Right-wing psychology

[Rick]

Some kind of systemic change is all that will course correct. I don't claim to know what it is, but the problem is a lot deeper than one big fascist baby's personality. I think he's awful and is a bad sign, but the idea that his presidency created our situation is simply not accurate at all. He's exacerbating all kinds of horrible things that were already going on, and adding to it with the open racism, misogyny etc., but let's not let that lull us into the idea that the problem will go away with a new president.

The underlying problems will not magically disappear with a new president, even if that president is as radically different from the current one as a Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. How could they, they're institutionalized! And institutions change very gradually, right? But what will change pretty much right away, I'd wager, is the political/cultural vibe, both in the US and beyond. 50% of Americans will, for the first time in 4 years, breathe a sigh of relief. Probably even more for the populations of Western Europe, Australia, Canada, Mexico. Backlash will, of course, also occur in some form. Trump supporters might end up seeing him as a martyr, tortured and murdered by the "deep state" ... and fanaticism is an ugly and scary thing.

Trump took a few months to cast a giant shadow over the world. Who's to say that a new president couldn't lighten that shadow just as quickly? Will a more upbeat vibe make the underlying problems disappear? Again, how could it when these problems are institutional. But it might encourage good things to happen. Especially since the bar on "goodness" has been waaaaay lowered since Trump became would-be King of the World.

[Sādhaka]

Some good points made in this thread.

Seemingly most if not all pro-trumpers are foolish, and most anti-trumpers are bandwagon fools.

Also, what we might ideally have, is a ‘true’-moderate (or maybe someone center-right). That is, not controlled by corporate interests (I’m not necessarily talking socialism vs capitalism here; but corporatism).

And hopefully the hot hells freeze over (or cool down rather) and the cold hells warm up.

[tkp67]

The real truth here is obfuscated.

A direct perspective of rationalism applied to media and information is no longer rational because of an overwhelming amount of information highly skewed by opinion through desire of other agendas such as social media likes or corporate interests.

I think one aspect of the degenerate age, self interest being treated dogmatically as we abandon belief for self construed epistemology that can't see past the moment, and whose senses are so directly connected to desire it is if there is no interruption in that moment to appeal to reasonable human nature.

[Rick]

[DharmaJunior]

'Bread and circuses' might be palliative for some people but the class/racial tensions are part and parcel of a sharp dip in quality of life. Far be it from me to cheer-lead equality though, who wants to give up all their stuff?

[Matt J]

That (OP's) article is pretty incendiary. But there has been research on psychology and politics:

https://news.rice.edu/2014/07/31/libera ... -disagree/

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... or/580465/

The upshot is that conservatives are more affected by the negativity bias and potential threats.

Rick, the new Amusing Ourselves to Death is The Shallows by Nicholas Carr. Both brilliant work, in my mind.

[Nemo]

The problem is not the psych profiles of these ding dongs. The problem is oligarchs weaponizing them for their political ends. You could just as easily program then to be civic minded and helpful to society. We did it all the time in the army.

[Matt J]

Were you PSYOP?

I don't know how it is in Canada, but the U.S. Army is terrible at this kind of stuff. I would take anything I got from the U.S. Army with a grain of salt given the abysmal failure in Iraq (and probably soon, Afghanistan).

The problem is not the psych profiles of these ding dongs. The problem is oligarchs weaponizing them for their political ends. You could just as easily program then to be civic minded and helpful to society. We did it all the time in the army.

[Queequeg]

The problem is not the psych profiles of these ding dongs. The problem is oligarchs weaponizing them for their political ends. You could just as easily program then to be civic minded and helpful to society. We did it all the time in the army.

Agree to an extent. The oligarchs are taking advantage.

In the US, the Electoral College distorts democratic power to rural areas, and there is no way around it: people in the country live different than people in the cities. This has always been the case.

There used to be a North/South divide, the enduring legacies of the Populists and the New Deal that made many in rural areas Democrats, unifying them with labor in the urban parts of the country, and the Republicans were typified by Blue Bloods, bankers and industrialists. Then the Democrats passed civil rights legislation and flipped Southerners into Republicans. There's a certain redneck charm in Southern culture that has since had appeal throughout rural US - it otherwise makes no sense to see the Dixie flag waving in places like central New York State. A generation of right wing media seems to have united rural people in opposition to urbanites. A guy in rural Alabama probably has a lot more in common with a guy in rural Pennsylvania or Oregon than any of them do with a guy in DC or Boston.

And the abortion issue drove a lot of ethnic Catholics over to the Republican party - see Hannity, Cavuto and the other stars of fox news - Irish and Italians. They've now moved out to the exurbs and are blending into rural America, bringing with it their own intellectual history... (The US Supreme Court is packed with Catholics...)

Right wing media, in its drive for eyeballs and ears have hit on and honed a certain kind of fear mongering that has political implications. Its a monster that has a life of its own now.

[Nemo]

Were you PSYOP?

I don't know how it is in Canada, but the U.S. Army is terrible at this kind of stuff. I would take anything I got from the U.S. Army with a grain of salt given the abysmal failure in Iraq (and probably soon, Afghanistan).

