Republican mythology

I have often written that Democrats have been thoroughly corrupted by our campaign finance system, which encourages bribes and graft.   Equally so, have the Republicans been corrupted, but Republican politicians carry the weight of a long litany of absurd beliefs that they espouse with religious zeal.  This St. Louis Post-Dispatch opinion piece lists eight of the big ones, including:

• They must believe, despite the evidence of the 2008 financial collapse, that unregulated — or at most, lightly regulated — financial markets are good for America and the world.

• GOP candidates must scoff at scientific consensus about global warming. Blame it on human activity? Bad. Cite Noah's Ark as evidence? Good. They must express at least some doubt about the science of evolution.

• They must insist, statistics and evidence to the contrary, that most of the nation's energy needs can be met safely with more domestic oil drilling, "clean-coal" technology and greater reliance on perfectly safe nuclear power plants.

• They must believe that the Founding Fathers wanted to guarantee individuals the absolute right to own high-capacity, rapid-fire weapons that did not exist in the late 18th century.

Stunningly, none of these beliefs is founded on facts or self-critical thinking.   As Eric Hoffer pointed out long ago, this lack of objective evidence presents no problem for true believers.

Continue ReadingRepublican mythology

Dialog with a Republican.

My neighbor, B, is a progressive republican and a tax partner in a large CPA firm. We had a conversation... "Obama needs to go", said B. Why? He's doing pretty well considering the mess he inherited! "Because all he wants to do is raise taxes! If we don't get control [of congress and senate] my taxes will go up by almost 20%. I already pay almost half my income in taxes: income, property, FICA and the rest" What? How do you get a 20% increase? "FICA - is capped at about 100k. As a partner, I pay FICA at 15%. Lose that cap and my taxes go up immediately by 15%. The top rate of income tax is set to climb to 39%, which is an extra 3%. And there are a bunch of others, too" No -- that's just wrong. Even assuming that happens... an example, if you earned $200k your effective FICA rate would be 7.5% on that $200k, right? So even without a cap, your effective FICA rate will never be greater than 15%. If you earn $200k, that means an increase of 7.5%, not 15%! "OK! But that wouldn't be a 7.5% increase if I earned 300k or 400k or 500k. It would be much greater than 7.5%" B, Sure it would, but if you earn $500k and can't absorb that kind of increase I'd advise you to start looking for a new tax accountant! LOL "Well ok! But do you think it's fair that 60% of the people in this country don't pay any taxes?" Where did you get that number? Do you think it's right that the US has such a large population of poor people they fall under the threshold for federal taxes? "Most of those people aren't poor!" But all of them pay taxes. You included property taxes in your 50%. I assume you included sales taxes, 7% for most everything here in GA? Then those people who pay nothing are paying way more in effective taxes than you - for food and energy and shelter [More . . . ]

Continue ReadingDialog with a Republican.

Is that a gun in your pocket or do you really dig my Neocon fundamentalist tea party ideas?

How is it that so many Republican men find Sarah Palin credible when she claims that we can drill our way out of the energy crisis? There simply isn’t that much oil in Alaska—anyone with a small bit of curiosity can do the math and find out that Alaska has only six months of oil to offer the rest of America. It gets much worse, of course. Republican men tend to love fact-less, self-contradictory female Republican politicians and commentators (including more than a few at FOX), especially those that push their sexuality hard based on the manner in which they dress and act. And consider the recent reactions of conservative pundits regarding the issue of whether Sarah Palin had breast implants. This anomaly leads to my question: Do Republican men really and truly think that the current crop of female Republican politicians/commentators are offering ideas that work, or are they confusing sexual arousal for patriotic fervor or intellectual inspiration? Consider that “misattribution of arousal” is well-established through numerous experiments. In 1962, psychologists Schacter and Singer told participants that the psychologists were studying the effect of vitamin injection on visual skills. This was prior to modern day ethics restrictions, and many of the students were secretly given injections of adrenaline or a placebo (to control for the effect of sticking a needle in one’s arm). Strong emotional reactions to subsequent stimuli (a “nosy” and “offensive” questionnaire) were strongest in participants who had been given the adrenaline but told that it was only vitamins and that it would have no effect on them. They misattributed their chemically-enhanced emotions to the questionnaire, whereas those who told that they were receiving the injection of a stimulant (and those receiving the placebo) did not misattribute their emotions. Here is a succinct description of the phenomenon of misattribution of arousal. (and see here). republican-babes What follows is an excerpt from Social Psychology and Human Nature, by Roy F. Baumeister and Brad Bushman (2007) (p. 187):

The intriguing thing about the Schachter-Singer theory is that it allows for arousals to be mislabeled or relabeled. That is, an arousal may arise for one reason but get another label, thereby producing a different reaction. For example, someone may not realize that what he or she is drinking has caffeine (e.g., if you think that you have decaffeinated tea when in reality it has caffeine . . .) it may create an arousal state. If something frustrating happens, someone who has this extra, unexplained arousal may get much angrier than he or she would otherwise. This process is called excitation transfer . . . The arousal from the first event (drinking caffeinated tea) transfers to the second event (frustration).
Consider that large numbers of conservative/fundamentalist men are not comfortable acknowledging the sexual arousal they feel when they see images of Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter or Michelle Bachman. Therefore (as my hunch goes), when they experience intense sexual arousal that they are not comfortable acknowledging (when they “dissociate” these toxic thoughts of “inappropriate” sexual attractiveness), they are left without any obvious explanation for their increased arousal. They are thus ripe for misattribution. They are easily self-fooled that they are feeling passionate about their country or fearful about Middle Eastern “terrorists.” Whatever it is that these vapid/deceitful Republican babes are uttering, it must be true too. “Why else would my blood flow thusly whenever I hear Sarah Palin give a talk?” Why, indeed?

Continue ReadingIs that a gun in your pocket or do you really dig my Neocon fundamentalist tea party ideas?

Sepuku, Republican Style.

It's been absurd for a long while, but the apparent self-destruction of the Republican Party is reaching new depths. Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina is being censured by the state G.O.P. organization for working with Democrats on a climate bill. Here is the Fox News report. For contrast, here is the Huffington Report. All one can do is stare and ask "What is wrong with those people?" Despite party leader calls for bipartisanship, we see repeated motions by the grassroots elements of the embattled party to circle the wagons and harden their resolve to do nothing to aid and abet what they perceive as The Enemy. Which is what, exactly? Anything, it seems, which suggests that people cannot manage their own affairs, no matter how much they might affect other people, is disallowed. If legislation is proposed to control behavior of individuals, it is anathema to the Republicans. Unless we're discussing abortion. Then the full weight of the state must be brought to bear to prevent individual choice. If the Democrats are smart, all they need do is continue to discuss issues in rational, thoughtful ways, and let the Republican Rabid Dog Wing continue to vociferate mindlessly, and in 2010 there will be another bloodletting of Republican presence in Congress. All the Republicans seem able to do anymore is bang their shoes on the desk and repeat "No! No! No!" At some point, surely, there will be a schism (much like the one we saw in upstate New York) and the sane and rational Republicans will split away from the hydrophobic microcephalics that have been destroying them for so long. That cannot but be a good thing in the long run.

Continue ReadingSepuku, Republican Style.