was gone.. poof! disappeared… Are you implying teh stupid would simply go away?
yeah, pretty much.
What I’m talking about isn’t ignorance or even a simple lack of intelligence.
I’m talking about people who are actively misinformed, who have been molded to be paranoid.
Take a slice of any population and you’ll find stupid and crazy people. But it doesn’t become the dominant culture unless someone really works on that population.
I’d don’t buy this genetic determinism others are discussing in this thread because you can be inclined to the right or left based on biology, but if that is all that mattered then every part of the country would have roughly the same political characteristics.
What’s going on here is that people are being actively harmed and turned into fucking morons, on purpose, by charlatans.
This has always gone on, but it seems to gone haywire in the digital age.
Wow. Where to begin?
First, you’re implying the people you think are being “harmed” (there’s no actual proof of this) are not in fact already stupid/biased/bigoted to begin with, and there is plenty of proof of that.
I’m not talking about genetic determinism; it simply is what it is. and no amount of media “telling the truth about the GOP” is going to change the minds of people that are entrenched against things like equal rights, etc.
Second, the notion numerous people are easily, readily swayed one way or the other by right wing media, political institution, etc. is insulting. You’re implying people are influenced only by the things you say are harmful, their politics aren’t based on other things like family, friends, religion, region, etc.
Third, your own bias, apparently reinforced by progressive bloggo world has you in denial regarding the proof your take on this is wrong– Obama crushed Romney in 2012. Obama crushed Romney in spite of all of the right wing TV/radio bullshit propaganda/lies.
If right wing media has this enormous power over voters, why did Obama win??
Fourth, you overlook the ON/OFF switch. You realize people have a choice, right?
I can’t argue with you.
If you simply ignore that I am blaming a certain strain of religion or that I am describing something that is heavily regional (exurban/rural, southern, Midwestern), then how can I defend my argument?
These megachurch preachers share blame with Rush Limbaugh and Roger Ailes, as well as with the Koch Brothers and the oil industry and other financiers of stupidity.
You aren’t arguing with me. You’re arguing with some imaginary set of statements that I never made.
I follow a couple of evangelical blogs. The majority of evangelicals are either ideologically opposed or think the whole package is the devil due to the contraception mandate which they equate to chemical abortions.
Evangelicals, fundamentalists in general can be dismissed outright.
for starters, they are totally in denial regarding the level of poverty in our nation and the obvious numerous problems that leads to.
I’ve been reading a little about what people/press were saying about FDR and it sounds exactly the same. Just substitute Keynan socialist for communist pinko and you got it. Certainly the rich said that, but there were plenty of common folks who did too. These are not new ideas. I grew up hearing my grandfather talk about the Jewish banker conspiracy to rule the world and more conspiracy theories than you could shake a stick at. A lot of the men in my family said the N word all the time. The KKK marched in my small town and I think it might have started here in Indiana. A sampling of my family: I have a brother who is a Bircher, a cousin who thinks Michelle Bachmann should be president and a nephew who is right wing church/far right GOP. They do not respond to logic and don’t care about facts. They just spin whatever the point is to fit their own view. I heard Libertarian crap when I was a kid and it sounded stupid to me then. These folks are set in their views and in a way of thinking that means they can create a world in their own heads that makes sense to them instead of having to do the work of looking at a world that is shades of gray instead of black and white. Where we have to make difficult choices and create something new from what we have been given. When I look at my family I see people who are insecure. I feel that way too, but I accept it, go on and just do the best I can.
As far as politics I notice that it gets the attention of the GOP when their Fox News bubble is confronted with calmly given opposing ideas and facts by enough people. They slither around to a new position. Reporters and media types are vulnerable to public opinion. Just like signing up voters, change may not happen in a day but by keeping on we shape the future just as other forces like Koch or Tea Party have been.
If these f*ing GOPer asshats weren’t in office we wouldn’t be discussing this issue so a paramount importance is voter reg, get ids, support people we like, don’t fight against people working for Dems we don’t like, just choose to focus on our causes and people and work together on a common end goal. We have a tide of dissatisfaction with the GOP and we can ride it and increase it to success in 2014. That’s how Unions organized and black and women citizens won the right to vote.
I’m such a peaceful person but I feel so incredibly angry now. What was it from the Godfather, going to the mattresses? That’s what I feel like now. Bring it. I will work for Dems and I want the GOP to go down and I will do whatever I can to make this happen.
Totally.
Paranoia?
Right-wingers?
You don’t say!
Someone posted this on this site, I believe, and I find it invaluable.
Have a read. It’s short, to the point, and you can basically see that our Tea Party nuts are just American nuts that have been periodically falling off the tree since the beginning of this country.
Tea Party = Birchers.
http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/conspiracy_theory/the_paranoid_mentality/the_paranoid_style.html
Yes! Hofstadter’s essay on the paranoid style in American politics is one of those must-reads that continues to be relevant five decades on.
The Hofstader essay has had a lot of influence, and obviously it contains a lot of truth. But unfortunately it’s also had a negative influence. To see why, you might want to read the following review:
http://www.ctka.net/reviews/cta.html
very interesting, thanks for posting this link
The Hofstader essay has had a lot of influence, and obviously it contains a lot of truth. But unfortunately it’s also had a negative influence. To see why, you might want to read the following review:
http://www.ctka.net/reviews/cta.html
They deserve nothing but ridicule. Look at these idiots:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=3774533
They’ve got no idea what they’re up against.
Yesterday afternoon on the radio somebody said that in a recent poll 25% of Americans FAVORED the shutdown.
That woman murdered yesterday by the DC cops?
I’m waiting to find out she was a devout Republican committed to the shutdown whose husband was out of work, or who was out of work herself, because of it and blamed Obama and the Democrats for all her troubles.
Sound like a reasonable guess?
Our fellow Americans have not mellowed a bit over the last century, so far as I can tell.
Stoessel, Kristol, and others are urging that the shutdown continue and be doubled down with a flat refusal to raise the debt ceiling.
They know what they’re doing.
They really are willing to drive the country over a cliff to kill progressivism.
And if they win they will paint themselves as heroes and attribute the disaster to stubborn resistance from evil progressive fanatics, comparable to devotees of Hitler taking all of Germany down with them.
You said they’re wrong about everything but then your account shows they basically get it, but have values opposite to ours.
Perverse, sure, but not stupid and not mistaken about the actual facts, either.
read the study.