How Conservatives Think: They don't. They wait for orders from higher in the system.

Now I realize the problem: conservatives are insane. The kind of 'conservative thinking' portrayed in this article is counter productive and anti-survival for our species if not for the world. An intelligent species should not engage in this form of 'thought'. We should have evolved past it. If we can't, we will not survive.

That explains why they want the rich to have more and the poor, less. It preserves and affirms their sense of hierachical order. And maybe even they, too can become rich some day. Amazing what they will twist to their own belief. Jesus (whether he was a myth or real) was a radical, non-violent socialist. Look what "fundamentalist" Christianity turned him into.

The film gives a perspective on their thought process, but I wonder if they bow to this dog eat dog hierachy just to justify their own meanness.

In related news the Trayvon Martin case WILL NOT go to a Grand Jury.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/prosecutor-says-she-wont-trayvon-martin-death-grand-160410903.html

The gaping hole in this argument is liberal political convenience; they'll toss others overboard just like conservatives, just for different, self-interested reasons. (Proof: let some poor kid displace a liberal child in a prestigious setting. Hell hath no fury like a liberal who takes a hit on their resume.)

And the emphasis on equality of opportunity vs. justice of outcomes is a slippery liberal trait that they share in part with conservatives. Liberals are courageous to the point that reality reaches their doorstep. After that, look out below.

This liberal know-nothing attitude about underlying conditions is why radicals thrash them every time. Thanks for the invite to water down my views and limit the left end of the political spectrum, but I prefer to keep my integrity.

How Conservatives think: Conservatives prize self-control (willpower), and seek it in themselves. But willpower is used up by resolving conflicting information, which is something reality is full of (especially human relations). To give an example, Ayn Rand's hero may build a city on a swamp, but some liberal just has to show up with a sign saying 'I preferred the swamp'. Don't laugh: that's actually a legitimate point of view. Its just that its cosmic dissonance hell to a conservative. Think of the willpower it took to build that city; you exhausted your allotment of willpower just building it. How to feel better about this dissonance? Decide the liberal's an 'eco-freak'. Cosmic order (and more importantly, willpower) restored.

Thus, Conservatives are more likely to accept a hierarchical definition of reality, one that neatly resolves conflicting information thus leaving them with more of the thing they prize, self-control (willpower). Unfortunately, I think the large corporations know about this trait of Conservatives (religions have known about it for centuries). They are busy using what media they own (Faux News) to build a Conservative 'hierarchy' that, what a surprise, requires their product. As they say in Alaska: 'drill, baby, drill', and for them to KEEP saying it, Faux News has to call Global Warming a hoax. Its a predatory 'bug in the ear' taking advantage of what is otherwise, at times (especially wartime), an admirable quality.

THEY THINK ????!!!!

I have been haunted by what happened to Anna Brown. It is so hard to understand. .How could that many people fail her. Her case should be getting the same media exposure as Trayvon. She was the victim of woman-slaughter by hospital staff and policemen. She was carried by her painful ankles, one of which was sprained and her painful blood clot legs were stretched while being carried like that because the other policeman had her upper body. She was then dumped on the jail floor moaning in agony while they turned and looked back at her then left her for an hour without checking on this dying woman. They never even bothered to lay her on a cot. The Hospital Administrator insist that she was given emergency care. But she had no drugs in her.Didn't they do a drug test? And give her something for pain? Why didn't they do a sona-gram on her legs when the Xray was negative? The Conservative Republicans demand that pregnant women get sona-grams against their will and forced to pay for them. But this poor woman who needed one on her legs to save her life ,who probably could not afford to pay for a sona-gram like many of the pregnant women was just arrested for trespassing. Any woman who goes to that catholic hospital is not paying attention or doesn't give a damn about other women. If you are pregnant , hemorrhaging, or having other medical problems and your life could be saved by an abortion, it may be denied you due to the Catholic theory that women are lower than not only men but also their sacred sperm which fertilized the woman's egg and that egg must take precedence over the woman's life and well being in a catholic hospital. The government should deny catholic hospitals government funds until they end their discrimination against women.

