Notes on "The Republican Brain" by Chris Mooney

                                                   (Meeting Chris Mooney)

Here’s some shocking news.  Conservatives and Liberals have different personalities. 

Hierarchy is important to Conservatives; egalitarian principles to Liberals.  It comes down to individual versus community.

An April 13, 2012 study shows there are many nonpolitical differences between Liberals and Conservatives.

But what influences people?  The author began the book believing differences lie in allegiance to God and/or money, but research suggests otherwise.

We are in a 35-year period of more and more Conservative mistrust and suspicion.  Fear - the psychology of ideology

Even when shown to be incorrect, Conservatives double down on wrong information after receiving facts - the “smart idiot” effect.  An example is that with more and more evidence that humans are affecting the planet’s climate, fewer and fewer conservatives believe it.  Even education doesn’t significantly affect this phenomenon.   In fact, with higher education, Conservatives tend to accept science less.  The reverse is true for Liberals.  Many Conservatives still believe Obama is a Muslim.  Environmental factors are inadequate to explain.

Our views and opinions feel naturally right to us and are rooted in our personality, psychology, and physical traits.  In other words, they’re largely inherited.

Experiments reveal that Liberals are messy and like abstract art.  Conservatives are neat and tidy and prefer realism and portraits.  Conservatives tend to dislike rival teams and their fans, and tend to be germophobic, and elect law-and-order candidates. 

Alcohol will make anybody more conservative.

Actor Colin Firth commissioned a study because, in his words, “I wanted to find out what was wrong with people who disagreed with me.”  That study revealed that Conservatives have more grey matter in the right amygdala, the fear center/emergency response/fight-or-flight part of the brain.  Liberals, on the other hand, have a more developed anterior cortex (anterior cingulate), the part of the brain that detects errors.

The amygdala (Conservative):

The anterior cingulate (Liberal):

Liberals tend to be highly abstract, complex, and open to new experiences; comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty.

Conservatives are dependable and less neurotic; preferring stability, structure, hierarchy, and certainty.

Conservatives tend to place greater value on earnings; Liberals on education.

A lack of openness enables Conservatives to deny reality, and the Fox News campaign of misinformation enables this. 

Conservatives have less intellectual flexibility.  Liberals are exploratory and sensation-seeking.  Not surprisingly, the scientific community tends to be liberal.  J.J. Rousseau and Galileo were Liberals.

School doesn't make you liberal; Liberals just tend to go to school and stay.  Schools and universities are like playgrounds to people who like new ideas; therefore, not surprisingly, Liberals have more advanced degrees.

Rick Santorum branded college as a place you don’t want to stay.  (Bush is a moderate in comparison.)

64% of self-described Republicans believe Obama was born in the US; 55% believe Saddam Hussein masterminded the 9/11 attacks; 18% believe humans are affecting global warming.

Conservatives and Liberals have different ideas of morality and respond differently to different situations, and those responses can be predicted.

Priorities:  Conservatives hate government intrusion (except when it comes to sex).  Community is important to Liberals.

Liberals are suspicious of large concentrations of power and tend to believe scientists, which is why many Liberals’ suspicion of childhood vaccines causes much anxiety and stress.

In a study that tracked eye movement, Liberals’ eyes go towards happy, pleasant images and Conservatives’ eyes go toward scary and disgusting images.  Because it confirms our views of the world...? 

When asked “what kind of child do you want: an obedient one or a creative one?” you can probably guess who chooses which.

Emotions defeat critical thinking.  If you want to change a Conservative's thinking, don’t appeal to their logic or reason; appeal to their emotions.

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Some of the author's conclusions are obviously controversial, but they make a lot of sense to me!

The end of an era. And this is not your father’s Republican party.

I’ve long considered Indiana senator Richard Lugar, who served six terms, to be reasonable, moderate, cooperative, decent, and willing to “govern.”  When Obama won that state in 2008, I was shocked and more shocked about that win than South Carolina or Virginia.  They said the president “reshaped the electoral map” back then.  But what’s the matter with Kansas Indiana today?

