Conservatism is a mental illness

Ordnary sane and rational people do not act at all like the McVeighs, Rudolphs and Breiviks of the world.

That belittles those that truly have a mental illness. Conservatism is a choice. People with mental illnesses didn't choose to be that way. Those you listed were terrorists, and all conservatives are not terrorists. There are lots of conservatives with mental illnesses, but they didn't choose it either. Don't blame greed and hate on mental illness. Please.

Or rational either.

And yet conservative mouthpieces like Limbaugh and Bootz are quite aware of how unhinged their fans are and are always trying to incite them accordingly.

They don't go out their way to appeal to the sanity or rationality of their listeners, do they?

But to be honest, I have not listened to Limbaugh or Boortz in years, for that exact reason. Give the facts, sans the spin, and I'll figure it out myself. But that doesn't net the results they want, so.....

I do believe a lot of the terrorists are quite sane. They know exactly what they are doing and why they are doing it.

On right wing boards the white male haters often C&P the latest garbage from Neil Boortz. I'd never heard of Boortz until 2005. We'd come to ATL when Katrina struck NOLA. While we were running errands in ATL we had the AM radio on for news. On WSBam we heard a bunch of insults directed at New orleanians for having been 'stupid' enough to live in NOLA. (BTW when NOLA was established it had been protected by much greater land barriers. Those were lost to man caused- including canal grids in wetlands- erosion during the 20th century). During the days immediately after Katrina Boortz was saying hateful things about NOLA residents and evacuees, mostly racial in nature.

We already have scientific evidence that conservatives react more strongly to stimuli that elicit a fear response. We also have scientific evidence that Conservatives tend to believe false reports even when they are proven to be false. To me this fits the definition of a mild form of dementia.


http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/09/fearmongering-h/


^snip^

Deep-seated political differences aren’t simply moral and intellectual: They’re also biological.

In reflex tests of 46 political partisans, psychologists found that conservatives were more likely than liberals to be shocked by sudden threats.

Accompanying the physiological differences were deep differences on hot-button political issues: military expansion, the Iraq war, gun control, capital punishment, the Patriot act, warrantless searches, foreign aid, abortion rights, gay marriage, premarital sex and pornography.

"People are experiencing the world, experiencing threat, differently," said University of Nebraska political scientist John Hibbing. "We have very different physiological orientations."



http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2008/09/why_the_facts_dont_matter_in_p.php


^snip^


Why the Facts Don't Matter in Politics
Posted on: September 15, 2008 2:54 PM, by Jonah Lehrer

I think this experiment helps explains a rather disturbing amount of our political discourse. What it neatly demonstrates is that the main reason so many campaigns traffic in dishonest allegations and pseudofacts is that, when it comes to voters, the facts don't really matter. Most of us are just partisan hacks:

Political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler provided two groups of volunteers with the Bush administration's prewar claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. One group was given a refutation -- the comprehensive 2004 Duelfer report that concluded that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction before the United States invaded in 2003. Thirty-four percent of conservatives told only about the Bush administration's claims thought Iraq had hidden or destroyed its weapons before the U.S. invasion, but 64 percent of conservatives who heard both claim and refutation thought that Iraq really did have the weapons. The refutation, in other words, made the misinformation worse.
A similar "backfire effect" also influenced conservatives told about Bush administration assertions that tax cuts increase federal revenue. One group was offered a refutation by prominent economists that included current and former Bush administration officials. About 35 percent of conservatives told about the Bush claim believed it; 67 percent of those provided with both assertion and refutation believed that tax cuts increase revenue.





http://www.medicinenet.com/dementia/article.htm

^snip^


Dementia Facts Medically Edited by: Charles P. Davis, MD, PhD

Dementia is a term that describes a collection of symptoms that include decreased intellectual functioning that interferes with normal life functions and is usually used to describe people who have two or more major life functions impaired or lost such as memory, language, perception, judgment or reasoning; they may lose emotional and behavioral control, develop personality changes and have problem solving abilities reduced or lost.


There are different classification schemes for dementias roughly based (and with overlap) on observed problems; some frequently used are cortical (memory, language, thinking, social) , subcortical (emotions, movement, memory), progressive (cognitive abilities worsen over time), primary (results from a specific disease such as Alzheimer's disease and secondary (occurs because of disease or injury).

is an ideology. It and liberalism is found in nearly every culture and has forever. Both conservatism and liberalism are part of the universe, to demean one automatically demeans both..

Tell that to the parents of the kids that got massacred in Norway. Or the relatives of the people killed in the Oklahoma City Bombing and 9/11. Or the descendants of Holocaust victims. Or the descendants of Stalin's purges. Etc, ad infinitum.

Conservatives have repeatedly and frequently engaged in predatory repression of populations and caused suffering and death on a mass scale throughout the entire history of the human race.

Liberals are always the ones that stop, or attempt to stop, the destructive madness of conservatives.

If you want to call this undeniable fact moral relativism, or say that calling conservatives on their actions (which appears to be the new Third Way meme) stigmatization, so be it. Is repressing and causing suffering and death to innocent people perfectly acceptable because it is part of the grand yin/yang design of the universe?

Demeaning conservative ideology and actions does not automatically demean liberal ideology and action, unless you either have absolutely no socially acceptable ethics or morals as defined by most democratic and democratic socialist societies, or have extreme perception challenges.

Our laws, our democratic government was, for all practical purposes, originally instituted by liberals to protect innocent people from the predations and control of conservatives, and yet allowed conservatives the maximum freedom to exercise their beliefs and opinions to the limit of where liberty can constrain them from hurting others.

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security...

Many of us here have spent our entire adult lives struggling to prevent conservatives from destroying our democracy, instituting repressive authoritarian government and killing and maiming innocent people.

When someone has the fucking audacity to tell us that calling a predator a predator is demeaning to the poor thing, and therefore demeaning to us, it just ain't gonna fly here.

