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Inside the Mind of a Conservative. Got a Minute?
Unfortunately, a little well-placed progressive sarcasm can't compete with the ongoing 40-year right-wing campaign to capture the sympathies of an impressionable public. It's a remarkable accomplishment on their part. Even though just about every thinking being would agree that fortunes are made through the efforts of many people over a long period of time, and that a lot of income owed to the middle class has flowed to the top instead, many Americans still believe it's wrong to take their hard-earned money back. They're scared off by phrases such as "soak the rich," even though the rich are the ones doing the soaking.
Why are conservatives so successful at spreading their message? They believe that improvements in the individual will help society. Progressives, on the other hand, believe that improvements in society will help the individual.
Whereas the danger on the progressive side is that cumbersome social structures could stymie individual initiative, the danger on the conservative side is that stronger individuals will exploit weaker ones. Both are legitimate concerns. But the conservatives have been a lot noisier in making their case.
Linguist George Lakoff has written about the conservative response to the Vietnam War, when students were developing an anti-business attitude and many progressive goals were being achieved. The National Chamber of Commerce rallied the wealthy around the flag. Before long think tanks like the Heritage Foundation were set up, research assistants and media agents were hired, right-wing intellectuals were showcased in books and TV shows, and all the best business practices were followed to sell the product of information.
What has been the result over 40 years? Emotional phrases such as "death tax" and "class warfare" that disguise necessary revenue initiatives in ugly metaphors. Or glorious terms that would seem un-American to oppose, including "pro-life" and "free trade" and "tax relief." Or a rant against any phrase with the nasty word 'social' in it.
It goes beyond terminology, to conceptual claims that sound meaningful until subjected to reasonable scrutiny. For example, the claim that new faces keep appearing among the ranks of the wealthy. Both Thomas Sowell and James Q. Wilson reference a 2007 U.S. Treasury Department report about income mobility that states "Among those with the very highest incomes in 1996 - the top 1/100 of 1 percent - only 25 percent remained in this group in 2005." But they ignore the fact that nearly 9 out of 10 of those in the top 1% remained in the top quintile of earners over those ten years. Other reports make it very clear that the U.S. ranks near the bottom of developed countries in economic mobility.
Conservative claims are also framed in feel-good denials, such as the recent downplaying of global warming by the Heartland Institute. Just as absurd is inequality denial, based on the "decline in the prices of products that poorer consumers buy," and on a living standard among the poor that includes "a refrigerator, an oven and stove, and a microwave." The Economist calls inequality "a red herring" that obscures the real task of fixing economic and political corruption.
Worst of all is the suggestion that the poor should be blamed for their own misfortunes. American Enterprise Institute spokesman Charles Murray concludes: "Healthy men are supposed to work. In practice, though, that norm has eroded everywhere...Married, educated people who work hard and conscientiously raise their kids shouldn't hesitate to voice their disapproval of those who defy these norms."
Lakoff has an explanation for what's been happening, based on the difference between the individual-oriented conservative and the society-oriented progressive. He describes the "strict father" conservative, the "moral authority" who uses strict discipline to teach independence to his children. Wealth is a measure of discipline. Social programs spoil the children, making them dependent.
The "nurturant parent" progressive, in contrast, is focused instead on community responsibility, and empathy for others. Proper care for others helps to develop the individual discipline that is part of the complete person.
Empathy is an interesting word and concept. It is defined as "identification with and understanding of another's situation, feelings, and motives." Various studies have shown that the ability to empathize with others requires a higher level of abstract thinking, and that people of wealth have less empathy, tending instead toward greedy, and even unethical, behavior.
Conservatives may also be, to put it delicately, not smart. A Canadian study in the journal Psychological Science concluded that "individuals with lower cognitive abilities may gravitate toward more socially conservative right-wing ideologies that maintain the status quo and provide psychological stability and a sense of order."
It makes sense that less empathetic, stability-seeking conservatives would be more likely to use simplistic insults like "death tax" and "class warfare." And that their reliance on individual achievement would be challenged by the absence of economic mobility. And that, to them, inequality would not be an issue if people just worked harder.
