I know you clowns are out there lurking. Watch this vid and choke on it.

terribly disappointed that we now know that we cannot reason with Conservatives but there doesn't appear to be any way to get them to acknowledge much less advocate, truth, science, logic or maybe even math...the classic Liberal mantra "ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free"...simply doesn't work with conservatives.

I don't know how we are going to defeat the ignorance being spread by the right.

here's the practical application of the research that Mooney talks about...it's in a post I did a few days ago about how Walker and Romney can lie their asses off and change their stories every three minutes.

I finished reading "The Republican Brain" and although I found the book incredibly shallow, it did capsulize all the current studies on how conservatives and progressives process information...and it's both frightening and disheartening...and explains why "say anything" and outrageous lies are prominent features of right wing advertising.

Repubs hold onto their beliefs in a defensive posture like they hold onto survival itself...in fact, their beliefs are their survival..sooooo...when confronted by facts, data, science etc., the engage in motivated reasoning and grasp onto anything to protect their beliefs...the "say anything" quotes and downright lies justify their beliefs and allow them to grasp more tightly to their positions.

What Walker is doing is giving them a proverbial "fig leaf" to cover their wrongness of their positions and it will work.

What Mooney's book failed miserably with was giving us a means to counter "the big lie"..just a cursory suggestion or two.

As MLK Jr. said:

“The Arc of the Moral Universe Is Long, but It Bends Toward Justice.”

If this were not true, in general, we would have never made it out of the caves. Evolution in general works on reality. There is only so long that conservatives (or anyone) lives. But the bad ideas do not survive "survival of the fittest" of ideas or anything else does.

Over time lies and inconsistencies with the universe are "selected" out of existence. Whether it is the idea that men can own women, slaveowners have the right to own slaves, one race is superior to the others or currently that gay people should not have the same rights as others, in the end and since the beginning of humanity, progressives have won the ongoing war.

This does not mean conservatives do not win battles. Humanity does take giant steps backward. But if those steps do not align with reality then ultimately those steps, in fact any step, is selected out of existence.

It does not mean it is easy to listen to the crap, just that at every step until now progressives have ultimately won.

Otherwise we would indeed still be in caves. I don't know if these thoughts provide any comfort--they definitely should not make any progressive relax--but just know that any idea held by anyone, progressive or conservative, that does not align with reality ultimately becomes extinct. It's just that as MLK Jr. said...it takes a long time.