:applause:

They live in the "Father knows best" realm.

"This hurts them more than it hurts us".

"Spare the rod, spoil the child".

"Might makes right".

The quintessential portrait of conservative ideology and resulting policy in America. That says it all. A picture really is worth a thousand words.
:hi:

:thumbsup:

conservatives are the problem.

Conservatism is extreme by nature. If not held in check, it inevitably turns deadly.

Do you have any idea of what kind of fascist hell we'd be living in right now if we had not been fighting conservatives tooth and nail every day for the past 30 years in order to stop them from destroying democracy and the planet itself?

Think about it, please.

if not held in check...

True, we have been fighting the extremist conservatives for at least 30 yrs.

What do you need to hold extremist liberals in check for? To keep them from saving puppies and whales? From permitting GLBT folk to marry? From trying to end war forever? From trying to protect the environment? From trying to protect social programs? From trying to make food safer? From trying to make sure everyone's granma can get medical care?

?

I don't get it.

It's just not real.

What in the world would extreme liberalism look like?

Liberalism is a philosophy that favors limited regulation of free enterprise. It combines a free economic system with the regulations necessary to protect individual safety, opportunities and human and individual rights.

Again: By definition, liberalism cannot be extreme.

If you are extreme, you are not liberal. You are something else.

would have a hard time, other forms of the LEFT WING can and have been extreme. Need I mention...oh Stalin? How about Pol Pot? They are extreme and in the LEFT.

That is history.

The Communists in Eastern Europe were not liberal at all.

but to call them conservative is a mistake. They were STATISTS... a horse of a slightly different feather.

Liberalism (from the Latin liberalis, "of freedom")<1> is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights.<2> Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but most liberals support such fundamental ideas as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights, free trade, and the freedom of religion.<3><4><5><6><7> These ideas are widely accepted, even by political groups that do not openly profess a liberal ideological orientation. Liberalism encompasses several intellectual trends and traditions, but the dominant variants are classical liberalism, which became popular in the eighteenth century, and social liberalism, which became popular in the twentieth century.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism

For every example of conservative extremists you can cite, there is some conservative out there who can cite some Stalinist liberal extremist. Do you deny that there have been conservatives and liberals in virtually every society of mankind since the beginning of time? That liberal and conservative ideology may, in fact, be the best example of yin and yang in the universe? I think it is laughable that some here can't or wont acknowledge the other side as an equal force in the universe even when the other side has always controlled approximately half of the power in any given state, country or planet.

Economic leftists are not necessarily liberals.

People can cite a Stalinist extremist. But they would be citing a conservative.

Liberal:

A person of liberal views

A supporter or member of a Liberal Party

adjective /ˈlib(ə)rəl/ 

Open to new behavior or opinions and willing to discard traditional values
- they have more liberal views toward marriage and divorce than some people

Favorable to or respectful of individual rights and freedoms
- liberal citizenship laws

(in a political context) Favoring maximum individual liberty in political and social reform
- a liberal democratic state

Of or characteristic of Liberals or a Liberal Party

(in the UK) Of or relating to the Liberal Democrat Party
- the Liberal leader

Regarding many traditional beliefs as dispensable, invalidated by modern thought, or liable to change

(of education) Concerned mainly with broadening a person's general knowledge and experience, rather than with technical or professional training

(esp. of an interpretation of a law) Broadly construed or understood; not strictly literal or exact
- they could have given the 1968 Act a more liberal interpretation

Given, used, or occurring in generous amounts
- liberal amounts of wine had been consumed

(of a person) Giving generously
- Sam was too liberal with the wine

Care to address the actual post? Can't face or acknowledge the truth? Keerist what a dogs breakfast you can dish up.

Stalin was NOT a conservative and STALINISM is not a conservative ideology. It is very much LEFT WING...EXTREME LEFT WING.

Jaysus this is like history 101... and it irks me as much as when the other side calls hitler a socialist... now talk about a CONSERVATIVE RW extremists.

This is like basic political science too.

And authoritarian types tilt conservative in the vast majority of cases. It's not that there can't be authoritarians on the Left, Stalin and Pol Pot being the obvious examples, but it's much more common on the Right.

let's qualify things

when I was 17 yrs. old. I seem to have forgotten it over the years.

I only believe what seems to be real to me, I can't speak for others, although many of us seem to have a large number of common experiences and have formed similar opinions about human existence, evolution, and altruism. It may be that all our actions are predestined by some universal principle of opposites, but then again, maybe not. I prefer to believe that I have free will.

But, anyway, it is good to hear that somebody knows the truth; I can't debate with with the absolute. My "dogs breakfast" opinion will pale in comparison to the truth, and will be inaccurate.

I really have no idea if there have been conservatives and liberals in virtually every society since the beginning of time, I'll just have to take your word for it.

(BTW, the reason I did not fully respond to your post was because my battery died in my computer and I did not have my power cord with me. You couldn't have known this. I apologize)

then moved quite far to the right of center into my mid 30's. Since, I have moved back quite left of center. Some of the movement has been because of both parties movements as well as the division of issues. Much though has been because of evolution of my personal ideology. I believe in balance in the universe. I really wouldn't want to live under the rule of either a liberal extremist state or a conservative extremist state. Neither have examples of successful reins.

Thanks for your thoughtful response in 129, even though it was a little snarky..:hi:

Stalinists are Communists.

Liberals are not Communists.

Liberals favor free enterprise with just enough regulation to guarantee equal opportunities and the safety and fairness of all in their personal and social transactions.

Puzzling to me that a person could be on DU and not know what a liberal is.

Liberals, for example, generally believe in rationally balancing protection of private property with the interests of society as a whole.

This is reflected in our Constitution which provides that the government can take an individual's property but only upon payment of just compensation. That is a very liberal idea.