Yet perhaps we progressives are the real dummies, for despite a self-perceived abundance of wisdom and compassion we've allowed the opposition to hijack the language of voters. We should be proclaiming the message we believe in: that America is not a collection of individuals, but rather a community of people who need each other to ensure health and education and a clean environment and job opportunities. As Lakoff says, "The Public is what makes The Private possible."
We shouldn't allow self-interest to guide our country's growth, or to use wealth as a barometer of human value, or to stand by as one man celebrates the "American Dream" by making enough money to pay the salaries of 100,000 teachers. We need to look into our own progressive minds to plan a better strategy for publicizing the important role of society in America.
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Show AllThey only call it class warfare when we fight back. -- Cliches 101 :-)
The term "war" implies that both sides have the capability to win. At the rapid rate the Democratic Party and GOP are facilitating the transfer of wealth from the 99% to the 1% while 95% of the US electorate contnues to vote for those two parties, the "war" will soon be over and all wealth will be in the hands of the 1%.
Precisely.
Excellent article. One way we can regain lost ground is by taking religion and religion-speak away from conservatives. Refer to God as She. Refer to Jesus as one of the original Liberals/Socialists (he didn't charge for miracles did he?) Talk of humanity as Gods family, and why in the world would god want her own children to think of themselves first. Why would she want a Me versus a We family? Would YOU as a parent want your kids to behave that way? Of course not.
[G]lorious terms that would seem un-American to oppose, including "pro-life" and "free trade" and "tax relief."
So many others, but here's another that comes to mind: "right to work."
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Yeah, (and yay), the linguistic element is my first interest, too, in fathoming psychology. Let me split a semantic hair here, but turn it around to 'criticize' the writer!
In his introduction citing "an impressionable public," change the word 'impressionable' for the more relevant word 'suggestible' (public) where the point is about rightwing-soaked media indoctrinating a docile or submissive public (in "skulls full of mush" - Limbaugh's meme).
Through the (better) word 'suggestible' we enter the research realm of hypnotism.
Hypnotists and the methodology of hypnotism states quite plainly that of the two types of people in the world -- suggestible or not suggestible, hypnosis only 'works' on the first kind. The rightwing broadcasters' style of sing/song monotone voicing is hypnotism in action.
Certainly 'suggestible' and 'impressionable' have similar meanings, only I note that using 'suggestible' in a search engine entry might return links to hypnosis discussions.
Also, 'hypnosis' is most descriptive of rightwing indoctrination talk (nonsense or ignorance, a practice of lack of facts), in the origin of the word this way: 'hypo-' meaning 'beneath' or 'under', and 'gnosis' meaning 'word' or 'knowledge', 'knowing'.
So 'hypnosis' = beneath knowing, or less than knowledge.
Limbaugh demonstrates not knowing every time he speaks lies as a substitute.
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Who is this "we" Mr. Buchheit?
>>"Empathy is an interesting word and concept. It is defined as "identification with and understanding of another's situation, feelings, and motives." Various studies have shown that the ability to empathize with others requires a higher level of abstract thinking, and that people of wealth have less empathy, tending instead toward greedy, and even unethical, behavior."<<
We are born empathetic. Babies in a nursery cry because other babies are crying. It is a natural and inborn response. It is only through "education" that such feelings are un-learned.
"You've Got To Be Carefully Taught"
You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.
You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.
You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!
It's no secret that the 1% is uniformly conservative. They have all the money in the world to spend and finance the Heritage Fn., and other propaganda outlets as well as give enough political bribes to insure they stay the 1%. .
The 99% is mixed lib, prog, and con. They are all mostly poor, middle, upper middle and simply rich. The lib-prog part of the 99% is not generally rich and can't bribe many politicians. The rest of the 99% are conservatives of redneck, fundie, Tea Party and other authoritarian varieties that vote with their .001% slavemasters
If a lib or prog gets rich, he or she usually joins the neo-lib, conservative lite part of the 99%, becomes a willing slave of the 1% and may vote with the cons.
Representative government is key to control by the 1%. It can easily bribe 530 federal politicians and more state politicians. It couldn't easily bribe 313 million people so it must fool them with propaganda.
How can libs and progs win in today's world unless they reject politicians and representative government?