With Dick Lugar’s defeat, in a recent primary no less, politics becomes significantly more cynical and unrewarding to independents and mavericks, and this is a trend we should be aware of and ready to push back on.  We should address it and the rationale behind it forthrightly and maturely.  Senator Lugar was defeated because he cooperated with the president, even though the president was trying to stave off a depression, among other pressing issues, and still is.   It’s a disturbing trend lately that representatives are punished for governing responsibly rather than selfishly or serving their corporate masters.

This coming election is the most crucial election in my lifetime, and there have been many presidents who have held that office in my lifetime.  If a Republican wins, it will be worse than when Reagan held the office, despite the fact that Reagan made education more costly and less accessible (and we see the effects of that today), and even despite the fact that Reagan, in the words of Hillary, “made it okay not to care about each other.”  Too many Republicans have become more pernicious, more dastardly, and more craven than ever before and they are more willing to be so publicly, making no bones about it.

Sen. Lugar’s defeat signals danger, that compromising, cooperating, and respecting your opponent will not be tolerated.  His defeat is a clear signal to other moderate conservatives that if you govern moderately, you will be punished.  That’s not good for our democracy.  Our democracy depends on open, honest debate, but the corrosive, corrupting effect of money has changed that.  Money and a largely uninformed electorate spells trouble, and we should be willing to fight against the polarizing trends. 

Dick Lugar is an intelligent, decent, soft-spoken foreign policy expert who served his state and his country honorably.  If he hadn’t served honorably or if he had been tarnished by scandal or was out of step with moderate voters in his state, one might better understand his ouster, but the fact is, until recently he was well-loved and well-respected by his constituents and colleagues.  Unfortunately, low-information voters are easily influenced by clever, costly advertisements and attacks whether true or not, and the money spent on Lugar’s opponent’s campaign (an opponent who is, as they say, a real piece of work) was money well spent, again, unfortunately.

If people want to criticize Obama for walking a conservative line, it may be because he has a more clear-eyed view of American voters than you or I.  If the president plans to get anything substantively and long-lasting done, he must be re-elected, and to be re-elected in this country, he has to walk a fine line, because in this country, if you try to govern like a moderate or, god forbid, an independent statesman, you will be punished.  (We’ll see how badly he’s punished (or rewarded) for his support of marriage equality for all people.)

So they cast aside Dick Lugar as part of a hyper-partisan cleansing of the party, but a cleansing of what?  Corruption?  On the contrary. 

It’s a clear message to others:  If you’re going to govern moderately, beware.

To make matters worse, Richard Mourdock, the man who beat Richard Lugar for the Indiana senate seat, for sixteen years served as vice president of a coal subsidiary of Standard Oil Company, and eventually became vice president of Business Development for that company, so who’s he in the pocket of?  Mourdock's campaign criticized Lugar's willingness to work with Democratic lawmakers, and Mourdock himself rejected bipartisanship, arguing that "the most powerful people in both parties are so opposed to one another that one side simply has to win out over the other.”

Mourdock was endorsed by several conservative interest groups, including The Club for Growth, FreedomWorks, Citizens United, and the Tea Party Express.  If you’re not familiar with the Club for Growth or FreedomWorks, they’re the modern-day John Birch Society.  If you’re not familiar with the John Birch Society, you should become so.  Mourdock has also adopted Herman Cain's 9-9-9 tax plan, which calls for a 9% income tax, 9% federal sales tax, and a 9% business tax.

On Tuesday night, Texas Rangers outfielder Josh Hamilton tied a Major League record when he hit four home runs in one game against the Baltimore Orioles IN Baltimore.  Although the Rangers won that game decisively, 10-3, Baltimore fans gave Hamilton a loud standing ovation as he rounded the bases in the eighth inning and did so again at the bottom on the eighth.  Like true fans, true patriots celebrate victories that benefit and elevate all of us.  To do otherwise is bad sportsmanship and bad governance.  It also tarnishes the game of politics and endangers our democracy.  We're better than that.  Aren't we...?

