It's Not _____________ When We Do It!

Donald Trump banned from RedState over menstruation jibe at Megyn Kelly

Aw...were their feelings hurt? Are they are all PC and shit now?

Sheesh...what a bunch of hypocrites. So much for the "outrage" over everyone being offended all the time:)

Debate A Go Go

Lots of post debate analysis out there. Here are a few of my favorites...

Fear That Debate Could Hurt G.O.P. in Women’s Eyes

Ya think? It will never cease to amaze me how conservatives play the victim card and blame the media for the ACTUAL WORDS THAT COME OUT OF THEIR FUCKING MOUTHS. Save Carly Fiorina, none of the GOP nominees will get the female vote. I thought they were going to try to fix that after 2012.

FactChecking the GOP Debate, Late Edition

Darn those pesky fact checkers!! Reality has a well known liberal bias...

If you listened closely Thursday night, several Republican candidates let some heresies slip out.

Indeed:)

Hillary Clinton Can’t Stop Laughing At Dumbass Republicans 

I wonder how much she wants Trump to be the nominee...:)

Fox News panel blasts Trump’s debate complaints

Are they serious wondering why Trump is so high in the polls right now?

Think about the personality of Donald Trump and how that represents the characteristics of the GOP base. Trump is angry, hateful and peddles fear on a consistent basis. His behavior is similar to that of an adolescent bully and is most aristocratic, believing firmly in a hierarchical structure for society where the wealthy and privileged few lord over the peasants (see also: the Antebellum South). These are all traits that exemplify people in the GOP base and it's exactly why he is ahead in the polls.

More importantly, Trump is a "have"...a mega wealthy person who GOP voters...the "soon to haves"...believe will someday be them if they just pull themselves up by their bootstraps. That is, of course, if the federal government, liberals, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and the gun grabbers don't foil them in their quest to be just like The Donald.

Someone Please Notice Mike Huckabee

With the GOP clown car filled up to max cap, Mike Huckabee needed to do something to get noticed. This task was especially difficult given the Donald's suckage of all of the air out the room. So, he offered up some right wing blog commenting porn and compared Barack Obama to Adolph Hitler.

I was not offended by what he said as many others are now pretending to be in the media. For me, it was simply another shining example of the type of people are country has to deal with on a daily basis. They start with a straw man (Obama is helping Iran) and then sashay into appeal to fear (Obama is helping Iran kill Jews). They top it off with a false equivalency (Obama is helping Iran kill Jews like Hitler!). This tactic works every time for the audience he is targeting: the GOP base.

Conservatives become more animated when anger, hate and fear are all involved.

Another Right Wing Nut Job

AP News is reporting that John Houser, the shooter at the theater in Louisiana, was a right wing nut job.

In the 1990s, he frequently appeared on a local television call-in show, advocating violence against people involved in abortions, said Calvin Floyd, who hosted the morning show on WLTZ-TV in Columbus, Georgia. Houser also espoused other radical views, including his opposition to women in the workplace. Floyd described Houser as an "angry man" who made "wild accusations" about all sorts of topics, and said he put him on to counter a Democratic voice because "he could make the phones ring."

I could have seen that one coming from a mile away. As soon as I heard "white man in his late 50s," his ideology was obvious. The question is...why was it so easy for him to still own a gun? Given the failure of Manchin Toomey to pass and the relaxed gun laws in the South, he clearly didn't have any trouble figuring out some sort of loophole.

Ilooks like his wife hid his guns and his family had him committed at one point. I'm calling on all wives of Gun Cultists to do the same. You never know when your husband might snap.

Force. Period

The Confederate Flag came down today in South Carolina and I'm certain that plenty of people out there are taking it as some sort of victory. It's nothing of the sort. In fact, it reminds me a lot of the way conservatives argue. They set the battle line somewhere on the 5 or 10 yard line on the right side of the field and then "compromise" at the 35 yard line on the right side of the field. Sorry, fuckers, but that ain't gonna cut it with me.

The simple fact that it was up this long is an absolute insult. The Civil War was won 150 years ago and the people that are keeping the Confederacy alive (see: the current form of the GOP base, the Tea Party, Right Wing Bloggers, Gun Rights Douchebags) should be considered in a state of insurrection and in violation of the Constitution. Their constant whining and adolescent rebellion requires what every child throwing a temper tantrum needs: a firm hand.

I'd start with cutting off federal money to the areas of the country that bitch the most about the federal government. The Deep South is a start followed by Texas and Arizona. Cut off their fucking allowance and, like teenagers, see how long they last. In addition, I think that the people who claim they want to improve the gun laws in this country should change their tactics. You can't bring a limp noodle and milktoast to a gun fight. The Gun Cult are assholes and they're armed. How has America dealt with people like this in the past?

Force. Period.

After all, isn't that exactly what they preach when it comes to countries like Iran or Russia and groups like ISIL? The only thing militants understand is force so begin to apply it. The next time there is a shooting at a school, the next group of families that have to suffer as a result of assholes' insecurity and control freak/power syndromes should park a tank on the steps of the NRA headquarters plastered with photos of all their dead children. They should pool their resources with other families who have lost loved ones to gun violence and hire a Blackwater type security team to fuck with gun rights people...in the same way they fuck with Islamic extremists. I'm sure Michael Bloomberg has the money:)

It took the deaths of 9 people in a massacre to pull down a stupid ass flag. Given just how giant of assholes these people are, it's going to take a lot more for serious and substantive change. I mean, we didn't ask kindly with the Nazis, now did we?