The Fourth Amendment which protects your right to privacy and requires a warrant based on probably cause for police search of your property and persons is also a liberal idea.

The rights of defendants in criminal cases to remain silent, to be represented by an attorney and to have a public trial, etc. are also liberal ideas.

Our Founding Fathers, Jefferson and Madison for example, were liberal thinkers. The royalists, the supporters of the British King were the conservatives of their day.

We liberals continue to hold the underlying values of the liberal Founding Fathers.

Unfortunately, conservatives attack these ideas, these values. Bush II in particular has not respected basic rights including those guaranteed in the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the Constitution.

while nazis are right wing...

And trying to rewrite this is crazy.

No, Liberals (of the John Stuart Mill Tradition, which is what has survived in the US, and morphed into the FDR School) are not usualy going to go to the extreme... but far in the left, far, to the left of you... are Stalinists...

They share a lot with Nazis... why I like to joke that they give each other a hand. They are statists. and believe in the role of the STATE... but that does not change this. They are left wing.

and read everything I could get my hands on. I compared his ideas to those of someone else, but I can't remember who the other person was.

I read books from every political direction -- from Marx to Jesus to Ayn Rand. It was the early 1960s.

And back then I was a music major. Can you imagine -- a music major? Me? It's been about five lives ago and at least as many careers.

Women in my generation (early 40s) went through a lot of strange changes.

I still collect books on embroidery. We were raised for a life very different from the lives we have lived.

I think it is probably the best governing philosophy and when people ask I tell them, yes I am a MILL Liberal. Which leads to a few raised eyebrows. These days. who is JSM? That is for starters. His is a descendant of the Enlightenment. sadly I have the fear that we are going down a very dark path here in the US... and far from Mill, to be honest.

Both are problematic when taken to the extremes and both can lead to a total state...

Four researchers who culled through 50 years of research literature about the psychology of conservatism report that at the core of political conservatism is the resistance to change and a tolerance for inequality, and that some of the common psychological factors linked to political conservatism include:

Fear and aggression
Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity
Uncertainty avoidance
Need for cognitive closure
Terror management
snip--
The researchers conceded cases of left-wing ideologues, such as Stalin, Khrushchev or Castro, who, once in power, steadfastly resisted change, allegedly in the name of egalitarianism.

Yet, they noted that some of these figures might be considered politically conservative in the context of the systems that they defended. The researchers noted that Stalin, for example, was concerned about defending and preserving the existing Soviet system.

http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/07/22_politics.shtml

Everything I have ever read about Stalin strongly indicates that he exhibited, in the extreme, the primary characteristics linked to conservatism listed below. Seriously, this is a succinct synopsis of Stalin's personality:

Fear and aggression
Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity
Uncertainty avoidance
Need for cognitive closure
Terror management

Add extreme paranoia to the mix and you get Stalin.

and Stalinism was not a right wing state. Sorry. He was a communist, a stalinist... sorry.

and since I have a strong mystical bent myself I get exposed to a lot of it. While I can appreciate it in a cosmic sense, on the human level, and especially when it comes to politics, I am strictly a secular humanist.

Fear someone will take your money.

Fear someone will take your woman/man.

Fear someone will move in within your tribe (country, neighborhood, etc.)

Fear someone will diminish your standing within your tribe.

Fear someone will hurt you.

Fear someone will corrupt your children with radical new ideas.

Fear someone will corrupt *YOU* with radical new ideas!

Fear you won't be able to defend yourself when these things happen.

Etc.

All these fears are the mental illness. Conservatism (whether political,
religious, or both) is just a result.

Tesha

Burn a book, start a vigilante para military, target those you fear. For the most part they just reinforce each other with their fear mongering and sometimes achieve a degree of populism such as the "Tea Party". There is a threat of violence or at least obstruction borne out of fear. When they finally turn violent it can be so illogical that it appears to almost be random.

this is the type of demonizing that we rail against when it comes to the right. The McVeighs, Rudolphs and Brieviks are not representative of most conservatives. this is the type of dog shit that people use when they argue that Islam is a mental illness not a religion. Congrats on sounding like Daniel Pipes- who Brievik was a fan of.

These people are crazy and dangerous... In more ways than one.

in the past 15 years? Other than Obama and Clinton who are, I think, caught in the web of a very militaristic government.

Muslim extremists are not liberals although there are liberal Muslims.

Unable to think rationally, prone to believing the disinformation when contradicted by the truth, hostile to social outgroups, unwilling to recognize failings in themselves or the leaders they trust... right-wing authoritarians are batshit fucking crazy, and everything you've lost in the past ten years is due to Karl Rove's ability to motivate those crazy idiots to believe what he wanted them to believe and to turn out in droves to the polls.

The right-wing authoritarian is primarily motivated by fear of change, but they are not able to identify what "change" is, or the fact that it is their own leaders who wish to expand the rate of change by driving wages down, dismantling the social safety net, and impoverishing the middle class. They are the rock-solid 23% of Americans who show up in every political poll, weighting the side of stupid every single time.

Here is an article I wrote years ago now, which I think still stands on its own:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5415300#5421432

Your argument reminds me of those egghead types in sci-fi movies who are always trying to convince everyone that the aliens in giant space ships have come to Earth in peace.

that liberalism is a mental illness.

Because, we all know that I'm perfectly sane.

Your argument reminds me of those hippie types in communes who are always trying to convince everyone that the foreigners arriving in huge waves have come to America in peace.

... what does that make you?

past 15 years. Liberal causes by definition cannot be furthered by violence. How could that be?

Violence impedes another person's personal freedoms.

Central to liberal thought is the idea that a person should not impede another person's personal freedom.

A person who would shoot at a bunch of people to make a political point as Loughner did in Tucson would not be a liberal.

We are not dealing with sane people.

Not to mention those defending them.

