The Dow is down for the week, having only ‘visited’ 13,000 for a few hours during the middle of an otherwise horrendous week.
Left to our imaginations is how long can they keep this Kabuki Dance up?
(Is the answer as disturbing as for as long as they are physically able?)
Will the endless barrage of ’Happy Talk’ continue even as the studio burns down around their ears…(thus is the power of the paycheck!)
So, on a related note we have yet another ‘slightly off center’ article from Alternet that tries to blame the conservative mind for something more basic:
In his new book, The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Don't Believe in Science, Chris Mooney explores years of research into the cognitive and neurobiological features associated with our ideologies. “The way the mind works,” Mooney writes, “suggests that good arguments only win the day when people don't have strong emotional commitments that contradict them.” Scientists, he writes, have long noted that “cold reasoning (rational, unemotional) is very different from hot reasoning (emotional, motivated).”
We are better able to have a cool, unemotional debate about the merits of, say, higher or lower corporate taxes. But cultural beliefs resonate more deeply, especially with conservatives; these beliefs become integrated into their identities, and once fixed, are difficult to dislodge with factual arguments. One area where conservatives and liberal tend to differ, according to Mooney, is “in their need to defend their beliefs, their internal desire to have unwavering convictions that do not and cannot change.” The culture wars are ultimately tribal, and as Mooney notes, conservatives are more likely to “be sure that their group is right, and the other group is wrong – in short, their need for group solidarity and unity, or for having a strong in-group/out-group way of looking at the world.”
So, having turned substantial issues into cultural debates, the right is more deeply invested in their outcomes, and less likely to be swayed by the reality we see around us. That “facts have a liberal bias” has become more than just a quip, and this is part of the reason why.
Always with the schilling! Hell, are these guys the ‘liberal press’ or just its advertising arm?
Anyway, I say ‘slightly off center’ attack on conservatism because it isn’t conservatism per se that drives the ‘My way or the Highway’ mentality (although the two are so strongly linked that attempting to separate them is akin to picking fly shit out of pepper.
One barely visible black dot looks pretty much like any other tiny black dot!)
Although there is a huge difference between the people who merely parrot this anti-social sentiment and those who issue such ultimatums from a position of , er, (relative) ‘strength’…
The Robber/Baron takes a calculated risk by being overtly cruel, the sycophant gains nothing more than some ‘reflected’ power. (What stupid seldom realizes is parroting such sentiments can quickly land him on the wrong end of a rope, right beside Mr. Calculated Risk!)
They love the ‘tough guy’ act so much that they can’t resist providing an echo to some decidedly unpopular bullshit.
This is what give us our current, er, ‘turbulent political environment’, a situation that is greatly ‘magnified’ by the corporate owned press!
The ‘One Percent’ has a deeply ‘vested interest’ in making the rest of us believe we are evenly divided politically.
So we will have no choice but to believe otherwise ‘incredible’ poll results.
Which is to point out how easily the media can manipulate ‘public opinion’.
They tell us we are ‘deeply divided’, who are we to disagree?
Besides, you don’t get much more lopsided than 99 to 1...what’s truly bizarre is how most of us have been convinced that it’s closer to 50 - 50...by same said media!
As I have pointed out before, the, er, ‘Left’ last brought the as long ‘as they make a stand’ crowd under their sway when the Right was ‘waffling’ about ‘it wasn’t their fault’ they were rich!
You see, good citizen, a stunning majority of us want ‘commitment’ from our leaders, that’s how this whole ‘my way or the Highway’ bullshit got started!
Do I need to add it is also how the global economy got driven off a cliff?
My way or the highway…think about it.
That’s the cudgel the One Percent have used to convince us half of the population actually supports their ‘newfound prosperity’ (because if they support it hard enough, maybe some of it will ‘rub off’ on them.
You know what ‘rubs off’ when you handle the shitty end of the stick, don’t you?
Well another ‘favorite saying’ of the ‘my way or the highway’ crowd is, ‘I can’t help it if they’re stupid!’
So, we have the ‘One Percent’ who writes the paychecks for the corporate owned media. In turn the corporate owned media ‘slants’ the news to show capitalism in a favorable light.
Um, how much you want to bet the victims of yesterday’s horrendous tornadoes are going to end up like Hurricane Katrina survivors?
The states (and Illinois is in the top ten) are BANKRUPT…can Washington afford to float more ‘loans’ to troubled states that don’t have enough ‘tax revenue’ to repair the damage on their own?
And you need to understand this is not just a FEDERAL problem it’s a broken top to bottom Justice system problem!
The ‘electoral process’ is compromised from top to bottom, decisions at the federal level are made by the (bought and paid for) STATE representatives!
Which is to belabor the obvious, the Rep’s ‘main’ campaign contributors are the same people who ‘pervert’ the Justice system in their own favor…
UNTIL we ABOLISH ‘elected representatives’ (who make decisions in our name without ever consulting us) in favor of voting directly on the laws (and the laws will be both simple and few, most of today’s laws are ‘superfluous’.)
A Simple Plan, an idea whose time has come!
Thanks for letting me inside your head,
Gegner
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