Chris Matthews begins to turn on Obama.
In one early experiment on amygdala activity from the turn of the past century, a young woman had electrodes wired into her amygdala region. When the area was stimulated with electricity, she felt overwhelming rage, and begged to have the current stopped, lest she lash out and break something. As amygdala activation begins, and produces angst, it also produces a desire to lash out. This desire is wholly independent of intellectual analysis, and it can be directed anywhere. Understanding amygdala focus is key to this. Focusing the amygdala on something while the target is undergoing vague and unspecific amygdala activation can attach a neural pathway connecting the focused image with the angst and negativity.
Liberals are right now beginning to experience the angst, even if they are unaware of its source. First, there are the deep tremors of discord growing in the nation. People realize, on a deep, subconscious level that our government is heading in the wrong direction. They see financial ruin on the horizon. They respect government ever less, and they recognize that government has become perverted in many regards. They see corruption and institutionalized profiteering by politically connected interests that have overtaken our governing structures. In addition, they are beginning to see the public come to recognize that liberalism is failing.
When Obama ran for office, he promised a rosy future of rainbows and skittles, and universal respect and admiration for liberalism. As the reality sets in, and the public begins to reject Democrats and liberalism, liberals will see their amygdalae begin to fire up, just like that young woman’s. They will want to lash out at something. Their amygdala will than scan their environment for something they can lash out at, without risk of conflict, or open competition.
For now, Obama will take an enormous amount of the flak, since to attack him will allow the liberal to avoid any conflict with the broader public. Guys like Matthews will be happy to help it along, since Hillary-ites like him see the writing on the wall, and want to begin casting Hillary as the solution to the failures of the past for the 2016 election.
This offers an enormous opportunity for Republicans. A lot of powerful Democrats are about to turn on, and demonize the face of leftism in the country today, to help Hillary. They will do this in an environment filled with angry liberals and moderates looking for something to be irritated by. All it would take is a minor adjustment to the public dialog to turn it from “Obama is a loser” to “the leftism/liberalism Obama has pursued is a loser.”
The main danger is if the Republicans fail to use their power to quickly cement Obama’s liberalism as the enemy, and take the initiative to stop his initiatives at every turn. If Boehner and McConnell try to play nice, and reach across the aisle to compromise, Obama will attach his angst to them, and Hillary will cast Republicans as just as big of a problem as Obama. Liberals and moderates could again return to focusing their ire on the Republicans.
At this point, Republicans need to cast themselves as the public’s ally, in the fight against the liberalism that is embodied by Obama. If they can do that, we will have a front row seat to a narcissist forced to confront a rejection by reality – and the next President could be Ted Cruz.
Hee Hee, You should have a section called “AC’s Toolbox”. This knowledge works wonders. I missed getting kicked in the head by inches. Getting pretty good at hijacking and dodging!
Pardon me if you answered this question in your book, but where do upper-middle-class white liberals (Jews and WASPs mostly) fall on the r/K spectrum? They profess very r-selected political views, but practice K-selection in their personal lives. They marry late and stay married, have no more children than they can afford Ivy League educations for, save for retirement, etc. In William Buckley’s words, “Jews live like Episcopalians but vote like Puerto Ricans.” Why?
It is the Jane Fonda Effect. If you look at the research on number of sexual partners and relationship durations you will find liberals as a group skew toward the r-traits compared to Conservatives. The thing is they are smart, and wealthy, so birth control and abortion allows them to avoid being “needlessly burdened with a child” – that statement itself a reflection of diminished desire to rear children, and a sign they will not invest as heavily as someone who would view a child as a blessing. Interestingly it even carries over into smells, with liberals preferring the smell of coffee to the smell of babies, and conservatives vice, versa.
If you look at somebody like Jane Fonda, she would have had fifty kids by now, by fifty different men, without modern contraception. Although no study has specifically examined upper-middle-class white liberals, I would assume from what research there is, if you take total number of partners by thirty, and relationship durations, and compare with upper middle-class Conservatives, you would find the same relative numbers you find in liberals and conservatives generally.
The bottom line is those upper-middle-class white liberals, by espousing liberalism, seek a world with every r-trait protected and promoted – itself a profound expression of deep psychological desire.
I wonder if this “Jane Fonda Effect” persists into subsequent generations. My mother has been a feminist her entire adult life, but she always had her mother’s traditional values to fall back on. So she traveled all over Europe in her 20s, almost died from the old high-dose Pill, landed a husband at 31, got pregnant, quit her job, and became a housewife.
My sister, who was 4 when our maternal grandmother died, learned only feminism at our mother’s knee, and she is now in her 40s and childless. I eventually rejected feminism, found a submissive wife, and have four kids so far.
I think the ultimate r-influence is ease and pleasure. If a child is raised absent any hardship, and they are always flooded with dopamine, they experience an addict effect, where normal life is not stimulating/pleasurable enough. If the research can be believed, there is probably some epigenetic effect involved, which can amplify the effect and predisposition, generation to generation, and there is likely a genetic predisposition as well.
The essence of this idea is that pleasure creates a need for more pleasure, and at its apex, only a high degree of novelty, excitement, and pleasure can make life worth living, and anything promoting hardship, conflict, danger, risk, etc, becomes something to avoid like the plague, at any cost. If it can be governed away, all the better.