Problem: There is a massive, and I mean massive, propagandistic reinforcement mechanism at play, called Organized Religion, that has been "clued into" this dynamic of the Conservative mindset, branching out into the MSM (yes, including Hollywood) to indoctrinate even those not in Organized Religion about it. It's behemoth in its scope, and probably targets half the world's population through its distribution networks. (A friend from Japan wanted to come to the US because of all the movies she saw about it. She respected the hierarchical nature of the US, but felt there were more freedoms to be had here than in Japan, but reinforcing her constructs of hierarchical society nevertheless.)

Look, we've been a hierarchical country since our inception, those having brought another form of Organized Religion over from the motherland, with the same architectural constructs as what they were supposedly fleeing, but with different stripes. And yet, still there were stripes. American Indians? African Slaves? All part and parcel of said architecture. There's a long standing mandate for this mindset, and it has festered, grown, particularly in our overtly and overwhelmingly dominant Militaristic Culture, a culture that like OR, so too is rigidly and adamantly hierarchical. It fits.

I guess it comes down to this: you want the conversations/culture to change to "liberalist" mindset? You are gonna need a gargantuan army of culture jammers. Period.

I am very uncomfortable about this liberal piece. This person claims that conservatives value "social order" and heirarchial relationships above all else, and it is the liberals who are for individlual freedom and opportunity. Yet all conservatives I meet adhere to a one-track ideology of freedom-freedom-freedom including a hatred of anything that would legally interfere with their freedom to not be compelled to pay even a fraction of a penny to save someone like Anna Brown. Their love of freedom also includes the absolute inviolable "freedom" of the powerful to make decisons without being compelled ("coerced" as they say) to make any consideration whatsoever on their decisions brutal and enslaving effect on the disempowered. Furthermore, they argue that the disempwered are free presons too, but they freely chose to be "unproductive leeches" who "perish as they should as Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman said. But make no mistake about it. They US Right values freedom above all else. And the liberal commenter in this piece has been sucked into this framing put forth by the US Right.

As a leftist, rathar than a liberal, I'll refuse to be sucked into the framing of the discussion around the word "freedom". Fuck your freedom. Take you fucking "liberty" and SHOVE IT UP YOUR ASSES if it is part and parcel of such horrific human suffering as this poor woman in that jail cell!

So, the operative word is not "freedom". With a little thought, one realizes that "freedom" really just a euphemism for POWER. Take any sentence one wished to construct with the word "freedom" in it and put the word "power" in place of it. It does not change the sentence in the least - indeed, it improves the sentence. I have the freedom to go to New York tomorrow. I have the power to go to New York tomorrow. Same sentence - yet the latter one is more truthful - as the reason that one may be able to go to New York tomorrow is that they have the money to do it (under capitalism, money=power), and also, one can only go to New York (assuming this is not a work trip under orders from a boss) if one has the power to withhold ones rented-labor to a capitalist boss for at least a few days without punitive consequences.

So, the operative word is power which economic class has it and which class does not have it! Anna Brown's class did not have power!

All Workers unite and seize the power!

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Society/Conservatives_Deconstruct.html

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0607.wolfe.html

Whining about conservatives will really be quite effective even if just for messaging. It certainly is cheaper than demanding our rights in person.

I know. We should get one of those swank propaganda outfits like FOX and then we can grow our own band of codgers who will cuss and spit at the tv.

_____________________________

Instead of nurturing division, why don't the folks on the left grow the f-ck up?

It's a safe bet that we won't talk to each other, right and left, isn't it? Is it really so hard to accept that some people have a mind wired to think differently? Lakoff posts here often enough but people on the left are happy it seems to ignore him.

Bullshit to divide and conquer. I expect better of lefties and that's where I am wrong again and again. I shouldn't expect anything of the sort.

Stonepig's implication is correct. They don't think. They can't think. They don't know how.

I loved a graffito written on an interior wall of the Comet Tavern in Seattle, back around 1982 _ it was visible for years, and read _

'Leftists fear competition _ rightists fear equality.'