  

The saga of John Edwards, my first choice

Who here hasn’t fallen in love with someone they shouldn’t have, or had an abortion, or taken something that wasn’t theirs, or hurt somebody deliberately, or let someone down callously, or fallen short in some other significant way?  If getting involved with somebody outside your marriage and making a baby results in all of your lifelong friends and colleagues turning their backs on you, then it’s true what they say:  With friends like that, who needs enemies?  I’m pretty sure that when John Edwards was living the good life, his friends and associates couldn't be nicer, and promised their loyalty, and local NC merchants couldn’t do enough for him, but at a time when he needs his friends' and colleagues' support the most is when they run for the hills, and worse than that, they disparage, insult, and judge him publicly.  That’s very sad to me, a sadder commentary on America than it is on him.  We too often tear down the successful instead of being happy for their successes, even if hard-earned.  I’m saddened and disappointed by how pilloried and disparaged he is because he had an affair.  Narcissist or not, everybody does things they’re not proud of or are ashamed of -- or should be if they’re decent people.

Am I the only person in the country who’s not afraid to publicly state that I still have a high regard for John Edwards's achievements and the work he did?  Sure seems like it!  I certainly don’t despise him like so many others seem to.  In fact, I don’t even regret my campaign contributions to him, not because I refuse to admit I was wrong about him, but because I know politicians and candidates are as fallible and as flawed as the rest of us; they represent us.  I know that putting faith in any person is risky business because we are so flawed and fickle.  Given the kind of work he did, he had proven his commitment to our society enough to satisfy me.  He screwed up, no doubt about it, but in a way, I understand how he could or why he did.

There’s a part of this story that looms large and that I can’t ignore when I judge his actions.  His wife seemed to me, even back then, and apparently it’s confirmed by others, to be an angry and sometimes mean woman.   There was an energy about her that made me wonder why they were married.  I know that she’s dead, and apparently it’s verboten to speak ill of the dead (btw, I didn’t sign on to that agreement), but her premature and unfortunate death doesn’t change the fact that she was cruel to and dismissive of the people around her.  I agreed with her politics, as far as I understood them, but she was somebody I had a hard time envisioning her husband being happy with.  Maybe he stuck around for the children.  Losing a child is a grief I can only imagine and I pray I never experience, but it changes your view of life and family.  As much as I admired him, I never warmed up to her.  Her smile seemed brittle and unconvincing to me.    

An opinion for which I have been pilloried and banned from a certain ultra left web site (because Elizabeth is my example) is that husbands and wives have an obligation to keep themselves fit and healthy and should work to remain healthy and attractive to their mate, because if you don’t, the competition will be fierce.  We do have the choice not to do that, of course, but if one chooses to put on weight and stop caring about their appearance, one’s spouse may look elsewhere.  Is that really so shocking and outrageous to people?  Mrs. Edwards put on weight and seemed to stop caring about her looks, her hair, and her fashion before she got ill.  I'm not a psychologist, but I believe that decision can be interpreted as hostility toward your mate.  Did that decision not affect her marriage?  Is it wrong to expect it would?  Maybe that’s why he strayed…?  Is it really fair to let yourself go and expect your spouse to either ignore it or give up passion and sex for the rest of their days?  I certainly wouldn't be happy with it, and I would not expect or ask my mate to accept it -- all things being equal.

If Elizabeth did decide not to keep herself fit, she should have at least treated her husband well and been a loving wife.  This, it appears, she did not do, by many accounts.  By many accounts she was mean to him both privately and in public, and to others as well, which is a fact his attorneys could but have not raised in the trial, probably out of respect to Elizabeth and out of consideration for their children’s feelings.  Her cruelty is evidenced by her last decision days before she died to leave her husband out of her will, as a final punishment to him, regardless of how it might affect her children and regardless of the fact that all she had, he provided for her.  It bespeaks a vindictiveness and entitlement that I sensed years ago.   Yes, she was a mean one, and as someone said to me once and with which I agree: if you’re going to be homely AND mean, you’re going to have a very difficult life.  I don't mean that to sound harsh, although I know it does.  I believe it to be true.  Some will say I'm shallow, but I think I'm being realistic.  This is a debate I’ve had with others for years, and few people will agree out loud... 

