The "congnitive dissonance" essay on the homepage is really good.

If you haven't read it yet, check it out:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/04/11/20_frat.html

We have both been struggling mightily to figure out why people support Bush, no matter WHAT. This essay, while explaining a lot, for some reason only makes me feel worse. As I told my daughter, okay, now I get it. Things will never get any better. These people's eyes will never open. I might make that leap and say there is no hope for the future, but something within me says we just can't give up. Fight on!

read this:

http://www.chelseagreen.com/images/DTE_Sampler.pdf

It might be really helpful if you would take just a minute to say WHY you think I should click on that link. Otherwise, forget it.

sorry. it is along the same line of thought in a way. explaining how rupugs are able to convince people to vote against their own interest.

I just find it a bit annoying when someone posts a link to something and won't take the time to tell us anything about what the link is connected to. Think of it this way: There are thousands of links in this one forum right now. I can't follow all of them, I have to decide which link I'm going to click, which information thread I'm going to follow. Having even one sentence about what I'll find when I click on a link really helps.

Thank you and I apologize for coming across harsh.

'don't think of an elephant - Know your values and frame the debate"

Howard Dean says (on the cover of the short, succinct book) Lakoff is "one of the most influential political thinkers of the progressive movement."

She is such an intelligent and thoughtful young woman, not to mention the free thinker I raised her to be. She finds herself surrounded by people her age who are just the opposite and it's driving her nuts. She's now re-reading "1984" and getting further frustrated because she sees it as so clearly describing where we are heading under Bush & Co. I'm encouraging her to keep the faith. She's ready to leave the country, and I'm not trying to disavow her of that notion. In fact, I am hoping this will also be my and my grandsons' (her nephews) ticket out of the madness. Because, contrary to the doublespeak going on in this administration, War is NOT Peace. And JMHO, Bush is NOT president!

Thank you sir, may I have another.

Maybe in order to break them out of their spell, we should invoke Ronald Reagan, and his glory days. Prop his results up, and compare the 'W's lack of results to Reagan.

Maybe just get them all to come to a consensus to 10 Great things Reagan did. Let that fester for a month. Then give them a bucket of cold water by showing that the 'W' doesn't come close. Try to lay blame on the 'new' Conservative policies ... so that it ripples through the 2006 elections.

Bush supporters aren't interested in listening to us--Democrats or liberals or progressives--all of which they disdain. They will only listen to one another and then only just barely. If the media revealed Bush to be the utter fool he is, they would see it. But the media doesn't do that and so they see what the media shows them.

In any case, the last thing I intend to do is laud Reagan for ANYTHING.

has missed:

1.The willingness of Americans to believe in their own exceptionalism which they transfer to their so called leaders.
2.Their equally deplorable willingness to think the worst of people of other countries, especially those they consider either racially or religiously inferior.

These two produce the predictable reactions such as the relation between 9/11 and Iraq,WMD's in Iraq and so on.

This is very similar to the reactions of the German people after the war that they were unaware of Hitler's gas chambers.That excuse was demolished by Goldhagen in the excellent work HITLER"S WILLING EXECUTIONERS.A similar analysis of Americans would yield, in my opinion, identical results.

if you haven't read his work, I suggest you do. I think you'll find it worthwhile.

Moral Politics - How Liberals and Conservatives Think
George Lakoff

In Chapter 17 - Varieties of Liberals and Conservatives, he speaks a little about American Exceptionalism and how it works along with the conservative's view of a Moral Order, which makes certain entities more moral than others.

cannot be seen as a victim.During the entire WWII period, collaborators among the Russians with the Nazis were the first to go whether they were in a Church or not.To deny the Iraqi people the right to defeat the invader by any means necessary is to relegate them to, what else, the status of another Untermenschen.

Take whatever position you want, but don't misrepresent what OTHER PEOPLE say. Contrary to your claim, NO ONE SAID that they are terrorists merely because they are defending their nation

And your apologia for "freedom fighters" does not apply to kidnappers who are motivated by money and not politics or freedom or something else. Just money.

So tell us how that aid worker, Hassan, "collaborated" with the invader?

While I am not in a position to judge the overall accuracy, the main thesis of Goldhagen's book (which I have not read, just read about) seems inconsistent with what I have personally heard in long discussions with WWII-era Germans.

The work is also not entirely uncontroversial among historians.

I have nothing at stake here, and I am not interested in pursuing this tangent any further. Just a word of caution.

and know whereof Goldhagen speaks.I do not consider anything he has written beyond the realm of possibility.I would also refer you to the Epilog William Shirer wrote to the paperback edition of his classic Rise and Fall of the Third Reich just before his death.In that, Shirer demonstrated how enthusiastic Germans were to follow the Fuehrer and how hate filled they were toward the Jews and accepted all of Hitler's programs against these Untermenschen.

It would not be surprising to me to see a similar verdict rendered on our aggression against Iraq or for that matter Vietnam by future historians.Already, I notice a thread on DU of all places this morning condemning the Iraqi "insurgents" for resorting to violence and terroristic tactics against the invading U.S.troops.