I Wonder Which Party And Ideology They Belong To...

Charleston Church Shooter Dylan Roof Receives $4 Million Dollars in Donations From Supporters

Update: This story has been proven false by Snopes. 

I am very happy to be wrong!!

Looking Forward To The GOP Debates

So, I posted this question on Quora...

...and the best answer I have ever seen was posted. In addition to this being the best answer I have ever seen, it's also one of the finest examples of satire I have ever seen. Here it is in its entirety...

The questions was how exactly are Christians under attack in the United States?

I'll tell you how: 

1. Churches in the USA are regularly burned down by atheists, Muslims, and other anti-Christians, and the secular law enforcement agencies here won't even investigate. That's why you rarely see a church that can be identified as a church in the US. Mostly, Christians meet in hidden locations to avoid detection. 

2. It's almost impossible for Christians to get elected to public office. As soon as word gets out that a candidate is Christian, s/he can kiss that election good-bye. 

3. The Bible has been banned in the United States. You can't get it here legally, and if you're caught with one you'll go to prison. 

4. Christian kids live in fear of their schoolmates discovering they're Christian, because it's bound to lead to teasing, bullying, even getting beaten up. 

5. All broadcasting of Christian views has been censored. Try as you might, you will not find a Christian radio or TV station in the US. They do not exist. 

6. Christian holidays are forbidden. You'll never hear a peep about Christmas or Easter in the US -- people are simply too afraid to openly celebrate these holidays. Which is a shame for people like me because there would be oodles of marketing opportunities around those events, but alas, no. 

7. All Christian symbols are banned. You cannot find Christian jewelry, bumper stickers, t-shirts, or anything like that in the US. 

8. Christians who dare reveal their identity, or who are even suspected of being Christian, are regularly beaten in the streets by angry mobs. And again, the secular law enforcement here does nothing to stop it. 

9. Christians in America are forced to publicly deny their faith, and to perform public actions to prove they are not Christian, such as being forced into a gay marriage. The alternative is life in prison, or execution. 

10. People who are openly Christian here cannot own a business, are harassed at the voting booth so that many do not even attempt to vote, are subjected to special taxes no one else has to pay, and must have a cross stamped on their driver licenses, Social Security cards, and passports. 

In short, America is a brutal and frightening place if you're a Christian. I wouldn't go there if I were you.

The answer has gotten over 3,000 views already with my question over 8,000 views. No wonder...it's completely brilliant and makes conservative Christians look fucking ridiculous.

The only thing that is under attack is the ability of a conservative Christian (see also, fucking hypocrites) to force their opinion on the rest of Christianity. That's what they are really pissed off about.

We are calling them on their bullshit.

Christians Under Attack?

I think there are several reasons why conservatives like to play the victim as detailed here by Bill Maher. The main one is they generate support by fomenting anger, hate and fear. What better way to do it then the garbage Bill points out?

'Tis a bizarre world in which they live. I'm very, very glad I don't go through life constantly feeling persecuted and under attack. Oh well...at least they have guns to fight off the imaginary monsters:)

The Republican Brain Part Five: Smart Idiots

The next section of Chris Mooney's book, The Republican Brain, is called "Smart Idiots" and it's honestly one of the most depressing sections of the book. It begins with a study of why motivated reasoning, which we talked about last time, occurs in individuals. Dan Kahan, a law professor at Yale, has a classification system based on how people reason with their moral and political values. Imagine a Cartesian plane like this one:

Now, imagine that the X Axis is a measure of individualism on the right and communitarians on the left. With the Y Axis, imagine egalitarians on the bottom and hierarchicals on the top. Broadly speaking, Kahan discovered that US conservatives are in Quadrant 1 (individual, hierarchical) and US liberals are in Quadrant 3 (communitarian, egalitarian). It's important to note here that individuals are really scattered all over the place and we're just talking about general groups.

Still, this explains so much to me personally. I've always wondered how a group of people who are so obsessed with individual rights are also so authoritarian. Now we know. They believe that a chief organizing principle for society is hierarchies, with the "right" people at the top. With so many US conservatives from the South, this clearly goes back to the Antebellum and all of its mythical structures.

So, how do these classifications apply to the issues of the day? One of Kahan's studies took groups of people and had them imagine helping a friend make a decision about three important topics: whether global warming is caused by human beings, whether nuclear wasted can be stored safely underground, and whether letting people carry guns either deters violent crime or worsens it.  The study subjects were then shown fake excerpts from a variety of "experts" on each topic.

The results were very telling. Only 23% of individual-hierarchicals agreed that any of the experts knew what they were talking about while 88% of communitarian-egalitarians accepted the experts as being knowledgeable and trustworthy. Right here is that instant and most adolescent reaction to people who are in authority and knowledgeable of which I always speak. Why? I simply don't get it. Are they that insecure about themselves?

What tends to happen in examinations of these issues is what Mooney calls the "My Expert v Your Expert" battle. Even worse....

When they deny global warming, then, conservatives think the best minds are actually on their side. They think THEY'RE the champions of truth and reality; and they're deeply attached to this view. That is why head-on attempts to persuade them usually fail. Indeed, factual counterarguments sometimes even trigger what has been termed the backfire effect: Those with the most strongly held but clearly incorrect beliefs not only fail to change their minds, but hold their wrong views more tenaciously after being shown contradictory evidence or a refutation.