DirectDemocracyNow.org
I would have to agree with the founding fathers, no to direct democracy. I don't want some mob in the majority wiping all the social gains we have made away. If we had true majority rules, civil rights for minorities would be gone. And that would just the first.
The Bill of Rights expresses the fact that representative government is the next best thing to direct democracy due to logistical reasons. The IT revolution has made those logistics non-existent.
Studies have shown that decisions made direct democratically are more reliably correct than those made by politicians. This is easy to understand when one realizes that political decisions are heavily influenced and based on the amount of political bribes from major plutocrat and corporate donors, comprising over 90% of all political contributions.
Mr Buchheit asks "Why are conservatives so successful at spreading their message"? Progressives don't understand this because they judge the "conservative message" to be in error or wrongheaded. Take homosexuality or gay marriage for example. Progressives say why should anyone fear this? In their minds there is simply nothing to fear. When you judge someones fear as being completely unfounded you cannot relate to the power or depth of that fear. Humans are very fearful beings. We do all manner of things to reduce, avoid, or hide our fears to make it through another day and night. We hide from fear. We run from fear. In US America we take mountians of drugs to help deal with our fears. In a group of people conservatism is a survival mechanism. The conservatives are the holders of the fear of change. They exist to oppose change that can be dangerous or destructive to the group. A resistance to slow down change like a governor on a steam engine. Conservatives deal with life as they perceive it to be. Progressives on the other hand see things as they could or should be. Conservative fear what will happen if we change,progressives fear what will happen if we don't. The most powerful thing a progressive can do is not to win an argument but to understand why there is an argument.
"They (cons) exist to oppose change that can be dangerous or destructive to the group."
Opposing change that would be destructive to the group like opposing change by invading Iraq, AfPak, Iran, opposing terrorism by bombing and killing for Christ, Allah, Israel and the MIC, opposing regulations on banksters and corporate polluters, opposing prosecuting corporate and government crime, opposing taxing the rich, opposing evolution in schools, deny global warming, etc., etc.? It seems that opposing change is far more destructive to the group than not. I get your point though. Fear is good??
Excellent post.
I believe progressives are far less empathetic than advertised. As iwonder writs above, progressives dismiss the fears of conservatives (as in the case of gay marriage). The progressive's ability to empathize is bounded by thier own ideas of what is (ir)raitonal. Staying with gay marriage/homosexuality, progressives often dismiss the fears of conservatives because those fears are based on religious precepts. Yet because many progressives are critical of religion itself, they are ease with their lack of empathy. That is a major failing of the progressive movement. It smacks of elitism (i.e. we can only be empathetic when the others' feelings are grounded in whatever we deem acceptable; if unacceptable, we feel free to judge and dismiss).
Perhaps, our lack of empathy in this regard is due to our own (unacknowledged) fear: a fear of empathizing with conservatives to such an extent that we truly understand them...a fear of eventually sympathizing with them; a fear of inching slightly to the right. After all, we all can acknowledge the power (danger) of thinking from an individualistic perspective -- it is almost liberating; not having to really worry about one's neighbour...and I believe it is our underlying fear.
"Why are conservatives so successful at spreading their message?"
Because it is their ilk who own & manage the small handful of MEGA-corporations that own all the media worldwide, providing an *illusion of choice* ...not to mention that much tell-a-vision programming and mainstream movies are replete with right-wing 'messages' ("conservative," you know, like Andy Griffith protecting Mayberrians) fused within the background narrative (think back on the past thirty yrs and consider how many very popular movies glorify military violence)
This sometimes deliberate, often times unconscious 'product placement' has gotten astonishing mileage in establishing an un-reality that masquerades as 'reality' within the Public Mind, whereby opinions and belief systems that are in stark contrast to humanity's best interests are exalted and perpetuated as being good, normal, or at the very least, "that's just the way it is," while views/positions/beliefs that run contrary to those RW ideals are by default relegated to the margins for scorn.
Remember, as Bill Kristol admits, the "liberal" media mythology was intentionally created by the RW.
