In the September, 2006 Harper's "Notebook," Lewis H. Lapham begins with this quote by Rainer Werner Fassbinder: In the last analysis, terrorism is an idea generated by capitalism to justify better defense measures to safeguard capitalism. Is there money to be made in Iraq? Lapham, who has wielded a sharp…
“This nation is at war with Islamic fascists.” The President actually said this to describe our opponent in his war on terrorism. It appears to be a GOP talking point. Now, what would most Americans think if those intent on bombing civilians described their enemy as "Christian fascists?" How about "why…
It is because we tout ourselves as the smartest animal on the planet we are oh-so-vulnerable. As one can read in Proverbs 16:18, “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.”
Human cognition is an unwieldy and fallible bag of mental tricks. Anyone who has seriously studied human cognition knows this. As Leda Cosmides and John Toby wrote:
“The mind consists of a set of adaptations, designed to solve the long standing adaptive problems humans encountered as hunter-gatherers.”
Many people think, however, that they know how they think; they have faith that conscious common sense is always accurate and on target. Common sense fails consider Freud’s rock solid finding: conscious awareness is only the tip of the cognitive iceberg.
Common sense seduces us with powerful illusions, illusions that look like “uncontestable facts” to those of us who believe we can merely sit around and think in order to figure out how we think. Although common sense has led us well us for eons, it often leads to errors. The Sun does not circle the Earth. Our ears do not operate like microphones and our eyes do not work like cameras. “I” am not really a little person who seems to dwell in my head. Science has shown that what the “thing” that constitutes me is a complicated and often self-contradictory bag of skills and strategies. For many good examples of how we are often misled by the same heuristics on which we usually depend, see the …
The Nation explains that Ned Lamont was successful tonight because he was much more than an anti-war candidate. Lamont continually pointed to the domestic losses caused by the diversion of big money to finance the Iraq occupation: How did Lamont succeed where others – including 2004 presidential contender and current Democratic…
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 …