This is very key information to have when having a discussion with a conservative these days. Remember, they feel like they are under physical attack. If they have very strongly held views, it will be worse due to the backfire effect.

Now, what's interesting about the backfire effect is that applies to conservatives only. Brendan Nyhan of Dartmouth and Jason Reifler of Georgia State found that when conservatives were shown more and more evidence that Saddam Hussein did not have WMDs and that tax cuts do not increase revenue, they were MORE likely to believe the claim than before. I can personally attest to tax cut-revenue BS sadly being valid. Yet, when liberals were shown evidence in the same study that refuted claims that George W Bush "banned" embryonic stem cell research (he never did), liberals didn't backfire. They weren't more likely to believe the claim and, in fact, wavered more given the new information.

What this tells us quite simply is that liberals are generally more reflective and tend to be more open to new information. Consider the basic definitions of each word in objective reality

liberal: not opposed to new ideas or ways of behaving that are not traditional or widely accepted

conservative: not liking or accepting changes or new ideas

I'm always willing to accept valid, unbiased and verifiable data regardless of whether or not it supports my ideology. I am speaking of information that the cold and rational part of the brain can analyze. I haven't seen any such data from conservatives on most of the issues I discuss and quite honestly dismiss nearly all of it as wacky, ideological nonsense. Speaking of which...

The split over whether Iraq had the touted

 "WMD," and whether Saddam and Osama were frat buddies, represented a true turning point in the relationship between our politics and objective reality. In case you missed it: Reality lost badly. Conservatives and Republicans were powerfully and persistently wrong, following a cherished leader into a war based on false premises-and then, according to these studies, finding themselves unable to escape the quagmire of unreality even after several years had passed.

The "cherished leader" line echoes what I have said previously about President Bush and conservatives. He was their savior...their white knight... yet, on his watch, we suffered the worst attack on our home soil in history, a city fell into the sea, and the economy collapsed. By any metric in objective reality, he was a colossal failure. Much of the anger toward Barack Obama comes from the massive cognitive dissonance occurring within their brains.

At this point, we come to the most depressing part of the chapter and the origin of its title. Mooney posits that there is a "smart idiots" effect when it comes to many of these issues. One would think that the more educated a person is, the easier it is for them to accept objective reality. In fact, the opposite is true. It is because they are extremely intelligent that they can come up with intricate counter arguments and employ confirmation bias to convince themselves that their belief system is solid. Never was this more true than with global warming.

Humans, since the industrial revolution, have been burning more and more fossil fuels to power their societies, and this has led to a steady accumulation of greenhouse gases, and especially carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere. At this point, very simple physics takes over, and you are pretty much doomed, by what scientists refer to as the "radiative" properties of carbon dioxide molecules (which trap infrared heat radiation would otherwise escape into space), to have a warming planet. Since about 1995, scientists have not only confirmed that this warming is taking place,  but have also grown confident that it has, like the gun in a murder mystery, our fingerprint on it. Natural fluctuations, although they exist, can't explain what we are seeing. The only reasonable verdict is that humans did it, in the atmosphere, with their cars and smokestacks.

This is a great example of objective reality and thankfully one that is more reliable than people, especially the educated ones. Pew polls over the years have shown that Democrats accept this objective reality and Republicans do not. Worse, the more educated a Republican is, the more likely he is to reject the theory of man caused global warming. Astonishing...

Mooney offers further explanation of why this is the case. Even smart conservatives, for example, chiefly consume conservative news sources like Fox News. So, like anyone else, they are being conditioned. The more intelligent they are, the more resistant which does hold some good news for the rest of us in objective reality. We can, at least, attempt to persuade the less intelligent conservatives because the studies and the data show that they are easier to persuade.

What's even more vexing about this is that Kahan's studies sprinkled in other questions that were scientifically based but not very political. Nearly all respondents, despite their cultural background, answered the question with their colder and more rational System 2 brain. In fact, those who scored higher on the non political scientific questions but were individual-hierarchical distrusted climate science in greater numbers. Stunning!!

One big takeaway from all of this is the liberal line of "educate more people" needs to be retired. Becoming more knowledgeable will actually make it worse so the old idea about converting people with more education needs to go away forever. It won't work. They will just get worse.

In wrapping up this first section of the book, "Politics, Facts, and Brains,"  Mooney warns...

Motivated reasoning poses a deep challenge to the ideal of Jeffersonian democracy, which assumes that voters will be informed about the issues-not deeply wedded to misinformation. We're divided enough about politics as it is, without adding irreconcilable views about the nature of reality on top of that. 

Add in all of the new media of the last two decades and it truly exacerbates the problem.

The next section of the book is called "The Nature Hypothesis: Dangerous Certainty." It looks to be an even deeper explanation of the problem which is sort of a drag. At this point, I'd like to get to some solutions on how to go forward!

Same Number of Liberals As Conservatives

Gallup has been seeing some interesting polling numbers lately. First there was the abortion poll and now they have one that says, for the first time in their polling history, there are just as many people who identify as liberal as there are who identify as conservative.

“The broad trend has been toward a shrinking conservative advantage, although that was temporarily interrupted during the first two years of Barack Obama’s presidency,” Gallup noted. “Since then, the conservative advantage continued to diminish until it was wiped out this year.” It also seems to be affecting people who identify as Republican: only 53% of respondents said their views were socially conservative, “the lowest in Gallup’s trend”, and correlates with a rise in self-identified socially moderate Republicans (34%).