As I follow these last couple of weeks, I admire his daughter for sticking by her father when few others will, and I’m glad that her mother’s anger hasn’t appeared to diminish Cate’s loyalty for her father.  Daughters tend to love their fathers no matter what, but I hope his love for his children is genuine and is realized by them.  I hope he'll find love again and if it's with Rielle Hunter, I hope she's not as nutty as she appears.  I hope that one day he’ll be able to hold his head high and not be judged so harshly by others all too willing to cast the first stone.
ETA: 5/31/12.  To all you people on DailyKos who insulted and harrangued me and then censored and banned me for my support of Edwards and daring to speak a controversial opinion:  !Ha and ha!!  There's no justification for your intolerance and cowardly group-think, and Edwards's freedom is made all the more sweet to me knowing that you know that I know you were wrong and I was right.  However ostracized I am, I'm right, and you merely suck.   Have fun with each other.   One shouldn't gloat, but you all were pretty awful to me AND, may I say again, wrong.

A primer on the president

To view Barack Obama as feckless, power-hungry, uninformed, eager for war, uncaring, and ill-suited for the office of the president is stunning to me when I run across it.  I take solace that many thinkers I admire and trust do judge Obama's presidency as I do.  Not all of them do, of course, but I feel I'm in good company. 

George Bush may well go down in history as one of our worst presidents, setting us back decades in countless ways, while Obama may go down as one of our best.  Only history will tell, but that’s my prediction and definitely my hope.  Because we're at a tipping point.  My support of Obama is not based on an expectation of perfection because he can't be all things to all people and not even to one: me.  Neither is he a dictator to attain and achieve all he wants.  It’s no secret that the Congresses he has had to work with have been unwilling to work with him, and even worse, all too willing to sacrifice all of us in their effort to hamper his presidency, and they will not be judged kindly by history; maybe more like the most treasonous and obstructionistic for its abject lack of willingness to pass any meaningful legislation at a time when Americans have suffered in a manner and to an extent rivaled only by the Great Depression.  Even in light of the suffering, dastardly republicans and spineless democrats refused to work with the president, no matter how it hurts us, now and in the future.  The president is not a dictator, as much as George Bush liked to joke about that and if Congress won't deal, nothing gets done, domestically anyway.

The comparison of Obama to Dubya reminds me of just how ridiculous American voters sometimes are – the ones who vote, which is a little less than half of us.  Of those who do vote, a scary percentage of them believe Obama is Muslim and not American.  Many who do accept his citizenship announce that they cannot support him for one reason or another, always understandable righteous grievances, but so, too, did President Bush have righteous reasons for waging war – God told him to.  Voters would probably not have been happy with George Washington since he owned slaves; would have opposed Franklin Roosevelt because he was too rich and privileged; would have taken exception to John Kennedy because he was Catholic and there was that business about his father’s dealings; Abraham Lincoln was too inexperienced and besides, he proved himself to be bloodthirsty, sending soldiers off to die…  You get my point...?  :) Nobody is perfect, not even us voters.  I'd like us to take a broader view of government and our role in it, at election time and the three years before and after it.

"Obama is a war criminal just like Bush was."  You've heard that too?  When other countries issue arrest warrants for Obama's war crimes as they have done in the case of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld and a few others in that administration, then you can allege that Obama is a war criminal.  Until that time, let's focus on the real criminals, who, although criminals, are smart enough to not travel, to stay away from those countries.

To criticize supporters of this president as uninformed, unsophisticated, and just not as aware as we should be or not smart, or have been paying attention for years on end as political junkes do :D is the kind of arrogance usually reserved for the right-wingers and evangelicals.  Why, that’s why they must be told what to think, who to love; to give up control over our own bodies.  Occupiers are loathe to support Obama, fearing co-optation from the Democrats.  I understand that, I really do, but in reality and in fairness, we should stand up for Obama if we ask him to stand up for us -- which he should do.  We must push him in the direction we want him to go rather than sit on the sidelines, saying and doing nothing except hoping for the best, and then criticize and complain when it doesn’t work out the way we’d like.

I get impatient and saddened by the “He’s just like Bush.”  “He’s no better than Bush.”   It concerns me that people are so simplistic, still, even after eight looong years of Bush & Co. and the damage they’ve done; to think that Obama is half as bad as him worries me about the unformedness of Americans, and that kind of childlike thinking reminds me how naïve American voters are -- the minority of us who bother to vote.  (There has never been an election I haven't voted in even when I was discouraged, which I am not now.)

