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skooooo Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-08-04 08:01 PM
Original message
What I think is happening in America....

...I think with this torture scandal, that some Americans are just shutting down and refusing to deal with it. That's why you hear people say things like "college prank", etc. Bush has so degraded the image of America to the rest of the world that we can barely even conceive of the magnitude of the damage.

It's easier to simply shut down and increase the feelings of isolation from the rest of the world -- which, in my opinion, is just as alarming.
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kalian Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-08-04 08:02 PM
Response to Original message
1. Makes sense....
exhaust the population senseless....make them NOT CARE.
If they don't care...then they won't be a threat when it comes to
voting.
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whistle Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-08-04 08:09 PM
Response to Original message
2. You are correct, there are Americans who are shutting down...
...and not dealing with this. They are:

George W Bush
Dick Cheney
Donald Rumsfeld
Karl Rove
Colin Powell
Condi Rice
The Joint Chiefs of Staff

just to name a few.
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lastknowngood Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-08-04 08:11 PM
Response to Original message
3. Yea the repugnant ass in my office said they shouldn't just keep
showing the pictures they should just move on, and it's being made much worse than it really was by the "liberal media". I quoted his reichwing ass from a year ago saying that torture was OK for them damn Arabs as that is the only thing they understand. I told the ass that the next time an American is tortured I will remind him again.
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skooooo Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-08-04 08:22 PM
Response to Reply #3
6. I'm glad you spoke up....

...people should know better than to think like that.
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KissMyAsscroft Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-08-04 08:14 PM
Response to Original message
4. Doesnt matter what the 30% of morons think..


The majority is outraged.
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chookie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-08-04 08:29 PM
Response to Reply #4
9. This is my impression as well
In my "focus groups," Flying Monkey types are the only people who are backing Bush at this time. The way the war has gone, especially in light of the revelations about torture, have pushed the sane swing voters far away from Bush.
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Moonbeam_Starlight Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-08-04 08:15 PM
Response to Original message
5. Cognitive dissonance
is VERY psychologically uncomfortable and people will go to any lengths to avoid it.
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skooooo Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-08-04 08:22 PM
Response to Reply #5
7. can you explain cognitive dissonance..?


I think I get the general idea of it..but maybe you can explain it better..?
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SharonAnn Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-08-04 08:27 PM
Response to Reply #7
8. When you hold a belief very strongly and are then presented
with information that seems to contradict it.

To resolve cognitive dissonance, a person has to either change the strongly held belief (not very likely) or ignore/deny the contradicting information.
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x-g.o.p.er Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-08-04 08:35 PM
Response to Reply #8
10. I disagree that change "is not very likely"
I will agree that it doesn't happen overnight, that it takes a period of time, which is different for every person. BUt most rational thinking people, when presented concrete eveidence that is contrary to what they previously thought, do tend to change.

Does it happen with just one issue? I would say no, it doesn't, it might have to be a couple or even several core beliefs shaken before something like life-long political ideology changes.

But it does change.
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SharonAnn Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-08-04 08:45 PM
Response to Reply #10
11. Yes, I was referring to the first time or two it occurs. After a few
"cognitive dissonance" episodes, many people start to question their original belief and that's when it may get discarded.
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x-g.o.p.er Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-08-04 08:56 PM
Response to Reply #11
12. Ahhh, okay.
Makes sense. Thanks!
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Ladyhawk Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-08-04 09:02 PM
Response to Reply #10
14. Yes, it took me many years.
I first had to get rid of my blind faith in fundamentalist dogma. As Dan Barker aptly put it, "Faith is not the result of fuzzy thinking; it is the cause of it." Once "faith" was gone, I could look at everything critically.

Losing one's world view is very, very painful. It's taken me half my life to lose it. I'm sure more changes are on the horizon. It's very hard, especially when friends and family don't come along for the ride.
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Ladyhawk Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-08-04 09:00 PM
Response to Reply #8
13. Fundies are great at compartmentalizing knowledge to avoid...
...cognitive dissonance. It's a pretty nifty trick. I went to an ear, nose and throat specialist once who actually believed in Creationism. I wonder how he manages to know what he must need to know in order to do his job, then go to his 7th Day Adventist Church on Saturday, believing God created the world in six days six thousand years ago.

People like him kind of scare me.
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myomy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-08-04 09:03 PM
Response to Original message
15. True but there are multitudes of dumb, uninformed among us.
.
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