Hmm...I wonder why:)

Great Words

From a question on Quora...

It sounds likely, though I hope Mooney remembered to point out that such a reaction applies to anyone at any point on the political spectrum, not just Republicans. As a bit of anecdotal support--I used to be registered as a Republican. It was the intransigence, the belligerence, and--as badly as I hate to say it--the racism present in some members of the Republican Party when President Obama was elected that drive me away. 

I am now registered as "Unaffiliated" ... but when a friend of mine started making the argument (during the campaign, and before I changed my registration) that there were racist elements in the Republican Party, it felt like a gut-punch.

I wish there were more conservatives like this guy!

The Republican Brain Part Four: Denying Minds

The next section in Chris Mooney's book, The Republican Brain, is called "Denying Minds." Recall my last post on this subject in which we examined the Marquis de Condorcet and his failing to recognize that having more factual information available doesn't always mean that reason will win. More avenues of data does not equal greater acceptance. Clear refutations of false claims does not mean they will be discredited and prevented from hanging around like zombie lies (e.g. supply side economics, tax cuts increase revenue etc). Why?

To understand exactly how the human brain denies facts, Mooney turns to the example of the Seekers. The Seekers were a UFO cult that were studied by a social psychologist named Leon Festinger in the 1950s. They believed that on a specific date, a UFO was going to come rescue them and take them away. When that day came and they weren't taken away, Festinger took great pains to note how all members of the group were able to change their story, even in the face of overwhelming evidence, so their belief system continued unabated. He dubbed what they experienced cognitive dissonance.

Cognitive dissonance is the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time, or is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas, or values. Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance focuses on how humans strive for internal consistency. An individual who experiences inconsistency (dissonance) tends to become psychologically uncomfortable, and is motivated to try to reduce this dissonance—as well as actively avoid situations and information likely to increase it.

This is exactly what happens to conservatives when they are confronted with information that is psychologically uncomfortable. They avoid situations and information that makes this sense of discomfort continue. Like the Seekers, they goalpost shift when their now completely refuted claims meet their demise. All too often, the goalpost shift takes the form of a personal attack against the person who refuted their claim. This makes complete sense because they feel themselves feel like they are under attack.

Worse, they table turn and, in typical adolescent fashion, they accuse liberals of having cognitive dissonance and goal post shifting. I've always seen this as simple and rudimentary reaction-a dodge to avoid responsibility. On certain issues, liberals do experience cognitive dissonance on certain issues (corporations, nuclear power, GMOS etc) but not to the degree that right wing bloggers and commenters claim they do. Conservatives have such a large collection of prior beliefs and commitments that cognitive dissonance is much more acute with them. So, when facts disrupt their lives, they seek to achieve consistency as a protection mechanism. This is what Festinger discovered that the Seekers did when their prophecy failed to come true.

Mooney notes that similar things happen with smokers who rationalize their habit. "It keeps me thin" or "I'll quit when my looks don't matter so much." I think this type of denial occurs every day within the Gun Cult. "Accidents won't happen to me. I'm responsible. So are all my gun buddies." "We aren't responsible for other people's stupidity." And so on...

Mooney notes...

Neuroscientists now know that the vast majority of the brain's actions occur subconsciously and automatically. We are only aware of a very small fraction of what the brain is up to-some estimates suggest about 2 percent. In other words, not only do we feel before we think-but most of the time, we don't even reach the second step. And even when we get there, our emotions are often guiding our reasoning.

That's why I've always been amused by conservatives who caterwaul about "feeling" liberals and "rational, thinking" consservatives." Once again, they head off at the pass, table turn, and redirect any attention away from what is really going on with them...an emotional reaction driven by cognitive dissonance. In essence, we are talking about motivated reasoning. People tend to believe information that fits within their psychological make up (nature AND nurture...physiology and environment and there is scientific evidence that proves that they do this.

So why do people behave like this? Why do conservatives do it more often? Mooney notes that what is really going on here is a response by our primitive brain (subcortex, the limbic regions) that ends up overwhelming our more evolved, rational brain. These are the areas that deal with emotional and automatic responses whose purpose has been to keep us safe from danger for so many millenia. The newer parts of the brain (prefrontal cortex) that controls abstract reasoning never really kicks into gear because of the rapid response of the primitive brain. Frustratingly, these newer parts of the brain are responsible for mankind's greatest innovations yet they rarely "drive the show," as Mooney puts it. Perhaps it's simply a matter of convenience or we have become too lazy but we don't stop to really think things out.

System 1, the older system, governs our rapid fire emotions; System 2 refers to our slower moving, thoughtful, and conscious processing of information. It's operations, however, aren't necessarily free of emotion or bias. Quite the contrary: System 1 can drive System 2. Before you are even aware you are reasoning, your emotions may have set you on a course of thinking that is highly skewed, especially on a topic you care a great deal about.

So, the spreading activation occurs after the emotional response and reason is often overwhelmed. Again, the example of the Gun Cult applies here. Their primitive brain is driving the show and they are not taking the time to think rationally about the fallout from their ideology. They worry about piles of dead bodies in a gun free zone and completely fail to recognize the mounting piles of dead bodies every year with out of date gun laws...completely irrational and highly rooted in just such a spreading activation.

Here's another example of how this plays out.