I think it's because many are plain old criminals, and because others are targetting innocent civilians. I don't think blowing up Iraqis because they attended service at a mosques is a valid form of "freedom fighting". The same goes for kidnapping someone for money, which some Iraqis are doing.

people travel abroad AND make the time to interact with real people from other countries- and actually see how they live.

Just doing the tourist thing may but usually doean't solve this ridiculous (yet all too real) notion that Americans are should be so very different than everyone else.

I actually ran across it while googling new articles on the Plame case. It is worth reading twice -- I have already this morning, and enjoyed it enough that I'll probably read it again.

Usually nobody comments on the (few) articles I get posted. Enjoyed reading everybody's reactions.

:hi:

Now I gotta send in a donation . . . no excuse, now.

Thanks for putting the effort into it.

may have outgrown their usefullness. For a family to accept that their child has died in a war for oil...and no other reason...is an emotional earthquake.

At that point, if they accept the cold truth, they may start to examine other beliefs that no longer work....or...they have another glass of kool-aid.

Slowly, but surely, the residents of the planet will awaken.

He talks about variations in a person's moral model (ex. someone can believe in a Moral Order that states that there is a hierarchy of authority (God over humans, men over women, adults over children, etc) but they need not agree on the specific of the heirarchy) and how many of these variations are due to changes in how useful we perceive the various aspects of the Moral Order to be.

An good example would be a conservative feminist. A conservative feminist believes that there is a Moral Order, and that some group(s) have more moral authority than others (ex. "whites over blacks" ,etc) but they do not believe "Men over women" because recent experience demonstrates that it's not true.

Like everyone else here I've been trying to figure out why otherwise decent people would vote for Bush. You've filled in a piece of the puzzle for me.

This theory (and its application to Republicans) has been around in one form or another for a long time- at least since the Reagan era- although only in the four or five years or so has it really received the acid test. And passed with "flying colors."

So, how do you deprogram cult members? It's difficult to do.

It takes an intervention- which is usually unpleasant for all involved.

In the case of semi-rational Republicans, it usually takes an epiphany brought about by some personal tragedy- a mandatory sentence for some minor offense will do it, a bankruptcy might do it- depending on how it came about, a denial of healthcare, a death of a loved one in a needless war... you can think of many things that might do it.

However, in any case, the tragic event must not only happen to the person or a very close loved one- but there has to be a clear, direct and undeniable connection to the right wing policies that allowed or encouraged it to happen- otherwise the mindset or worldview won't "snap."

If the cult member can find a way to apply false attribution- that's what they'll do- and there are plenty of fellow cult members out there (in person and in the media) to reinforce those false beliefs.

So, in my experience- it takes in addition to the above- someone sane and rational to point out the objective reality, while at the same time coaxing the person through a very difficult time and transition.

I've seen this done and done this sort of thing myself more than a few times over the years, and it's unfortunate, but as often as not this seems to be what's required with all too many people.

~Depa

that.

That's it, isn't it? How to get people to snap out of delusional thinking to realistic thinking?

Hmmm, good points.

Fundies, Bush-struck brothers.

We have to remember that it is not just the Republicans who have unsustainable models and feel (or refuse to feel) cognitive dissonance.

In a way, we might be lucky. A George W. Bush phase happening fifty years from now might have been the end of the species. Bush is an optimal candidate for disproof by example of all he stands for. Most people learn by example. They only adjust their mental models when they have sufficient reason, time, energy, courage, and if they are fortunate, real leadership. George W. Bush is making himself a fiducial counter-example of leadership. The damage he does will determine whether he is a lesson for the next 100 years or for the ages.

People will learn. We can help the process by trying hard to understand the people we don't understand instead of writing them off as crazy. Fighting is great too, of course, but we need to figure out who to fight before we fight. A rip in time causes nine. We are all in cults.

:hi:

Some cults are less harmful than others, more like small random burns than huge firestorms... if anyone is interested in the math look into the natural fire cycles of the western United States, especially California.

delusional, but what about us? We too must have belief systems that we protect by twisting facts to justify the system rather than the other way around.

For instance, abortion-on-demand. It's a very complex and thorny issue, but given that there's a plethora of contraception methods available, even "morning after" pills now, isn't it ridiculous that we liberals don't ask couples to take a little more responsibility for the consequences of their sex lives?

Nope, we defend abortion-on-demand to the bitter end. Probably no single issue has hurt Dems more than that one.

Another simple fact we just don't want to acknowledge--promiscuity (both homosexual and heterosexual) increases one's risk of contracting AIDS. That doesn't mean that people who have a lot of sex partners "deserve" to get AIDS, but there is a direct cause-and-effect relationship that a logical person has to recognize.

But because that doesn't fit in with our message of "tolerance," we don't mention it much.

They hate arabs as much as they love their gas guzzling SUVs and they support a president who will kill as many arabs as needed to get those oil fields. Of course, they won't put it that bluntly, but millions of repugs love what bush is doing in iraq.