“It takes considerable skill to convince people that something that is clearly good for them – like universal healthcare – is not.” (Gary Young, “A Method to Their Madness” The Nation, 09/28/09) The base lives “in a political parallel world where everyone they know believes the same as they do. They don’t like established facts, so they come armed with their own.”

Patricia Williams says that the key to understanding the right’s base is that their “sense of identity has been premised on a raced, masculinist, conservative Christian hierarchy” so that “the world must seem even more terrifying than any actual facts would indicate.” “… it’s the expressive angst of people whose felt power relations have been turned upside down.” (Patricia J. Williams, “Reverse Nazism and the War on Universal Healthcare” The Nation, 09/14/09)

What astonishes me is not that the right has disrupted and disoriented the political conversation not only among the “35 percent of the country … with whom there is no real means of engagement” but the entire nation. The Sept 28th editorial “The Ambush of Van Jones” says “… somehow a man working to help Americans invest in an alternative energy future ends us being branded an untouchable radical while a hysterical extremist’s delusions are validated.” (speaking of Glenn Beck’s fabricated controversy).

Yes, Young says, “Today the Internet distributes these slurs faster, and cable TV gives them more outlets.” But such media changes can’t account for the national political conversation’s plunge into paranoid lies. Nor is his facile accusation of “a vacuum of leadership and the absence of good alternatives” convincing. As the face of America twists into a surreal insanity, I struggle to comprehend how escalating feedback of corruption and media effects could be countered.

What would happen if lies got stuck in the throat?

This sums up my view of the healthcare debate.

People will ignore any proof against something that they want to believe in.

If I’m a salesman, and I knock at your door and tell you that you can make $1, 000, 000 net income a year by joining my pyramid scheme with an investment of $10, 000, you would first want to see the IRS documents belonging to all those who have already made $1000, 000. But, If you’re desperate for money to the extent that you want to believe, then you might not ask for this proof. In fact, you might defend the salesman who’s stealing from you against those who know better as you help him hook more victims.

Young girls with boyfriends do this all the time. They want so much to believe that this handsome boy loves them that they ignore all of the evidence to the contrary. He could be kissing the girl next door right in front of her, but she’ll rationalize in a contorted way that he is justified in doing so. "Oh! You were just kissing that other girl in order to get some practice before kissing me."

Half of the people in the United States are easy marks for sly politicians and salesmen! Nowhere in any high school curriculum do I see studies that are meant to train children into not being easy marks. Powerful people prevent this from happening because they need the gullible to maintain their power base. The status quo is perpetuated in this way. This is a form of child abuse.

ETHEREAL wrote:
People will ignore any proof against something that they want to believe in.

Young girls with boyfriends do this all the time. They want so much to believe that this handsome boy loves them that they ignore all of the evidence to the contrary. He could be kissing the girl next door right in front of her, but she’ll rationalize in a contorted way that he is justified in doing so. "Oh! You were just kissing that other girl in order to get some practice before kissing me."

Unfortunately girls and women are especially vulnerable to "motivated reasoning" when it comes to handsome males.



Perhaps this is the converse of the male’s inability to think when confronted with an attractive woman, mentioned in the thread "Men lose their minds"

ETHEREAL wrote:
Half of the people in the United States are easy marks for sly politicians and salesmen! Nowhere in any high school curriculum do I see studies that are meant to train children into not being easy marks. ... This is a form of child abuse.

Intelligence by itself can’t guarantee rational behavior, maintains University of Toronto professor Keith Stanovich. This concept of "dysrationalia" is summarized in, among other places, Kurt Kleiner’s U of T Magazine article "Why Smart People Do Stupid Things": http://www.magazine.utoronto.ca/&8203;feature/&8203;why-people-are-irrational-kurt-kleiner/

Two of the major sources of "dysrationalia" are cognitive miserliness, taking shortcuts that usually work instead of thoroughly analyzing all possibilities, and mindware gaps, not having the proper cognitive tools, such as a basic understanding of probability. (Schools can and should do better here!)

(I first read about this in a Scientific American Mind article, which is now unfortunately showing only a truncated "teaser" preview, unless you’re a paid subscriber. The U of T Magazine article is sufficiently informative, and freely accessible.)

ETHEREAL wrote:
Half of the people in the United States are easy marks for sly politicians and salesmen! Nowhere in any high school curriculum do I see studies that are meant to train children into not being easy marks. Powerful people prevent this from happening because they need the gullible to maintain their power base. The status quo is perpetuated in this way. This is a form of child abuse.