If you haven’t been paying attention to Obama’s accomplishments (beyond the historical nature of his presidency, which also now apparently is taken for granted), read the link below.  If you need even more of a reason to support the president besides the evangelical war on women, the corporate war on environment, workers, students, and minorities, if these are enough of an impetus for you, please, read on.  Please take a moment to learn what you might not have known.  Please allow that it may surprise and inform you.

http://obamaachievements.org/list

Put the darn cell phone down...

This evening I walked to the grocery store, and it was beautiful out, sunny and mild.  I waited on the corner of Aurora and Winona, a busy intersection, and I watched for a good two minutes while across the street stood a young mother with her baby in a stroller and dog on a leash with rush-hour traffic whizzing by.  She glanced up from her phone exactly three times very briefly to check the light and then right back to her phone -- the whole time.  When the light turned green I was halfway across the street before she realized it had changed.

And APPARENTLY it would be rude to say something like, In the time you took reading your phone you could have kneeled down and interacted with your baby.  You could have smiled at your dog.  Hell, you could have even pet your dog.  You could have looked up to see me watching you in sad amazement, or you could have looked up to see a bright blue sky with pink and orange clouds. 

Apparently that’s considered rude; she certainly would have thought so.  I came *this* close.

Then, as I walked out of the store returning home, there was a guy pulling into the parking lot off of that same busy street, and he was so engrossed in his phone conversation that he couldn’t take the phone away from his ear while he maneuvered a sharp turn out of traffic into a narrow parking lot with a small boy in the passenger seat.

People need to get off of their cell phone, not only because it’s dangerous to others, but because there are so many moments we miss when we’re wired up.  There is so much eye contact that does not get made.  There are real moments of talking with a child, smiling at a stranger, greeting a clerk, noticing birds soaring overhead, and smelling the flowers along your path.  Stop using the phone as an excuse to hibernate in broad daylight and in public view. 

Remember what life used to be like?  I’m glad I still do.  If I’m standing in line at the post office, I’ll read my phone. Otherwise, I’d rather live.

Raising girls -- and what the heck would I know about it?

Listening to an interview by NY Times reporter Peggy Orenstein who’s written a book: “Cinderella Ate My Daughter,” and she writes about the Disneyfication, the “Kim Kardashaianization” of girls and girl culture these days especially in this country, and it reminds me again how very, very, very grateful I am to have had a son. 

I vividly remember sitting in my doctor’s office in 1985, almost five months along, convincing him to do an ultrasound so I could finally know once and for all, Is it a girl or a boy?  He couldn’t talk me out of it, not even in his humorous and gentle way.  So much easier to raise a boy.  For me anyway.  And then I was blessed with a good-natured, late-sleeping, energetic, imaginative, athletic, and humorous son.  I could not have gotten luckier.  Raising a girl today means suffering eighteen years or more of pink and pretty, and sexualization of girls, and the pressure to be pretty on top of competent, could be a bit overwhelming for any parent.  So much easier to raise a boy to respect girls and women than to convince a girl that she is more than her looks and willingness to please, despite the barrage of contrary messages from society; constantly fighting against the tide of objectification and sexism, sometimes – oftentimes -- against the wishes of a little girl who might succumb occasionally to society’s propaganda and pressure, and just wants to be like other girls.  That’s a big job.   It’s probably not as big a chore as I think, but it’s probably not easy.

If I had had a girl, I would have undertaken the task of rearing a fully realized girl, and it would have been a full-time job to counteract the messages that girls get today, or twenty years ago.  We would have had to endure a thoroughly pink toy aisle, Barbie commercials, and beauty products aimed at seven year olds.  Having a boy -- almost as if somebody up there were looking out for me :)  -- meant childhood was largely fun, energetic, tomboyish, and silly without the weightier worries of the parent of a girl.  That’s not all it was and it was not without its trauma and scares, but it was pretty fun. 

I can imagine some people will say that you can do the same things with a girl that you can with a boy…  I get that.  I’m just feeling really fortunate after hearing Ornstein’s interview.