Consider a conservative Christian who has just heard about a new scientific discovery-a new hominid finding, say, confirming our evolutionary origins-that deeply challenges something he or she believes ("human beings were created by God;" "the book of Genesis is literally true"). What happens next, explains Stony Brook University political scientific Charles Taber, is a subconscious negative (or "affective") response to the threatening new information-and that response, in turn, guides the type of memories and associations that are called into the conscious mind based on a network of emotionally laden associations and concepts. "They retrieve thoughts that are consistent with their previous beliefs" says Taber, "and that will lead them to construct or build an argument and challenge what they are hearing."

We see this on a daily basis with the president's policies. Every time he succeeds at something, the motivated reasoning wheels start to click into place for conservatives. Suddenly, an improving economy becomes the fucking apocalypse with their primitive brain driving the whole thing.

What this means is that conservative aren't reasoning, they are rationalizing. They aren't being scientists, they are being lawyers. They are winning the case within themselves by giving in to confirmation bias, offering greater weight to information (Fox News, right wing blogs etc) that bolsters our beliefs. They also give in to disconfirmation bias by hungrily trying to debunk any other information that interferes with their belief system.

So when good arguments threaten core belief systems. something very different happens as opposed to the reaction to the statement "2+2=5." The primitive brain doesn't come into play because there is no emotional response. We logically conclude error. We don't suffer from Francis Bacon's "idols of the mind." We are indeed capable of "cold" reasoning but all too often, this doesn't happen.

Mooney notes how this develops over one's lifetime. We are driven personally in how our brains were made (nature) and how we were brought up. We are driven beyond our own identity to hang out with people who think the same way we do. For conservatives, this is very deeply true. The beliefs that come out of this are physical, mind you, and not some floating entity next to their bodies. When they are attacked, it's no different than a physical assault. This is a very key point that everyone must understand when debating conservatives these days. It's no different than if someone invaded their home and threatened them.

And it explains so much. Now we can begin to understand why they take the positions they do. They favor loose gun regulation because they want to protect themselves. They favor tough immigration laws because they want to protect themselves. They want less government because they want to protect themselves. Consider every position they hold and ask this question...are they simply trying to protect themselves? Is that why they are being so irrational? The answer is yes. Now, I truly understand the motivation behind all the personal attacks I've experienced over the years. I am fucking up their shit and they view me (and all other liberals, really) as an invader threatening their way of life.

More importantly, we can understand, through scientific evidence, why this occurs more often with conservatives than with liberals. At the end of the chapter, Mooney notes Drew Westen's of Emory University's study on strong political personalities and their reaction to information that directly challenges their views. Westen presented respondents with an example of Bush flip flopping on something and Kerry flip flopping on something. Conservatives bent overbackwards to excuse the former and filet the later. Liberals did the reverse. Yet, Westen noted that Democrats were more likely to see hypocrisy in their own candidate and Republicans were less likely to see it in their candidate. The authors conclusion?

A small but significant tendency to reason more biased conclusions regarding Bush than Democrats did towards Kerry.

And while all of this was happening, respondents were having their brains scanned. None of them were using parts of the brain associated with cold and logical thinking. All of them were using the regions associated with emotional processing and psychological defense. As Mooney notes,

These people weren't solving math problems. They were committing the emotional equivalent of beating their chests.

The Republican Brain Part Three: A Dream Ever Failing

In the prelude to the first section of his book, The Republican Brain, Chris Mooney laments a lost dream.

The dream was that the power of human reason would eventually stamp out lies, prejudices, and falsehoods, delivering a truly enlightened society. It would be a society in which ideologically driven misinformation would gradually decline or disappear, vanquished and chased from the public sphere by rational arguments (like mine). It would be a society in which everybody could agree on the core facts about the world, especially those that matter to public policy and the future.

Truly, a fantasy world today given how fiercely conservatives avoid core facts and rational arguments. In fact, their rallying principle is to fight against them with their own version of reality and far too many people follow along. Worse, they "turn the tables" and say that it's the Democrats who aren't rational, truly killing this dream or a rational world.

But this dead dream didn't just recently die. It has been dying all along human history. Mooney cites the example of Marquis de Condorcet as an excellent illustration of this idealism. Condorcet was a passionate philosopher during the Age of Enlightenment. He hung out with Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. Like all the great thinkers of this time, he championed the science of society and a society of social mathematics. He predicted a world that where reason and facts win out. He saw the villains of this world as dictators and priests and the heroes were the scientists and the innovators.

As Mooney notes...

...free inquiry and critical thinking-"that spirit of doubt which submits facts and proofs to severe rational scrutiny"-must prove unstoppable. It's virtually a law of nature. In the long run, our better faculties will enable not only the expression of human reason, but the creation of political system based upon universal human rights, social contracts, majority rule, and so on-precisely the sort of constitution Condorcet tried to establish in France as the terror descended. 

The terror, of course, being the French Revolution. As Condorcet vainly tried to instill this philosophy in the new constitution, angry and hateful men (the Jacobins) rebelled against this rationality. Of course, Condorcet believed that if he got the word out about his type of society, through widespread dissemination via the printing press, rationality would "stamp out" wacky, ideological nonsense. Imagine what Condorcet would have thought about the internet and social media!

What he didn't realize was that the wider nets of communication allowed many other messages to mix in with the rational ones. Further, he neglected to understand that the human mind, in capturing these irrational messages, might be affected by them. The human mind had indeed progressed but, at its base, it was still primitive. So, the question is...how does this happen?