The problem is not the psych profiles of these ding dongs. The problem is oligarchs weaponizing them for their political ends. You could just as easily program then to be civic minded and helpful to society. We did it all the time in the army.

There are soldiers and then there are other soldiers. Snowden is a fine example. Does he seem like a jar head who doesn't know how the world actually works? Sure, some soldiers are better off with their making the world safe for freedom and democracy blinders on. It's better for them. But the actual decision makers know exactly what is going on. We told the politicians point blank what we needed to win in Afghanistan. With what they gave us we had a 100% chance of failure. We had to go anyway. We called it a training op in private.

The right wing does not play the game looking one election ahead Queequeg. In private they think 20 years ahead. They know if they can influence how people think now in 20 years they get the laws they want. The people in charge of the right are not the ding dong candidates who do exactly as they are told. These oligarchs are actually quite intelligent as can be seen by the fact that they have been getting exactly what they want for the last 40 years. Abortion, etc mean nothing to them except a means to an end. Their ideology has also infiltrated state security and labeled left thinkers and environmentalists economic threats and use public resources to run them down.

[Queequeg]

The right wing does not play the game looking one election ahead Queequeg. In private they think 20 years ahead. They know if they can influence how people think now in 20 years they get the laws they want. The people in charge of the right are not the ding dong candidates who do exactly as they are told. These oligarchs are actually quite intelligent as can be seen by the fact that they have been getting exactly what they want for the last 40 years. Abortion, etc mean nothing to them except a means to an end. Their ideology has also infiltrated state security and labeled left thinkers and environmentalists economic threats and use public resources to run them down.

Oh, I get that. I was offering an analysis of the fault lines they've taken advantage of and why its hard to beat in the short term short of some re-alignment of priorities that break down the rural-urban divide. Democrats have been betting on demographic changes - the growing minority, and particularly Latino vote (which is an uneasy match given the conservativism of Latin culture), but the electoral college makes it ineffectual yet, and the policies they pursue keep alienating people who might otherwise join the coalition - all the identity issues, while each in themselves have merit, don't make a workable basis for a winning strategy for attracting socially conservative working class white voters.

There are liberals thinking long term also - "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

The problem with liberal long term thinking is that it relies on a notion that justice is self-evident, rather than something that needs to be developed and cultivated with zeal. It needs to be propagated and made normal. Obama was a lame president in many respects, except that he embodied a glimpse of a post racial possibility where people are accepted for who they are as a matter of course - white, black, brown, yellow, whatever, straight, gay, bi, queer, whatever, everyone can be accepted on the basis of personal merit. It takes a lot of work to create a just culture. It requires that lizard part of the brain to be tamed, and the higher functioning levels of the brain to prevail.

Anyone familiar with Buddhist education and training sees the truth of the above paragraph.

The right wing, and the progressive wing, feed fear and paranoia for their ends, but the target of right wing fear mongering is just a much bigger demographic than the progressive fear mongering. That game is always a loser for the one looking for exapansiveness, transcendence, diversity, etc. Its an approach that undermines the goals. Its workable in very discrete approaches (compare wrathful deity practices), but also cultivating that part of the brain is much more likely to go terribly bad.

[Queequeg]

Working class white voters - in the past, they had their Blue Dog Democrats. Its not pretty, but I'll just point this out - working class white voters had people like Strom Thurmond - segregationists from the South - who kept the Democratic party bending conservative on certain issues. Thurmond quit the Democratic party after the passage of the Civil Rights act, but the sensibility he represented endured in the Democratic party until his generation died out. I suppose the punctuation mark on their purge from the Democratic party was the election of Bill Clinton in 1992. Bill Clinton also represented the ascendancy of neo-liberalism as the economic ideology prevailing in the Democratic party which basically hastened the demise of the working class - no wonder all those former union members across the midwest abandoned the Democratic party and voted for Trump who was speaking to the their experience (and why Bernie was probably the right candidate to run on the Dem ticket in 2016).

As someone who believes in justice and equality as the basis of civil society, I have just as long term vision as the Koch brothers. I also don't have billions of dollars. I also feel dirty playing the fear mongering game and have no heart for it. That leaves me, and others like me, having to play a different kind of long game that involves living the culture out at a personal, local level. We have to be a widespread culture that stands up over the course of a lifetime for the things we believe in, and endure and weather these periods when reactionary BS prevails. We need to pass laws that cut off Right Wing influence - and its pretty discrete: its not numbers of people, its just money and the influence it buys.

I think that's the same conclusion you come out to.

[Queequeg]

Re: Lizard Brain...

Anyone who has seriously engaged in Buddhist practice understands how hard it is to tame self-preservation impulses that express as fear and insularity. Usually we encounter it as the pervasive grasping at self that just keeps popping up as we try to ameliorate it. Releasing it requires a subtle balancing in the mind. That's usually too hard to do except in the most serene environments. Alternative methods involve distraction - intentionally and vigorously acting for other's benefit.