I’m gonna use that one-- about "child abuse" --next time I’m advocating for better education; thanks!
===

Yep! After seeing those Jay Leno bits, Jay Walking, I could see the problem; a woefully under-educated and poorly educated general populace. Every day I give thanks to Mr. Oates, a HS English teacher, who offered a unit on propaganda, advertising, and critical thinking skills.

Seems to me that the whole entertainment culture is designed to "distract" people from critical thinking.
After 9/11, the only safe stuff to make jokes about on the latenight talkshows was sex and celebrity "news."

Ruth notes how to "...conservative Christian hierarchy” ... “the world must seem even more terrifying than any actual facts would indicate.” “… it’s the expressive angst of people whose felt power relations have been turned upside down.”

It makes sense when you realize that their view of the world is informed mostly by TV shows like CSI: Mayhem, Law & Order: Special (...like the Olympics?) Victims Unit, and Desperate Housewives: Cougarville--or worse--"reality" shows.
...or worst: The "entertainment" portion of Faux News’ "official" daily schedule, as when Glenn Beck is on.

Reality shows!? Who came up with that euphemism?

ETHEREAL wrote:
Half of the people in the United States are easy marks for sly politicians and salesmen!

Actually all of us may be easy marks. The Overton Window is cleverly used by right-wing extremists to change what everybody perceives as the middle.

"The technique relies on people promoting ideas even less acceptable than the previous "outer fringe" ideas. That makes those old fringe ideas look less extreme, and thereby acceptable. "

They introduce radicalism into the public discourse so that whatever used to be radical within mainstream media sounds moderate by comparison. For example, "Eliminationist Right-Wing Blogs and Fox News screechers may look like clowns, but that is their function. To stretch the Window so far to the Right that anything short of nuking the Middle East seems acceptable."

Ruth wrote:
The Overton Window [represents the range of "politically acceptable" ideas. Its conscious manipulation] "... relies on people promoting ideas even less acceptable than the previous "outer fringe" ideas. That makes those old fringe ideas look less extreme, and thereby acceptable. "

They introduce radicalism into the public discourse so that whatever used to be radical within mainstream media sounds moderate by comparison.

Progressives could make use of that principle as well: introducing "outrageously far left" ideas that make formerly-"fringe" progressive ideas become popularly acceptable by comparison. In other words, not compromising to the "middle", but taking bold positions that end up shifting the middle in the desired direction.

In Switzerland a popular saying is that extrems join each other. For fun I got the image from this thread of a political 360 degree panorama. To get a balanced propaganda there should be equal access to media channels for the various political tendencies.

This is a poster for the interdiction of minarets in Switzerland 2009, it will actually be voted:

This poster was forbidden in a minority of Switzerlands regions. The colors are the same than the banner colors of the third Reich just as here in 2007, about a law promoting the expulsion of foreigners that would have commited crimes:



The political party that makes this popular initiatives (direct democracy, you just need to get a certain amount of signatures to get your law initiative voted), represents 30% of votes in Switerland.

Could anyone imagine this kind of images in their own country?

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marendo wrote:
In Switzerland ... the interdiction of minarets in Switzerland 2009, it will actually be voted: Could anyone imagine this kind of images in their own country?

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Wow! I always imagined the Swiss as immune to the kind of racism we see in the US.

How is this significantly different from Germans banning synagogues? There’s an ashram in my neighborhood. Do they want to ban Hindu places of worship too?

There is mostly a fear of arabs/muslims in Switzerland I think. There is this image of arabs taking over Europe. The sheep image is about a law making it automatic to expulse any foreigner who would have commited a crime. There was also a variation with the family of the offender being expulsed along. Some people in Switzerland noticed that the exact same law had been passed in the third Reich (family co-expulsion).

Neither of the laws passed but the minaret law has still to be voted. Hindus and other religions are not really significant in Switzerland. Islam is the third religion with 4%, with judaism the fourth 0.25%.

marendo wrote:
The sheep image is about a law making it automatic to expulse any foreigner who would have commited a crime. There was also a variation with the family of the offender being expulsed along. Some people in Switzerland noticed that the exact same law had been passed in the third Reich (family co-expulsion).

How does a jury determine that someone would have committed a crime, if they didn’t actually commit one, by mind reading? Or are there specific precedents that count observed behaviors such as purchasing a gun or holding a knife to somebody’s throat?

Oh I am sorry, my english is poor. I meant foreigners that have been convicted for crimes, not that could have or would have or else)

If the government would just pay every doctor’s medical liability insurance premium, make all money made by doctors tax free, and open up more medical schools so that we would have a glut of doctors then the cost of medical care might be affordable for all. Perhaps we wouldn’t need any kind of socialized medicine then. Also, don’t require the pharmaceutical companies to pay taxes.