In each case, the murderer is labeled by the press as a crazy exception: Loughner in Tucson, McVeigh which you name, the fellow who killed all the people in the Unitarian church in Nashville. And there are quite a few others. Wasn't there a Rudolph who was systematically assassinating abortion doctors and was believed to have been protected by a network of like-minded people?

We still have not resolved beyond reasonable doubt the identity of the person who sent the anthrax letters in the wake of 9/11. But there is no indication that it was a Muslim or a liberal. That's for sure.

Conservatives simply forget all the violence that has arisen from their movement.

Liberals are still walking in the footsteps of Martin Luther King and Ghandi. I personally believe that violence is utterly incompatible with liberal thought -- which is "liberal," i.e., never overly sure that its right, always open to questioning and not a dogmatic set of ideas.

How many pacifist conservatives do you know? Not all liberals are pacifists, but there are far more pacifist liberals than pacifist conservatives.

mental illness.

Isn't there some kind of clinical evidence to the affect that you say?

there was some study, and I don't know if it was a randomized control trial or how scientific, that conservatives' brains are liberals' brains are a bit different.

It may be that conservative policies (everyone look out for themselves!) fit more in with the reptilian brain? Or, these conservative policies fit in more with sociopathic or antisocial brains and personality adjustments?

The problem when you say mental illness is - I don't think people with bipolar or schizophrenia necessarily cut down to right, left, or center.

I do find RWers to be rather immature and irrational. Maybe histrionic is a better term.

But whatever the cause, I really believe that wingers aren't right in the head.

You wonder about conservatives - I do know some, and they are the nicest folks you'd want to meet. They'd bend over backwards to help you, as an individual, when you need it. But they seem to have some type of block in front of their brains about social and fiscal programs and cultural norms.

And, for white conservatives, I think, laying at the bottom of all of this, is prejudice. Racism, sexism, homophobia. Not always, but in a lot of cases. They seem to have a fend-for-yourself attitude if they think the fenders are doing something they personally, disapprove of (single mothers- people who fall on hard times and need food stamps).

It's pure sociopathy.

These are people who don't see other people as people at all. And it ranges from the Radians, who would rather have the unworthy fall victim to some kind of social Darwinism, the McVeighs and Breiviks who want to do the job first hand.

They do everything that they can to deny the humanity of others.

are, thank goodness, NOT typical of rightwingers. It is in human nature to be violent, imho, and both extremes will have people like that.

But, it is a puzzler when a right-winger sees some story about someone losing their house and says, "That's not right!" and then you look at them and say well, this policy, that policy etc systemically causes a lot of this and they just look at you like a disconnect.

Uninformed citizenship is way more dangerous to democracy - watching dumb shit like Fox "News".

What you're describing about typical wingers is the mental disconnect that all of them seem to have.

It's a blind spot in their psyche the prevents the association of their actions to their outcomes.

I would just love to create a scenario in which they're totally subjected to their own ideology in isolation, without any outside leveling influences. See how long they last with that.

While, as a liberal, I'm a pretty nice person who believes in all sorts of egalitarian things, paid for by rich people...my particular personality adjustment is the you-break-it-and-you-buy-it-theory of Life.

By this I mean - if you are a big-time, working-class conservative who espouses cultural and, esp., FISCAL conservatism, you don't get to share in any goodies.

:rofl:

So, if you vote for Republicans, you don't get to bitch to me now when your college-educated kids cannot find decent, full-time, benefits-enriched jobs and are working down at PetSmart instead, cleaning cat shit outta litter boxes. (I use this example since it is a real-life one).

You don't get to call me up, all worried now that your SS check may not come in (it will, but let him sweat- he's been propping these bastards up for years).

Or, if you are in a group with me and mention some group you don't like getting something you consider an entitlement, I will totally tell everyone in the group, in front of your face, how you had to get food stamps in 1991 or whatever, thus embarrassing you to stfu.

:rofl:

I pretty much see that as the fact that they don't know what they're talking about. That their entire worldview is shaped by lies.

The fact that regular Fox viewers of all political stripes are the most misinformed and uninformed people in every single known category is no accident.

Who benefits from this campaign of campaign of lies is quite telling, it's the uberwealthy at the expense of everyone else.

It's a war on the masses to be sure.

(best thing to ever happen to me - I got another one)

and I was around a lot more conservatives, I found that they had not clue one about much of how the world works, how the US government works, or even, recent American history. They seem to have some idea that their lives exist in some type of bubble, shaped 100% by them, and that the outside world and its forces (both political and non-political) do not effect them, and things like 40-hour workweeks, paid vacations, etc grew up out of the ground.

And nothing of the why behind the few perks we here in The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave enjoy. Nothing. Like, they are just so special, smart (not) or charming these things should flow to them, naturally.

Now, having said that - since I have no children and am able to enjoy one job that provides me enough to live on and supplies most of what I need, I have the luxury of following the news and reading that a lot of people too busy with kids or whatever do not have. I am also lucky to have come from a family that had, at that time, enough money to send me to good, private schools, and allow me things most of Americans are not exposed to.

I would say, I do enjoy what I call, "learning moments" with conservatives.

As for the example above - you should have seen the look on the face of the parent of the kid with the BS in a hard science who could not get a job when I told her what a H-1B visa was, and how much something like that could save an employer tons of money. I mean, that's what is it all about, in the end, isn't it? In a capitalistic society, it's all about the money.

Heh.

EDIT: Typo

Who think that the Bible is the law of the land and not the US Constitution and the US Code. I would gather to say that they're never even HEARD of the US Code, if you were to ask them what it is.

But somehow, the Bible is supposed to quoted as the unimpeachable law that everyone must abide by. Don't tell them that something like that is against everything about what it means to be American.