I think people intuitively understand that when we help others, we are able to transcend our selves and live out an expansive life. People who want to help others become teachers, social workers, doctors and nurses, public advocates, etc. In Buddhism this approach is expanded on as the Bodhisattva life - the practice of the Six Paramitas.

A dangling thought kind of related to the thread that I felt compelled to add.

[Nemo]

Working class white voters - in the past, they had their Blue Dog Democrats. Its not pretty, but I'll just point this out - working class white voters had people like Strom Thurmond - segregationists from the South - who kept the Democratic party bending conservative on certain issues. Thurmond quit the Democratic party after the passage of the Civil Rights act, but the sensibility he represented endured in the Democratic party until his generation died out. I suppose the punctuation mark on their purge from the Democratic party was the election of Bill Clinton in 1992. Bill Clinton also represented the ascendancy of neo-liberalism as the economic ideology prevailing in the Democratic party which basically hastened the demise of the working class - no wonder all those former union members across the midwest abandoned the Democratic party and voted for Trump who was speaking to the their experience (and why Bernie was probably the right candidate to run on the Dem ticket in 2016).

As someone who believes in justice and equality as the basis of civil society, I have just as long term vision as the Koch brothers. I also don't have billions of dollars. I also feel dirty playing the fear mongering game and have no heart for it. That leaves me, and others like me, having to play a different kind of long game that involves living the culture out at a personal, local level. We have to be a widespread culture that stands up over the course of a lifetime for the things we believe in, and endure and weather these periods when reactionary BS prevails. We need to pass laws that cut off Right Wing influence - and its pretty discrete: its not numbers of people, its just money and the influence it buys.

I think that's the same conclusion you come out to.

The secret of liberalism is pretending you are all about justice and equality but making property rights inviolable. That this inevitably leads to oligarchy was old news when Plato wrote about it. Liberalism is a scam. There will be no meaningful change through the center left parties. They have frustrated it at every turn for 50 years. Which is why there are now Trumps popping up all over the world. It's either turn left or fascism.

[Queequeg]

The secret of liberalism is pretending you are all about justice and equality but making property rights inviolable. That this inevitably leads to oligarchy was old news when Plato wrote about it. Liberalism is a scam. There will be no meaningful change through the center left parties. They have frustrated it at every turn for 50 years. Which is why there are now Trumps popping up all over the world. It's either turn left or fascism.

Property rights, they say, are actually a bundle of rights. Getting rid of property rights is not feasible.

We can, however, work on adjusting them. And its happening.

For instance, the so-called Sharing Economy, for all its warts, is changing people's relationship to stuff at a tangible, real life level. I don't need MY car, I just need A car, or just a ride, really, on demand. I don't need a vacation home, I just need a place a few times a year. I don't need a mcmansion on an acre of land, I need a modest house in a walkable neighborhood I like around people I like with public spaces for us to hang out in.

Its not such a stark choice. Its not easy, but neither is a communitarian revolution - especially the violence you need to erase the people who will disagree with you. And then good luck trying to build an idealistic civil society with all that PTSD coursing through the population. Especially after you killed everyone with the expertise needed to run the society.

[Nemo]

The secret of liberalism is pretending you are all about justice and equality but making property rights inviolable. That this inevitably leads to oligarchy was old news when Plato wrote about it. Liberalism is a scam. There will be no meaningful change through the center left parties. They have frustrated it at every turn for 50 years. Which is why there are now Trumps popping up all over the world. It's either turn left or fascism.

Property rights, they say, are actually a bundle of rights. Getting rid of property rights is not feasible.

We can, however, work on adjusting them. And its happening.

For instance, the so-called Sharing Economy, for all its warts, is changing people's relationship to stuff at a tangible, real life level. I don't need MY car, I just need A car, or just a ride, really, on demand. I don't need a vacation home, I just need a place a few times a year. I don't need a mcmansion on an acre of land, I need a modest house in a walkable neighborhood I like around people I like with public spaces for us to hang out in.

Its not such a stark choice. Its not easy, but neither is a communitarian revolution - especially the violence you need to erase the people who will disagree with you. And then good luck trying to build an idealistic civil society with all that PTSD coursing through the population. Especially after you killed everyone with the expertise needed to run the society.

My preference is for there to be an actual left again. Democrats pretending to be left while prosecuting air wars murdering countless civilians and deregulating Wallstreet is an absolute farce. Liberalism is not a leftist ideology. It's views on property, capitalism and warfare are incredibly regressive and far right. A fig leaf of human rights only for American citizens is laughable.

[Queequeg]

Dude, that's what I referenced about Clinton and his neo-liberalism.

We agree, its a mistake.

Fighting it is a long game. Don't look, but there are people in the US fighting it, now. What do you think is going on right now in the Democratic primary? We're fighting it out with the milquetoast centrists, and among ourselves, about who should carry the banner for the Democrats.

You really need to get back off the sidelines. Shit is going down, now. The fight is on.

[tkp67]

what did the buddhas who existed during times of great strife do in response to great strife?

If the teaching have been sustained are there examples of how we might better adapt our minds to over come the obstacles we face as a society today?