There's something to this, and to Adam's point above. I believe, though, that there's more to it. I've put a lot of years and mental and emotional energy into attempting to understand the heads of what have come to be called, in 21st-Century US, 'Conservatives' _ it's a phenomenon that has culturally and socially eviscerated my home town, gutted friendships and families and whacked a gash down the middle of our nation, leaving us a people politically paralyzed and at the mercy of organized thugs, bandits and sadists in gov't and media, who are making a good living off the carnage.

The people who today call themselves 'Conservatives' bear a certain responsibility for this, as do those of us who were too polite and cowardly to put a stop to them, when we did have a chance. They are now not only in charge, but probably reflect much of the actual character of our nation.

I've spent many hours over the years hearing them and debating with them, and I've concluded they are not remotely dumb, and that they actually do agree with us on many of the nuts and bolts of reality and morality. The thing that baffles me is that they'll endlessly re-arrange these nuts and bolts to construct a logic in which they do not, ever, have to agree with us, because they simply hate something fundamental about us. They will repeatedly build complicated bridges over the gaps in their own logic, invent elements of faith to fill in the blind spots, or just simply cover their ears and shout to avoid agreeing with us, because they simply loathe us. This is probably at the heart of the issue. I just don't know what to do about this.

Below copied from the comments section at ______
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/04/09/how-conservatives-think-this-video-needs-to-go-viral-video/

"If by a “Liberal” they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a “Liberal,” then I’m proud to say I’m a “Liberal.” ~ John F. Kennedy, 1960

"We're all connected to each other biologically. To the Earth, chemically. To the Universe, atomically." - Neil deGrasse Tyson.

"Many people, especially ignorant people, want to punish you for speaking the truth, for being correct, for being you. Never apologize for being correct, or for being years ahead of your time. If you’re right and you know it, speak your mind. Speak your mind. Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth." - Mohandas Ghandi.
“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”- Mohandas Gandhi.

Decisions for civil behavior, society & global economy should be "arrived at" via Science, best ever-emerging technologies, reason/logic, what is best for the individual, group and the planet as a whole (i.e., what brings least harm & most benefit), Earth's carrying capacity & available resources & the Ethic of Reciprocity; NOT based on any leader, bureaucracy, money/profit, personal, religious or political belief or ideology, opinion or popular vote. A better world's possible. - me
"Please stop thinking like a slave to the Wealthy elite. Its time we, as a HUMAN SPECIES consciously, selflessly and CONSCIENTIOUSLY EVOLVE to value life over greed. Our current monetary system promotes corruption by INCENTIVE. The Earth is the ONLY home we have right now and the faster corporate greed develops the faster we are destroying our home. Christians don't care 'cause they delusionally think "So what, Jesus is coming back and he'll give us a New Earth". WAKE UP. Its an extremely short-sighted CON!" - me.
"Never stop asking questions and never stop learning. When you stop asking questions you cease your path to enlightenment. Consciously evolve." - Me.

"The old appeals to racial and sexual and religious chauvinism, to rabid nationalist fervor, are beginning not to work. A new consciousness is developing which sees the Earth as a single organism, and recognizes that an organism at war with itself is doomed. We are One Planet." -Carl Sagan.

"This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career." -Albert Einstein.

"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." - Max Planck - (Father of Quantum Mechanics).

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." -Margaret Mead.

"Reason obeys itself; Ignorance submits to what is dictated to it." -Thomas Paine.
MORALITY IS DOING WHAT IS RIGHT, NO MATTER WHAT YOU ARE TOLD.
FAITH IS DOING WHAT YOU ARE TOLD, NO MATTER WHAT IS RIGHT.

"May the Great Bird of the Galaxy bless your planet" - Hikaru Sulu (Star Trek).