Although, unlike yourself, I grew up relatively poor and I have little more than a high school education and had to thank the military for giving me the opportunity to learn about the world and American politics (I spent seven and a half years working in The Pentagon). However, my experiences impressed upon me the understanding of a universal truth: That people all over the world are pretty much the same. That we're all human beings.

The inability to recognize the humanity of others and equate that humanity with their own, I believe, is the basis of right wing ideology. They are the first to dehumanize other people as means to their ends. Most of all, as in the case of Breivik, they are unable to recognize the fact they are themselves dehumanizing actual human beings, even as a defense of people whom they see as human. To this guy, he shot people with no more consideration than someone who would swat a mosquito on his or her arm.

And you're right, wingers' most precious concern is about money… Even those that have very little of it. I'm sure that those learning moments are more frequent amongst the poor and working stiff wingers who find out first hand the contempt that the monied classes have for people unlike themselves.

It hurts to be dehumanized by ones idols.

I have come across religious conservatives who have spouted all sorts of nutty things like Katrina was punishment, by God, for sins.

What sins? I would ask. Calmly, b/c there are times I really want to hear what they say.

Well, you know... at this point, I am going to assume it was the sin of being a minority. I mean, there is no way a white Christian fundamentalist is going to like a city that is predominantly poor or working class, Black, Catholic, and is a hotbed of things like Mardi Gras. (I am white, btw).

And I would say, If God was punishing bad behavior, then He would send great tidal waves to wash back and forth across the USA everyday.

Then they would say, Well, you know THOSE people (in New Orleans)- why do they live there? They know it's a flood zone. Blah blah

And I would say there are historical and logistical reasons for people to live there that have to do with moving goods up from the ports there to the rest of the US. And, there is not one geographical place on Earth that cannot suffer a natural disaster - a flood, hurricane, earthquake, tornado, etc. Unless humankind wants to move under the Earth, where there are probably other logistical issues, the reason FEMA and federal insurance exists is the reality of living on Earth. Shit happens. Disasters strike.

I've also met religious conservatives who've gone to third-world countries to provide medical care for folks, with their churches, which is more than I've ever done in my life.

And I am sure there are conservatives who think liberalism is a mental disorder. I think that's projection, of course... ;)

the more education a person gets, it, usually, has a liberalizing effect, and a person is able to make connections between things.

At this point, all that is needed is a workforce just smart enough and obedient enough to do a job, and nothing more.

So sayeth George Carlin, I think.

It was a great movie… However, one thing was missing from it: The depiction of who actually benefited from the dumbing down of our species.

We actually have a class of people in this society who are doing that very thing. And the stats on who's making gains are striking indeed.

It's people who are doing their best to create a class of willing and ignorant slaves.

Fundamentalist religion, violence and hatred are their opiates.

I hope that Norway resists out own example by countering this crap with more openness, tolerance and democracy.

I will see if I can see it - I have not yet -

Many times, when I become so frustrated, I too get angry and think, "God these stupid RW assholes are killing us all with their crazy-ass BS!"

Of course, they think we on the Left are dragging the country into Communism. They don't know, exactly, the difference between communism and socialism, but they know it's not good, plus Hitler had something to do with a party with the word "socialism" in it, per Glenn Beck, so we on the Left are also Nazi supporters.

Fanaticism of all stripes is dangerous. Religion, politics. Stalin was not religious and he's responsible for the death of millions.

I always felt that Those in Power use class and race to divide the proles (us) so we in-fight and not look to them to give up their fair share.

While they pick our pockets, they point to "the other" and say, See - that (insert scapegoat) is taking away your standard of living!

Like the Tea Partiers - big, big monied interests are, cynically, using that bunch of useful idiots to advance their own agenda.

I think, for our survival, at this point, we are going to have to try to open up discussions with average people of all persuasions to stop this assault on all of us. I'm not sure how to do that at this point, we're so polarized in the US - thanks to Commander Codpiece.

The hardest part for people like us is getting other people who are distracted by all the bullshit to open their minds and actually see what's going on and what and who are doing what they're doing to them.

It's frustrating as all get out, I'm sure, when we try to talk sense into these people whenever we come across them. They are unwilling to THINK. All they're doing is reacting.

Sure we have our own reactionaries, as demonstrated by some of the other posts in this thread.

But from time to time, lefties can be talked down.

To the wingers, we're not even human fucking beings.

I think there is a very small (thank God) cadre of hard-right wingnuts in the world who would love to put people they do not approve of in camps because they are control freaks and, also, when you listen to the things RWers worry about happening to them - being put in camps, guns taken away, hunted down by liberals - I think they're projecting some of what they'd like to do themselves to other people.

Like the ones who want civilization to end up in chaos so they can set themselves up as some sort of King Rat kingpin or something.

Again, I think the amount of people who feel that way are a very, very tiny fraction of the human population.

But it is only human nature to get mad from time to time and say, Oh, I could just strangle a RWer, or a Left-Winger! Of course, you never would do it in real life. Nor would I.

:scared: we are getting there.

Now I gotta go watch monster truck pulls...

If yes, do you remember the fine shows it used to show? Now it's all Hunting BigFoot and Alien Pyramids.

Yes, indeed. Believe it or not, there are times I watch the Military Channel to watch decent history shows.

:thumbsdown: very tired of hunting Bigfoot.

I'm willing to accept that Aliens were here before but I wish they'd come back and truly distract everybody.

mouth liberal conclusions. Your reasoning somehow seems confused to me.

What does this mean?

While, as a liberal, I'm a pretty nice person who believes in all sorts of egalitarian things, paid for by rich people...my particular personality adjustment is the you-break-it-and-you-buy-it-theory of Life.

"paid for by rich people." Rich people get their wealth in great part by exploiting public property and public assets.

The great tycoons of the railroads made their money by getting very generous laws passed in their favor by various legislatures. JD Rockefeller also wielded power in the public arena in order to establish his monopoly. These people got special favors from friends in high places ranging from cheap land to free land to right-of-ways to incredible deals.