More importantly, what are the facts regarding why we deny facts? Science doesn't always persuade us let alone mere facts. Education doesn't really help either. Even having more information means that there are many more instances to twist reality and skew the facts. Why? What is the science about why we deny science?

This is what Mooney will be exploring in the next section of the book and the topic of my next post in this series.

The Republican Brain Part Two: Liberal Denial and A New Framework

A few weeks ago, I was talking with a guy I know from the club the other day about the military. He served in Vietnam and we always like to discuss history as we pump iron. I mentioned to him that the Pentagon these days has their eyes on the larger threat of climate change and the implications it presents for destabilization around the world.

He instantly became enraged and began to caterwaul about how it was all made up, a hoax etc....the usual response that comes from a plethora of right wing propaganda. I tried to explain to him that the science was solid but he would have none of it. I walked away in frustration, as I invariably do when I try to let facts pierce the bubble, and wondered what I could have said differently to change his mind. Since that time, I have been reading Chris Mooney's book, The Republican Brain and, as the rest of the introduction shows us, I failed to recognize key traits of the conservative brain,.

In short, I was a liberal in denial.

As seen in my first post about Mooney's book, the distribution of falsehoods is not equal or symmetrical across the political spectrum. As Mooney puts it, "It's not that liberals are never wrong or biased...it's that political wrongness is clustered among Republicans, conservatives, and especially Tea Partiers." Worse,

Insanity has been defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome and that's precisely where our country stands now with regard to conservative denial of reality.

Sadly, we have been trained to "equivocate" by the media and, indeed, our culture at large. In order for us to move forward, non conservatives have to end this behavior immediately. Why?

The cost of this assault on reality is dramatic. Many of these falsehoods affect lives and have had-or will have-world changing consequences. And more dangerous than any of them is the utter erosion of a shared sense of what's true-which they both generate and perpetuate.

No doubt. The falsehoods regarding guns, detailed on this site, are directly responsible for thousands of deaths from gun violence every year. What are some other patently wrong ideas? Here are a few from pages 4-5 of the book.

1. The Affordable Care Act-government takeover, death panels, increase federal budget deficit, cut Medicare benefits, subsidize abortions, health care for illegal immigrants.

2. Abortion increases risk of breast cancer and mental disorders

3. The Iraq War-Saddam had WMDs.

4. Economics-Tax cuts increase government revenue 

5. Science-Climate change is a hoax, evolution not accepted by 43 percent of conservatives

As Bill Maher would put it, these are all Zombie Lies. They keep coming back...again and again, and as they do, Mooney warns...

Errors and misconceptions like these can have momentous consequences. They can ruin lives, economies, countries, and planets. And today, it is clearly conservatives-much more than liberals-who reject what is true about war and peace, health and safety, history and money, science and government.

In other words, political conservatives have placed themselves in direct conflict with modern scientific knowledge, which shows beyond serious question that global warming is real and caused by humans, and evolution is real and the cause of humans. If you don't expect either claim, you cannot possibly understand the world or our place in it.

Now that we have established that this is the case with today's conservative, we have to understand why the believe what they do. This is the road map to where Mooney will be going with the rest of the book. Half of the explanation lies with what Mooney calls the environmental reason or the "nurture" aspect of conservative development. In a nutshell, the GOP did what it had to do to get ahead. They embraced the religious right and corporate interests that directly conflict with the obvious solutions to the list above. Conservative culture arose out of these interests and this is how they are weened as they develop.

Further, they reacted to the 1960s counter culture movement in classic fashion, deriding "too much change, too much pushing of equality, and too many attacks on traditional values-all occurring too fast." If you put baby in a corner, a right wing authoritarian emerges:)

Of course, this doesn't account for the psychological side of the equation which is the other half of the explanation for why conservatives believe as they do. The conservative platform offers a solution to this way too fast change that hits people on a deeply psychological level. As Mooney puts it, "it's something certain in a changing world; wanting to preserve one's own ways in uncertain times, and one's one group in the face of difference." Ideology is, after all, deeply personal and emotional so, naturally, it's directly tied to psychology.

I've written about this many times. This need arises from fear as one ages. Personal, physical failings stoke the fires of blame for the outside world. This, in turn, leads to that adolescent behavior and a desire to live life like we used to "back in the day." I always chuckle about this when some of my conservative friends wax nostalgic about eating what they want, not wearing a helmet, and being gone all day playing when they were kids. This is a direct response to fear of getting old and dying. There's a reason we don't do these things anymore....because we have progressed and evolved to live a higher quality of life!

Mooney then explains how this path will not be one of reductionism (conservatives are like this because their psychology...blah blah blah). The path will be one of determinism, encompassing all of the aspects that human beings deal with on a daily basis in their interactions with an emphasis on psychological reactions. This path must explore all the variables that lead to why conservatives are more closed, fixed and certain in their views and why liberals tend to be more open, flexible, curious and nuanced. On page 12, he issues the following warning...

[Conservatives]...won't like hearing that they're often wrong and dogmatic about it, so they may dogmatically resist this conclusion. They may also try to turn the tables and pretend liberals are the close minded ones, ignoring volumes of science in the process.

