Turning boon into boondoggle.

The Republican Party may have its share of PR problems, but common knowledge and polling data agree that the party still holds the upper hand on the issues of terrorism and national security. Polls also suggest that national security has a place close to the average American’s heart, especially after recent close-calls on national airlines.

But, as with so many other matters of partisan policy, the Republicans don’t really have any advantage over their political adversaries at all. Again, the Democrats seem to desperately struggle not with positions, but with effective marketing.

Take for example the 9/11 Commission’s report card, issued back in December of 2005. The report card reviewed the Bush Administration’s response to the bipartisan Commission’s list of well-researched recommendations, and it gave fairly dismal scores. I think the report card bears repeating, even some eight months later:

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Those “good old days” never existed.

The conservative right loves to use the term “family values” as a token cover for their backward bigotry. Used in opposition to abortion, gay rights, or even the increase of women in the workplace, “family values” summons a particular image of the conservatives’ imaginary era of perfection and bliss.

Many people refer to this image as a real time, probably somewhere in the 1950’s; “the good old days” when men worked to support their families, women stayed happily in the home with the children, no one divorced, and no children ran off to live renegade alternative lifestyles tainted with wanton sodomy, teen pregnancy, or drug abuse.

We may have even heard older people reminisce about “the good old days” in terms that make the time seem authentically wonderful: “no one locked their doors”; “neighbors looked after each other”; “marriage meant something back then”; “it was a simpler time”, and so on.

Even if we don’t buy into the conservative agenda against basic equal rights, we may concede that the world has become a much more frightening, complicated place, and that a time period such as the allusive 1950’s seems preferable, even tantalizing.

Unfortunately, no amount of regressive activism on the part of Republicans can return us to a grander time, because those “good old days” simply never existed. I like comedian Lewis Black’s take on the shiny 1950’s ideal:

“It was called the ‘50s. The wife cooked and raised the kids and sent the husband off to work, where

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The greatest sin–and virtue–of human memory

The human brain has a remarkable ability to categorize data. We use heuristics, or mental “rules of thumb”, to make sense of the world around is with efficiency, and usually, accuracy. That vital ability to generalize has protected us from harm since the beginning of our species, and it still aids us immensely in processing and storing information.

But the human tendency to generalize also gets us in a lot of trouble. The brain’s predisposition to throw sensory and contextual data into categories takes much of the blame for forms of human illogic such as stereotyping, prejudice, and jumping to conclusions.

Disillusioned with the failings of our logical process, we may feel tempted to shirk the instinct to generalize all together. At first blush, it sounds like a fantastic (if impossible) way to cure the world of much its ignorance and needless hate. If we could remove the part of the brain that draws quick conclusions automatically, where would that leave us as a species?

Well, it would make us autistic.

Psychologists associate autism with poor social skills, lacking communication ability, and a stubbornly structured and highly literal way of information processing. According to Harvard University Professor of Psychology Daniel Schacter in his book The Seven Sins of Memory, Autistics lack real-world critical thinking skills because they look at everything in an individualized, literal way. This explains in part why autistics tend to have astounding rote memorization, yet lack any grasp of context.

Without the ability to generalize, we …

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An atheist living in an evangelical world? How novel.

Morgan Spurlock, filmmaker and creator of the successful fast food critical documentary Super Size Me, has a groundbreaking program running on the cable network FX called 30 Days. The premise of the show goes like this: every episode details the journey of one person, either Spurlock or another willing participant,…

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The Democratic Party doesn’t need cohesion. It needs better marketing.

The Democratic Party’s “lack of unity” has become an oft-cited criticism of conservative pundits. The Republican right has successfully exploited intra-party dissent—primarily regarding the Iraq War—and cultivated the image of the Democratic Party as weak, faltering, and therefore ineffective. Republicans have artfully crafted a fear of uncertainty, and suggested on no uncertain terms that a divided party accomplishes nothing, and the divided Democrats would run the Iraq War and America into ruin if given the opportunity. As we all know, the Democrats have finally begun to recover from the GOP’s fear-mongering tactics, but the complaints of lacking cohesion remain nearly as strong as ever.

Analysts say that the Democrats need to create a new image, and they need to do this by creating a unified front. A few gained House seats won’t last if the Democrats continue to look weak and vulnerable. The talking heads seem to see cohesion as a wholly beneficial aim, something to achieve and advertise on the part of the Democrats.

Let’s inspect that assumption for a moment. Polls throughout the decades have indicated that most voters don’t fully subscribe to a party; they instead tow-the-line in the moderate middle. An independent “American Moderate Party” exists on the fringe, but allow us to face reality: most Americans feel they have but two choices when they go to the polls. In most cases, they really do only have a Republican and a Democrat candidate from whom to choose. And when an …

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