Even now, as we know, banks are getting low interest loans from the Federal Reserve and then investing them in government bonds that pay a higher rate of interest.

How easy is it for you to borrow from the Fed?

Even Bill Gates got a real boost from the US government in that some of the technology that he piggy-backed his software on was public. NASA, the military, universities, our federal and state health agencies all provide a lot of information and do basic research that help people become rich.

There may be a few rich people who don't owe a good portion of their wealth to government, but most of them would not be where they are were it not for the help of the government, that is society as a whole. They may not credit the government as the source for the basic research behind their inventions and work, but they should.

The problem is that when a conservative who is not loving and kind commits some horrible mass murder that is essentially a hate crime motivated by the person's conservative philosophy, it is not labeled conservative terrorism but rather insanity.

Liberals can also be intolerant and judgmental. I have gotten a lot of flack for my John Edwards avatar.

And I was angry at him too at one time. Then when the Anthony Weiner story was being featured in the news, I thought about it and decided that really if a person is not judgmental about the sexual behavior of others - - not hypocritical in other words - - perhaps it is unwise of me to judge that person's sexual behavior without really understanding the facts and circumstances.

One problem is that those of us who aspire to be "liberal" do not always succeed in fulfilling our aspirations. That is human nature.

But I can't think of any people who have committed mass murders as a result of their liberal ideas. Can't imagine it.

MrScorpio.

and no evidence of real understanding of the nature of mental illness.

chauvinism, whether its sexist, racist or political, is the notion that other people belong to some lesser state of being. This post wrongly suggests that conservatism generates inferiority in its adherent compared to non-conservatives. There isn't any evidence of this phenomenon, it is simply name calling. In fact, conservatism is an approach to solving individual and social problems in day-to-day life. WE ALL SHARE CONSERVATIVE TRAITS TO SOME EXTENT. Conservatism is distinctive as a way of thinking because it follows predictable patterns. A good review of those patterns is that of Jost et al 2003 (http://faculty.virginia.edu/haidtlab/jost.glaser.political-conservatism-as-motivated-social-cog.pdf) Mental illness causes emotional and behavioral difficulties in daily living which cause distress to the persons afflicted. There is no evidence conservatism interferes with the lives of its adherents in a manner which causes them uncommon distress during daily living. That is not to deny that the subpopulation of conservative people does not include persons who commit violent crimes--but, rather, to deny the claim that conservatism is at its heart a mental illness that causes violence.

Name calling is poor argumentation and an inappropriate rhetorical behavior. It has been considered logical fallacy as a form of ad hominem attack and in its use to create straw men.

There is real fallout from this sort of name calling on innocent people. Linking acts of violence with mental illness through name calling is demeaning and stigmatizing to the victims of real mental illness. It promotes the mistaken notion that all people with mental illness are dangerous. Unfortunately, the effects of such stigmatizing in our society aren't fantasy. People with mental illness and those recovered from their mental illness are still frequently treated as permanently defective and suffer discrimination from the decisions of relatives and associates, employers and potential employers, and public servants who accept stigma and act with prejudice against the mentally ill.

Several studies over the past 20 years have looked at violence and mental illness. Overall violence isn't more likely among those diagnosed mentally ill than it is in the general population. Focused studies on just the SEVERELY mentally ill suggest there is 5%-8% increase in violent behavior of this group compared to the general population. BUT--much of this violence is committed against their caregivers and families NOT the public. It turns out that use of impulsivity increasing drugs (including alcohol) is three times as likely to result in violence than SEVERE mental illness.


It's my understanding that Timothy McVeigh didn't use an insanity defense, no evidence was put on record that he was mentally ill. Also, as I remember Eric Rudolpf didn't use an insanity defense but rather quite rationally traded a guilty plea to avoid the death sentence. Both McVeigh and Rudolph rationalized their acts as a type of warfare.

You would see that I was being hyperbolic.

It's severely demeaning.
What does it say about women when a man referred to as a "girly boy"?
Associating a mental illness (which happens to be a neutral condition) with qualities viewed as negative insults the people who experience mental illness.
It's not simple hyperbole. It reflects a devaluation of the people referenced.

Basically, everyone who's making a point out of my hyperbolic attention getter of an OP are just doing what they can to derail the conversation.

For a taste of my actual position, I refer to the subthread with myself and XanaDuer.

Now although do I concede that conservatism doesn't necessarily qualify as a mental illness, I do believe that a large number of wingers are definitely sociopathic.

That's my actual position about people like McVeigh and Breivik. So given what they have done, it's only a short jaunt to calling them and people who believe in what they believe "out of their fucking minds".

By saying that, it doesn't require a degree in psychology. It's just an opinion.

Although I do thank you in particular for kicking up the thread with a strawman about misandry.

No, true sociopathic crimes reflect an absence of emotion in pursuit of self interest. The RWers you mentioned were motivated by ideas and beliefs. They even felt they were acting on behalf of others. I'm not sure which is worse, but the outcomes are not the same.
The original statement was more inaccurate than anything. Equating "Out of their fucking minds" with mental illness is a generalization approaching outright bigotry.
I understand the impulse, but my experience with friends who have mental illness and have experienced pain from been described similarly makes me sensitive to it.
There is one in particular who is an extremely intelligent advocate who even ran for office (knowing he would lose) with the full intention of essentially exposing the unmentioned worst ideas of the incumbent republican.

to the fact that, every time we get some horrific act of mass murder by a right-winger, it is excused as the act of a sole madman. But when a lone Muslim kills a group of innocent people, the Muslim is viewed as part of a conspiracy -- as a Muslim extremist.

I totally misunderstood the intent of your post. Sorry.

:applause:

or one might consider us mentally is as well based on the actions of a very small number or our people. All progressives are mentally stable people, just ask Ted Kaczynski.