Excellent post DogStar
Conservatives are the keepers of the status quo. Progress and change always comes from the non conservative or the contrarian. The conservatives function is to fear and prevent change, the liberals to embrace and promote change. The financial elite instituting the Corporate State are neither conservative nor liberal. They are by and large sociopathic, and amoral. They play both sides against the middle, and laugh all the way to the bank. Most conservatives are good people. Most liberals are good people. People on both sides share basic interests like health and safety and not having your children killed in war, or being cheated out of your retirement,or your home. We keep playing the stupid left right game and they keep playing us.
"The financial elite instituting the Corporate State are neither conservative nor liberal." "
Not so. The financial elite are uniformly conservative if only because they have the most to conserve.
"Most conservatives are good people."
That depends on their support for genocidal wars with countries that have done no harm to us, on their war on drugs and private prison complex, on their war on women, on their continued bilking of taxpayers, on their feeding the MIC instead of our poor, on their polluting the environment, on their denying Global Warming, on their religious crusades...shall I go on?
What Paul Buchheit touched can be explained very simply. Unless those whom wish to confront conservatives and win the war of words use the full panoply of verbal weaponry available like any good student of classic rhetoric was taught to do going back to ancient Athens, they will lose. What is so difficult about this? The consequences of not doing so are simply too important not to.
Cons have a distinct advantage--they hunt in packs. Herding liberals is like herding cats.
Not all feline species are individualistic, lions hunt in prides...and prides decimate packs. It is when lions are alone that packs win.
How is considering Thermonuclear war a possible strategy "conservative" ? The dictionary defines conservative as, being disposed to preserve existing conditions. Could it be I'm all alone in the dark I wonder.
most of us have succumbed to bending language and terminologies to suit our own needs, or gone along with those that do. but today's conservative or right wing is beyond all hope.
"we needed to destroy the village to save it" - is an example of twisting the meaning of "save" to justify what any truely conservative individual would naturally abhor.
"war on terror" mostly being really "war of terror" -
"collateral damage" a bonafide perversion - sanitizing the concept of the murder of innocents. and innocence.
"We need to look into our own progressive minds to plan a better strategy for publicizing the important role of society in America"
There is actually NO ROLE for society. The reason that liberals are losing the battle against evil is because their philosophy is fundamentally flawed. As such, liberal philosophy cannot serve as a refuge for the people.
The reason there is no role for society is simple. Society is like the corporation. It does not have personhood. It is a non-person. It cannot think or feel. It has no mind, no heart and no spirit.
Now et's get to The People's Philosophy. The people do not let "society", or "government" or any other construct trump the people themselves. The author himself recognized the potential problem with that.
Society, government, none of those institutions will be allowed to trump the people. Same for das korporations, and the churches. The people's philosophy is naturally coherent. All institutions are fundamentally the same - levers of power abuse. A most relevant truth that's constantly buried under das elite propaganda noize, ehhhhh?
No institution shall trump the people. So, liberals, get to work adjusting your philosophy. The people are going to rule themselves. Liberals, get your preachers to start preaching in resonance with the people's values. I'm assuming here your intentions are good. You have to set your agenda to match the people's agenda of universal equity, justice, enlightenment, solidarity, if you're going to contribute to the solution. So get your preachers to frame their ideas according to the people's agenda, which is to determine their own fates without elite interference. If liberals can't adopt the people's agenda, then get them out of our way.
So, these institutions WILL serve, like robotic slaves, the agenda of the people. Or we will dismantle them. The people will employ their own minds, hearts and spirits to own/control production and policy. These institutions are mere tools we leverage to streamline our processes. Like the hammer or the screwdriver. If a screwdriver rises up against us, heh heh, we break the damned thing into pieces.
"If liberals can't adopt the people's agenda, then get them out of our way."
What are you going to do, kill us? Your conservative bullshit has no limit. There is method to your madness though. If you keep repeating it, there are other morons who will follow you just like they followed other conservatives like Hitler, Stalin and the Republican Presidential candidates.
"Got a minute?"Why should it take longer than 3 seconds?
Con sevativ mind! The one which says others should serve them if they're in the one per cent or if in the 99% says yassa boss. What's soi hard to figure out about that. Brainwashed by corrupt con servative power elites who love their power and privileges!