The problem I have with this commentary is that it buys into the idea that the labels "liberal" and "conservative" have any subjective meaning that can be measured with any consistency. An honest working definition of the world "liberal" would acknowledge that there are no principles required to be a liberal, but that it simply means being loyal to the Blue Team, AKA the Democratic Party. During the Bush years, being liberal meant opposing war, defending the Bill of Rights and supporting single-payer health care, but now, being liberal means the exact opposite. It's a meaningless word, much like "conservative," which essentially means supporting whatever policies are implemented by Republican administrations and opposing policies implemented by Democratic administrations, even when the policies are exactly the same (which they usually are).

There is a brilliant speech and graphics on TED about this very issue. It is remarkable but true that conservatives, though they conserve nothing but their own wealth, actually have three ingredients missing from their character. Check out the site and listen to Mr Haidt
http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html
He exposes the lack of the decent morality that humans have had since the beginning of time and now turned to selfish and damaging ways. It may shock you, or not, to discover that the very people who pretend to be such righteous good Christians, Jews and Muslims, yes, all, are the anti-Christ/Moses/Mohammed of their own demise. Those who spew the most about sin are the most sinning themselves. Sin being their operative word, inhumane is more like it, judgemental...hmm, judge not, murderers...thou shalt not kill is in all their books...stealing...wow. No, no one is surprised by this unless they are already a brainwashed boob of the right wingnuts.

I was turned away from an ER in an emergency. I actually had MHI but I had just moved to a new state and new job and it wasn't all in order. The people at the hospital would not admit me. I was in labor having an second trimester miscarriage.

I almost died and the baby did. These nurses at the particular hospital were actually making faces at me and calling me a drug addict and a bunch of other complete garbage. I am not a drug addict nor do I remotely look like one.

This was the worst and most frightening experience of my life. To finally arrive at the hospital and then be bullied and not helped. I was crying and begging and they were wickedly indifferent, shaking their heads at me, and giving me that 'you disgust me look". I ended up grabbing a phone to call 911 thinking someone would take me somewhere else. This was a hospital phone and the switchboard intercepted it. This scared them and they admitted me but only after I had left and then returned .

The reason I returned after first being run off was I was new in town and didn't know of another place what so ever.. I was bleeding and actually in labor, I later learned , and the whole nine yards and still they wouldn't admit me. It took over five hours to get help thanks to this horrid hospital. I should have sued. They never sent me a bill even though I was there over night and had surgery.

They knew they screwed up. My dad was at the time a FEd Judge and head judge to boot. I was a full time state employee. So if you think this kind of treatment only happens to poor nobodies think again. Anyone can be a victim of this kind of indifference and system that allows those they think less of, for whatever off the top of their head reason, to suffer and die.

The wrong people are running this country and they are all about allowing people they don't like to die, starve, suffer, and be victims of crimes to right wing nut jobs. We must take our country back.

PS I know most nurses are not like this but the system protects and prefers people like this and they are becoming more numerous, not less.

How liberals think:

Posting on a blog is activism.

When one sees the video flashing conservative logic in progress, make sad words and invite self comforting thoughts that we're superior in the way we think.

One can be liberal and be just as uncaring to other individuals, especially one's that we can't know who are outside our monkeysphere.

If liberals meant what they said, wouldn't half of the worlds problems be somewhat addressed? I know I am exaggerating but my point is that being liberal should extend beyond caring thoughts and words to actual deeds and we all know how hard that is.

Upthread someone mentions that a small group of thoughtful committed individuals can change things, so if liberals are so caring where are all these groups? I know what liberal sounds like. Seeing liberal in action is too damn rare. It's just as likely to see kindness and decency from a conservative, not people here's caricature but the real thing. Just because they have ideas different from yours doesn't make them less your fellow Americans.

The false distinctions certainly make voting for Dems easier. I'd continue to nurture those differences to help get Obama reelected if I were a dem operative.

What's a "liberal" jail cell look like? Do they paint it blue and maybe give you a mint on your pillow? What passes for liberal these days is delivering the police state. But let's all hold hands and tell ourselves that liberal is a badge of honor and thinking and speaking liberal-ly makes us better than them.

How conservative think - with a natural leaning toward sociopathy. I've been in several conversations with conservatives where it became apparent that I was speaking to someone on the level of an abused to be dangerous pitbull.