Yay, generalization and hyperbole!

But I'd rather hand around with progressives, whatever their mental state, than wingers any day.

BTW, is being Norwegian a mental disorder? Apparently they had some guy go crazy.

- you've got going on there. You might want to answer your phone as I'm sure its the Sigmund Freud Institute calling.

Your knee jerk, reactionary, and broad-brushed diagnosis sounds much like the work of the conservative right. Are you here incognito?

Really - do you think they'll be nice to us for it?

Not just Conservative...


http://www.targetofopportunity.com/elf.htm

He said he was against God to be a republican. I completely believe this.
He was a smart man, my dad.
Duckie

he sounds like he was a wise man.

Just like liberalism is an ideology.

Both, in far-left and far-right forms, can be just as dangerous.

insisted on this starting back around 1776, to the utter dismay of conservatives.

It is not clear if the difference between liberals and conservatives is purely ideological.
---
Researchers help define what makes a political conservative

Four researchers who culled through 50 years of research literature about the psychology of conservatism report that at the core of political conservatism is the resistance to change and a tolerance for inequality, and that some of the common psychological factors linked to political conservatism include:

Fear and aggression
Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity
Uncertainty avoidance
Need for cognitive closure
Terror management

"From our perspective, these psychological factors are capable of contributing to the adoption of conservative ideological contents, either independently or in combination," the researchers wrote in an article, "Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition," recently published in the American Psychological Association's Psychological Bulletin.

http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/07/22_poli...

Study: Conservatives have larger ‘fear center’ in brain

A study at University College London in the UK has found that conservatives' brains have larger amygdalas than the brains of liberals. Amygdalas are responsible for fear and other "primitive" emotions. At the same time, conservatives' brains were also found to have a smaller anterior cingulate -- the part of the brain responsible for courage and optimism.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/28/conservatives-fea... /

There's No Arguing With Conservatives ... No, Seriously, Scientific Studies Prove It

A new study out of Yale University confirms what argumentative liberals have long-known: Offering reality-based rebuttals to conservative lies only makes conservatives cling to those lies even harder. In essence, schooling conservatives makes them more stupid. From the Washington Post article on the study, which came out yesterday:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-sweeney/theres-no-arg...

Study finds left-wing brain, right-wing brain
Even in humdrum nonpolitical decisions, liberals and conservatives literally think differently, researchers show.

Exploring the neurobiology of politics, scientists have found that liberals tolerate ambiguity and conflict better than conservatives because of how their brains work.

In a simple experiment reported today in the journal Nature Neuroscience, scientists at New York University and UCLA show that political orientation is related to differences in how the brain processes information.
snip--
"Does this mean liberals and conservatives are never going to agree?" Amodio asked. "Maybe it suggests one reason why they tend not to get along."

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-sci-politics1...

Also, see post #46

To imply they do is to paint with a mile wide brush.

isn't that imprecise of a tool.

Add in the complete delusion that the policies are demonstrably failed, toxic, and counter-productive in the face of decades of real life application going back to at least the industrial revolution.

You can't ignore actual reality to spout platitudes. Their policies have real impact and those impacts inflict real pain on real people.

Exactly. This is undeniable.

Why are so many people here at DU making apologies for this?

Didn't they "get it" during 8 years of conservative Bush hell?

It seems like many here bought the Ronald Reagan/Rush Limbaugh meme that republicans/conservatives are gooder and better and smarter and superior and more serious than liberals because liberals are weak and stupid and inferior and bad.

While I understand how this happened because this BIG FUCKING LIE was repeated over and over and over for the past 30 years and it seems like some people swallowed it whole like an anaconda eating a possum.

So frustrating.
:puke:

in the person of my uncle, a doctor and lifelong fiscal/social conservative. Loved Reagan--Reagan restored Murka after the Vietnam/Nixon debacle. This uncle belongs to no hate groups (I think) but he has followed Rush for years with enthusiasm and feels perfectly fine watching Fux Snooz daily.

There is a clear connection in my mind. I think it's naive not to see it. :shrug:

ignore said pattern at your peril

Breivik and McVeigh were fully sane people who believed horrible things.

Mental illness has no ideological boundaries, the OP is extraordinarily bigoted.

there is a difference.

PS- oh, and it made me sick when McVeigh used "Invictus" as his epitaph/epigraph.

May he fry in Hell.

Most in their everyday lives are normal, decent people. I know plenty of people you would think were quite liberal based on their everyday behavior, then they open their mouths and spout Beck-isms.

I never said anywhere here they were all sociopaths. Up thread, I even say most of them are lovely people who would bend over backwards to help you, as I have had some do for me.

It's funny. When I worked in the kitchen of a preschool one of my coworkers was a conservative guy who on a lot of things is actually very liberal. He is a very generous person and his other job is taking care of disabled adults and he and I have both lobbied together in St. Paul against cuts to funding for the disabled.

A fascinating read, and a classic, about the sociopaths that surround us in the world, their MO, and the disasters they leave in their wakes.

You sound like Ann Coulter when you make a statement like that.

Abnormal behavior is based on conduits that have nothing to do with a particular belief or ideology. Mental Illness is like any other type of illness. It falls on the individual. You might as well have said "eating Ice Cream is a mental illness". It would be just as inaccurate.

I understand why you made this statement. You don't understand why someone would commit a horrible act so you look for something that makes sense to you. Your hatred and/or rage directed toward a particular ideology is used to justify your own belief. It's not unlike that whole 'pot calling the kettle' thing.

This is one of them

I just won't use the phrase 'mental illness' to paint any ideology.

Peace

I'm angry.

I'm angry that a batshit crazy right wing scumbag mowed down liberals with an automatic machine gun.

So I hope you understand where I'm coming from.