Turn the tables? Conservatives? Nah....:)

With the foundation now more or less set, the core reason for that path we are about to take is then revealed by Mooney. Regarding liberals,

On the one hand, we're absolutely outraged by partisan misinformation. Lies about death panels. Obama is a Muslim. Climate change denial. Debt ceiling denial. These things drive us crazy, in large part because we can't comprehend how such intellectual abominations could possibly exist. I can't tell you how many times I've heard a fellow liberal say, "I can't believe the Republicans are so stupid they can believe X!"

And not only are we enraged by lies and misinformation; we want to refute them-to argue, argue, argue about why we are right and Republicans are wrong. Indeed, we often act as though right wing misinformation's defeat is nigh, if we could just make people wise and more educated (just like us) and get them the medicine that is correct information. 

In this, we both underestimate conservatives, and we fail to understand them.

Stunning. Remind you of anyone?:)

These passages led me to serious reflection. Eventually, the facts will win but how long will that take simply because liberals are in denial about the nature/nurture of conservatives? How many more people will suffer simply because liberals are stuck thinking that facts alone will change things..that we fail to note "how people work," as Mooney puts it? I've started down this path somewhat, I suppose, when I talk about gun violence. The Gun Cult won't change until they are personally affected very deeply by tragedy. But this isn't enough.

So what are the basics of how conservatives work?

So it's not that Schlafly, or other conservatives are stupid or can't make an argument. Rather, the problem is that when Schafly makes an argument, it's hard to believe that it has anything to do with real intellectual give and take. He's not arguing out of an openness to changing his mind. He's arguing to reaffirm what he already thinks (his "faith"), to defend the authorities he trusts, and to bolster the beliefs of his compatriots, his tribe, his team.

This paragraph pretty much sums up every blog discussion with conservative commenters for fucking ever!! This is exactly the motivation behind conservatives' arguments and why they behave and think the way they do. This is how they work. By denying this reality, liberals are helping to perpetuate the erosion of country. We must understand this is the place from where they define themselves.

We need a new strategy and the rest of Mooney's book details such a new strategy. I'm looking forward to the answers that he's going to offer because, while I'm please with the progress we have made since the president took office, we obviously have a much longer way to go. We can get there if we have a deeper understanding of how the conservative really operates and functions.

The New Hampshire Cattle Call

In looking at the cattle call last weekend in New Hampshire for the GOP, it's very clear that the Republicans have too many fucking people running for president. Politico has their takeaways, of course, but I didn't see a mention of the sheer number of candidates.

Cruz, Paul and Rubio are declared.

Carson and Huckabee are announcing soon.

Bush, Christie, Walker, Graham, Fiorina, Jindal, Bolton, Kasich, Lynch, Perry, Pataki, Santorum, Bolton, Elrich, Gilmore, King, Snyder, and Trump are all exploring.

Dudes, that's 25 people.! Reince Priebus must be shitting himself right now. Imagine that first debate with all those people up on stage collectively spouting wacky, ideological nonsense for all of the United States to see.

And where exactly are their new ideas? Senator Rubio announced last week that "yesterday is yesterday." Yet he is against abortion under any circumstance and vehemently against gay marriage. Smells an awful lot like yesterday to me...

25 people...good grief...that's just too damn many candidates. Did they learn anything from 2016?

The Republican Brain, Part One: Two Levels of Frustration

As we enter the 2016 elections, I think that every single citizen of the United States should the book, The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science- and Reality by Chris Mooney. Over the course of the next several weeks, I'm going to be examining the book in detail and my hope is that I can ameliorate my two levels of frustration that I have with conservatives. What are those two levels of frustration, one might ask?

It begins with the simple fact that conservatives deny reality. In their world, our economy is awful, the Affordable Care Act is a failure, and climate change is a liberal hoax. In reality, our economy has improved dramatically since the Great Recession and is quite robust at present. The ACA is quite literally saving lives. And the threat of climate change has risen to such a high degree that the Pentagon is treating it as one of the gravest security risks of the future. So, this is the first level of my frustration.

The second level is even more confounding and awful. Conservatives think that the rest of us are the ones that are actually brainwashed and live in a different reality. They use their perceptual framework and fop it off on everyone else. What Mooney's book does so eloquently is illustrate how the conservative brain is vastly different from the liberal brain or even the independent brain. Conservatives don't think like anyone else because that's how their brains were made from a physiological perspective. Thus, when they push their perceptual framework on liberals and independents, they are committing a massive error in judgement.

Liberals and independents don't strive to shut out new information. That's what conservatives do. Mooney opens up his book with an introduction called "Equations to Refute Einstein." In this section is a quote from Andrew Schlafly, founder of Conservapedia, AKA the alternative to reality. I've heard of the site before but have never explored it until I started reading Mooney's book. After reading a few entries, I was completely horrified. As an instructor of history, there hasn't been such a collection of propaganda and out and out lying since the Age of Totalitarianism. It is further proof of Sorkin's American Taliban theory.

Take a look at the entry on homosexuality. Kind sounds like the same garbage we see from (ahem) other religious extremists in the world....who could they be, again?:)

Here's the one on climate change.

Check out this one on "liberal denial". Oh, the irony!

This one made me fall over in laughter.

Mystery:Why Do Non-Conservatives Exist?

Mooney offers a quote from Schlafly in this first part of his book to explain why Conservapedia was created.

It strengthened my faith. I don't have to live with what's printed in the newspaper. I don't have to take what's put out there by Wikipedia. We've got our own way to express knowledge, and the more that we can clear out the liberal bias that erodes our faith, the better.