It was easy to tell Martin no, we probably weren’t going to see the latest Disney movie each year (even though I relented and then quite enjoyed The Little Mermaid).  Ace Ventura and Ninja Turtles I would have taken my daughter to see, but nobody enjoys a good talking-butt joke like the boys do.  For this I am constantly, still, and forevermore grateful. 

I’m thanking Steve Scher for a fascinating and funny interview and Ms. Orenstein for an interesting perspective on raising children.

That's my white mama

The bombardment of messages of consumption and unrelenting propaganda is finally beginning to be questioned and it’s a relief to me that my lifelong cynicism wasn’t really cynicism but an awareness that something wasn’t right.  Well, maybe it was cynicism, but maybe it was healthy after all, if not always easy to bear or to share, or to hear by others.  This collective communal awakening has brought with it a new appreciation for my mother who, from the time I can remember, eschewed and mocked much of what society seemed to value.  Popular shows like “Leave it to Beaver” and “The Brady Bunch” would launch her into cranky complaints about how those shows didn’t reflect reality when all I wanted as a kid was for her to enjoy them with me.  Why can't she just be happy...?

When I was little I used to yearn for her to be like the other mothers I met, who smiled brightly and cooked dinner every night, meatloaf or pork chops, and kept immaculate houses.  Of course, we never really know how other families live.  Sometimes we only know what they choose to show us. I knew my mom couldn’t have cared less about dusting and cooking.  She read voraciously, magazines like “Ramparts,” "Free Press," and “Avant Guard,” and books about the FBI and radical activists.  She often complained about police brutality and Jim Crow laws while I longed for a mother who smiled brightly.

I also used to wish I had grown up in a small town in Iowa, in real America, because that’s what I believed refleted the “real” America, where kids rode their bikes in safety, neighbors were neighborly, and schools were clean.  It wasn’t until later that I realized those images I saw on tv did not reflect my family; they were white kids attending clean white schools with nary a brown face to be seen.  This, too, my mother grew angry about.  Now I’m grateful that I grew up in Los Angeles, one of the most diverse and progressive cities in the country because if I had grown up in Iowa, I would have been isolated and out of place, much more than I perceived being when I was young. 

As I grew older and became aware of events outside of my world, I appreciated more and became interested in the opinions of friends of my parents, people who like my parents rode motorcycles, protested the war, and enjoyed movies like “Easy Rider” and "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner."  My dad played bongos at parties, and my mother was convinced she had an FBI file.  I met and overheard conversations of adults of all races in our home, radical and traditional, who also refused to accept what the government and Madison Avenue were selling us.

My mother was ahead of her time and she paid a price for it, emotionally and probably in other ways, and if your mother pays a price emotionally, you pay a price, so it was difficult at times, sometimes traumatically difficult, but maybe that’s inevitable when you cannot live the kind of life most Americans were living.  She was never content to stay at home and not work at a time when most mothers did.  When I was young, I was confused and saddened by that.  Now I’m proud of it.

Some things I would definitely change but much I wouldn’t, and I’m more proud of her than I am disappointed.  These days of revolution and involvement make me miss her more than ever because I wish that she could have seen the Occupy movement.  I wish she could have seen the election of Barack Obama.  She would have loved and been excited by both.  I wish I could believe she sees it now but my beliefs don’t lean that way.  She instilled in me a suspicion of government and establishment that I'm grateful for.  In some ways it’s easier to believe in our collective stories and the myths that make us feel good, but I’d rather have the truth than cling to an illusion. 

A few things I remember my mother hating:  John Wayne, Kate Smith, Clint Eastwood, "Hee Haw," cooking, Ronald Reagan, fine department stores, Leave it to Beaver, southern accents, the LAPD.

A few things my mother loved: Simon and Garfunkel, Robert Kennedy, Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, Herman’s Hermits, The Smothers Brothers, Dr. King, vodka and orange juice, Eugene McCarthy, long drives with the radio on while my dad (or her second husband) drove, her cats, Angela Davis, sewing, crossword puzzles, Benson & Hedges, reading (thousands of books), Dr. Pepper, anti-war rallies, and love-ins.

She was not an easy woman to love, but I’m glad and proud she was my mother.  They raise 'em up radical in Kansas.

The title of this essay comes from a "Mad TV" comedy skit.