I'm seriously troubled myself that this world is collapsing. I am also fearful that these types of hideous events will continue to occur. I don't really know much about his ideology and I really don't care. What bothers me is that he had absolutely no respect for life. He disassociated himself from everything and took the breath away from so many innocent people that did not deserve this.

I also fear that he is not alone. There are others out there willing to leave the human race and become animals that kill for no reason.

No offense, but the last thing we need right now is people defending the Conservatives. They have shown themselves to be psychopaths in more than just the Norwegian Massacre.

Who's side are you on?

The main focus of the original discussion topic was about Mental Illness. I know quite a few liberals that suffer from Mental Illness.

Prejudging someone and make assumptions without knowing anything about that person would require the prejudging person to be a bit of a sociopath.

Who's side are you on? The one where you are blindly driven by your own rage and will attack anyone who doesn't meet your criteria or the one where you care about the people that are suffering in this country and need all of us to stand together and fight the Republicans who are blocking progress that can help them?

Because that is the point we are trying to make

Today's GOP = Sociopaths

Are ALL of them are pretty much scumbags?

MOST definitely.

Honestly - I think you are mistaken

They are playing chicken with ALL OF OUR LIVES and have since they scooped up all those Dixiecrats in the 70s and 80s

Read it again. You questioned my integrity. I was trying to make the point that going from point A to point Z without any other consideration isn't a healthy way to approach any dialogue.

The GOP is a group of arrogant obnoxious assholes who are willing to run this country into complete and total ruin to further their agenda. They pander to those that are too stupid or unwilling to learn how the very political party they trust is fucking them over.

Jump from A to Z?

"Yes officer, I saw the guy get out of the car, break the window and steal the jewels. But that doesn't mean he did it..."

I guess I can come across as a bit obtuse. I make the assumption, wrongly quite often, that people take the time to actually read and digest the information being presented.

A= I make a statement that you disagree with
Z= You jump to the conclusion that I'm defending Conservatives and put me in a nice little box.

I know plenty of conservatives that couldn't hurt a fly.

But he's the exception not the norm

Yes, I know a few

I also know a lot of Born-Again Christians who turned the other way under George W Bush, and all of the atrocities (yes, there were atrocities) committed during the Iraq War. They just wanted a Republican doing it.

But they would preach peace and love, and say the half-a-million or so innocent Iraqis who died (and, according to their god, going to hell because they weren't the right stripe of theist) were worth it because Bush was spreading fucking freedom dust all over the place.

Whenever liberals did this (and there was a big case to be made for the American Left giving Stalin a pass for a while) we would later admit that we were wrong, we shouldn't have. See Pete Seeger. Conservatives don't do this.

I only know what the right wing which describe themselves as conservatives post online.

For instance, make up a yahoo account, register on YUKU and check out 'Yet Another Politics Board' and 'Helz Half Acre'. Read a few pages from May and June. Then get back to me and tell me conservatives don't want liberals dead.

What is emerging that we can assume to be true about Breivik is that he was homicidal and politically radicalized. Neither murder or radicalization require the presence of mental illness in the murderer or radical.

It is just as irrational to declare mental illness the cause of unusual human actions we cannot understand or explain as it is to claim God as the cause of events that we cannot explain.

And thank-you for the example of the use of name calling to create non-existant opponents. The non-existant 'conservative apologists' you refer to are known as straw men.

"A straw man is a component of an argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position."

Fuck everyone who isn't.

Mentally ill people aren't responsible for those illnesses. Conservatives choose a cruel ideology. Why do you want to give them a pass on being responsible for what they do?

I tend to take notice of something like that. as well

I'm not so sure I would call it mental illness. They know EXACTLY what they're doing. Those with mental illness can't help being the way they are.

the same reactionaries no matter how obviously destructive they are.

That isn't the same but definitely in a symbiotic relationship toward the exact same ends. This is why I don't see it as acceptable to rubberstamp our own hell or high water.

You are damn well what you endorse.

Regardless of what it might be? Regardless of whether it is good or bad, right or wrong, defensible or indefensible?

They assure us of their patriotism declare that we must defend our values not because they are right, but because our ancestors chose them? Not because our values are good, but because they are old?

Mental illness...? Perhaps. Or it could be that the lack of depth in their ideas and their inability to think beyond the first step or two, just makes them look that way.

Robert Altemeyer, a retired Professor of Psychology at the University of Manitoba has written extensively on authoritarianism and refined the theory into the concept (and measure) of Right Wing Authoritarianism.


He has written a book on the subject, that is freely available and is highly recommended to anyone who wants to understand what we are up against: The Authoritarians (PDF)

Eisenhower was a Conservative during his days. I don't consider him as someone who had a mental illness. I think the Republicans of today are a different breed.. Some how the Republicans have let the Super religious and stupid take over their party. As someone said, its more of a cult, than a political party.

I consider myself very conservative on a lot of issues, and I have nothing in common with the three names you posted above. Your post is insulting and stupid.

Ordinary sane and rational people do not act at all like the Attas, Jarrahs, al-Shehhis, al-Mihdhars, al-Hazmis, Reids, and Shahzads of the world.


Or am I wrong to smear millions of people by citing the horrible crimes of a few nutjobs?

Millions and MILLIONS of people, many who are DUers, deal with mental illness every day. This post is hateful and bigoted.

Demonizing people who disagree is what the McVeighs, Rudolphs and Breiviks of the world do. Don't be like them.

the other being liberalism.

murders by right-wingers that the killer was just a lone madman.

Have we already forgotten Loughner's shootings in Tucson?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/us/politics/09giffords.html?pagewanted=all

Then there were killings in a Knoxville Unitarian church.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knoxville_Unitarian_Universalist_church_shooting

And of course, Oklahoma City bombing by Timothy McVeigh.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing

None of them are called "terrorists," all just lone killers.

Does anyone else notice a pattern here?

he was as wrong to say that, as you are.