This statement confirms several assertions I have made on here over the years. Conservatives believe that reality has a liberal bias and if they don't like something, they bury their heads in the ground like ostriches. The "I don't have to live with" remark may has well have come with a long stomp down the hallway and a "Fuck you, Dad!"

More importantly, this quote is an excellent illustration of my two levels of frustration with conservatives. They willfully deny reality and erroneously think, in a massive way, that liberals are the ones doing so. But why do they do this?

It's because conservative leaders tell a better story. Think about it for a minute. You don't have to hear about things you don't like anymore. Only good things. Wholesome things. The way America used to be before freedom died and the fucking commies took over. Things are all normal and good without pesky reality intruding in to the mix.

And you don't have to eat your vegetables neither!!!

The Final Word On The American Taliban (Part Six)

Here are my last two American Taliban questions.

-Which political party in the United States (the Democrats or the Republicans) is more likely to be unmoved by new information and why?

Top answer?

I agree that members of both parties have a pattern of doing this. I'd also agree that conservative 

Republicans are by definition adverse to change, especially social change. Religiosity is a big part of that. Hard core conservatives , in my opinion, tend to see changing your mind as a sign of weakness. There is no credible data to support that marrsige equality negative impacts marraige. Zero. 

Yet, several states, including my own, have people digging their heels in. It's clearly a losing battle. Education reform is another area: it's based on the premise that union busting is going to improve teacher quality. Most of the premises that Republican governors base their reform agendas on are not rooted in an example.

I'm going to talking about this more frequently in the weeks to come. They are unmoved by new information because they believe the stories they are told by their chosen avenues of information.

-Which political party in the United States (Democrats or Republicans) has a hostile fear of progress and why?

Top answer?

It's hard to put either at the top given democratic fear of GMOs, increased productivity in fossil fuel extraction and usage around the world and increased freedom for businesses to operate with limited over site while there is republican fear of stem cell and reproductive research, and of human freedom of choice in regards to mating and use of narcotics. 

More to the point, both parties leverage fear to produce hostility. Neither party wants to speak objectively about any issue. Very issue seems to be caricatured to elicit maximum fear. Both parties enmesh the other in straw men arguments, turning every case away from it's individual merits and instead toward some extreme. 

Question the wisdom of carbon tax verses it's impact on business and you are a climate change denier seeking to end life on earth. Question the justice of one man one woman marriage and your a pedophile promoting beastiality. 

In all cases both sides routinely vastly overstate their own case, making the opposition out to be hypocritical monsters, rather than rational human. It's getting harder and harder for a thinking person to take any politician's word seriously, and easier and easier to despair over the near term future of politics. Politics today ignores reason and focuses on emotional persuasion, particularly the emotion of fear.

Completely agree. That's why Democrats would be best suited between now and the election next year to lose all the BS about GMOs and other nonsense that makes them look as ridiculous as conservatives look all the fucking time.

Have They Read The Bible or the Constitution?

The Final Word On The American Taliban (Part Five)

Continuing with the American Taliban questions on Quora...

-Which political party in the United States (Democrats or Republicans) has a pathological hatred of the federal government and why?

There were a myriad of responses on this one which all amounted to most people thinking neither party really does. I think the word "pathological" turned people off. Here are a couple of interesting responses...

The people of the South most hate the Federal Government. The Feds under Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson forced integration on them and they hated it.. Nixon's Southern Strategy recognized this. He welcomed the haters into the party (and pepole like me soon left). So now all ofices in the South are held by Republicans.

There are sadly many people like Jim. This is also further evidence of my ongoing discussions about the South and conservatives.

I'd say it's both neither and Republicans. There is a wing of the party, led by Grover Norquist that believes 'the government can do nothing well'. Grover, you may recall is infamous for his 'reduce the Federal government in size until we can drown it in a baby bassinet' comment. While he holds no official position in the party he has extracted promises from many to allow no new taxes of any kind, severely restricting options to react to conditions. I would say that this wing has a pathological hatred of the federal government, else why the images of drowning babies? 

The rest of the Republican party is rather more reasonable, but somehow they seem to have lost control. I would hope they regain it soon, if not the moderate flight from the party will continue to the point that a new party will form out of those ejected or who left in disgust. Our 'winner take all' elections force two primary parties of nearly equal membership, and marginalize pretty much anyone else.

Yep.

-Which political party in the United States is more intolerant of dissent, both within their party and in the general population? Why?

Top answer?

I think there are factions within each party that don't tolerate dissent within their ranks. But voicing your opinion as a voter and voicing your opinion as a legislator are two very different things. There are pro-life Democrats. There are Democrats who are socially conservative and have issues with marraige equality. There are Democrats who have problems with unions. Because many teachers vote democrat for a number of reasons, but have been vocally critical of Arne Duncan and Barack Obama in regards to Common Core, charter schools and standardized testing. Elizabeth Warren is probably the Senator who sticks out in my mind as criticising the party from within. 

There aren't many Republican politicians who have stood up to the marraige equality fight, the posturing of the socially conservative / theocrats even though I know there are many , many Republicans who have had enough of the big government , mean spirited, wedge issues. There is the Tea Party, which has talked about cutting spending, but also has morphed into social issues. Republicans seem to have greater party fealty, which may be politcually advantageous, but I think that means that it doesn't do enough calling each out, or standing up for what is somewhat at odds with the party's platform.

Agreed.