Strongmen are winning elections, from Putin in Russia, to Orban in Hungary, to Bolsonaro in Brazil, with an anti-LGBTQ agenda: Republicans here are implementing the same strategy
When people are locked into hate, fear and preoccupation with feeling under assault, they are easier to control. Higher brain functions are frozen out.
Is it reasonable to assume that those who are manipulated with hate and fear will have their higher brain functions atrophy over time, and their limbic systems will grow because of increased use, thus making people who possess such lizard brains more likely to become authoritarian followers?
Isn’t that how it’s always been? It’s taken hundreds of years for some of us to defeat the epigenetic residual of millennia of such abuse. Now we’re sliding backwards.
But unlike radical Republicanism, there's no need for body armor and bear spray. To win America's battle for the survival of democracy and freedom, you only need to recognize the main enemies: bad ideas and lies, not necessarily the "bad" people who promote them. And then show up for the fight!
Ukrainians are currently in a physical, life and death struggle against a truly bad man. But it's Putin's horrible ideas and lies they're fighting against as much as his soldiers. If American freedom fighters expect to defeat an authoritarian takeover on their own soil, they need to win the battle of ideas and emotions at the ballot box.
Awash in so much personal weaponry, a US shoot-em-up civil war would be a really, really bad idea. So naturally, the Republican base, in rapidly increasing percentages, are itching for exactly that.
Just ask the CEOs of the bullet factories. They're profiteering like there's no tomorrow (and no peace), continually playing catch-up to replace their deadly stock on the empty shelves as the crazies make runs on all the gun shops across the country.
Show up on November 8th and "Throw the bums out!" Free, fair, and peaceful elections to defeat an implacable enemy is a wild concept.
Mr. Hartman is mostly correct about the scope of the GOP 2022-24 advertising approach:
"Republican strategists know that a terrorized populace will quickly defer to a strongman authoritarian leader who promises to keep them safe from the evil monsters they’ve identified."
However, in all fairness, the fear campaign we have all lived through during 2019-22 may have been the most harrowing, and, sadly, the one leaving the most mental agony and fear with our current children (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8445752/). For those of us who have been in the classrooms and wore masks, we can attest to the worst fear we have ever seen in children, and we don't call them 'spreaders.' (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32371442/)
The political nightmare that we have all allowed to be a permanent fear machine in all public campaigns ought to shame all of us adults born since post WWII; it's a cancer we stood by and allowed to happen. Blaming one political party, or both, do not solve the problem, when we are 'it.' Surprisingly, one by one, we have the power to simply say no, simply turn off the TV, and simply contribute to peace makers and cancel subscriptions to media that don't have a balance.
For progressives not to flock together, instead of living among their conservative co-citizens is not a bad idea either.
For conservatives to be mindful that their future may rest on conceding some slack on things such as insane laws that allow pharmaceuticals to advertise in support of addicting drugs, and laws that allow students to become perpetual slaves to mindless debts. Perhaps the word 'discussing' is a better term than 'arguing and name calling.'
"Conceding some slack"!? Boy, that's the mother of all understatements! The "problem" to solve is the Republican Party going full fascist, which has earned the blame it so richly deserves.
How about tell your Republican buddies to quit lying about everything. Tell them to quit undermining democracy by disenfranchising Democratic voters. Tell them to support policies that help working people and their families more than their obscenely wealthy donors lording over us mere mortals. Tell them to quit destroying OUR planet and poisoning OUR air, land, water, and food. Ask them if Biden won the election fair and square.
The list is long, but that would be a good start. Otherwise, how do you "discuss" anything with closed-minded science deniers, disease spreaders, and purveyors of deadly lies who don't care about the truth or the plight of the less fortunate, all the while moralizing and preaching to everyone about God and religion without a hint of self-awareness or irony?
By the way, I've lived and worked among phony conservatives and radical Christianists in the real world my whole life and know of what I speak, as do most other liberals in red states. So don't assume too much there, Teach -- like this turd pulled from the butt: progressives "flock together." You are strongly insinuating with no evidence -- a typical troll tactic -- that Democrats have not been trying mightily for decades to reason with Republicans every step of the way on all the weighty issues. To no avail.
So, what rock do you recommend living under? The typical responses --for decades! -- from the increasingly isolated cult of Fox "News" adherents and gluttons of whacked-out conspiracies on far-right websites are ridicule, name calling, denial, deflection, or deafening silence. Republicans' communication "skills" were on full display as they shamelessly and falsely tore into Ketanji Brown Jackson, trying to ruin her exemplary reputation in front of the world to score cheap political points with their sub-cult of sick QAnon fanatics, who fantasize about holding mass executions of liberals, progressives, and Democrats.
So much for having a "discussion" with overt racists and flat-out liars. You're preaching/teaching to the wrong party and the wrong audience.
When people are locked into hate, fear and preoccupation with feeling under assault, they are easier to control. Higher brain functions are frozen out.
Is it reasonable to assume that those who are manipulated with hate and fear will have their higher brain functions atrophy over time, and their limbic systems will grow because of increased use, thus making people who possess such lizard brains more likely to become authoritarian followers?
Isn’t that how it’s always been? It’s taken hundreds of years for some of us to defeat the epigenetic residual of millennia of such abuse. Now we’re sliding backwards.
November 8th. "Be there. Will be wild."
But unlike radical Republicanism, there's no need for body armor and bear spray. To win America's battle for the survival of democracy and freedom, you only need to recognize the main enemies: bad ideas and lies, not necessarily the "bad" people who promote them. And then show up for the fight!
Ukrainians are currently in a physical, life and death struggle against a truly bad man. But it's Putin's horrible ideas and lies they're fighting against as much as his soldiers. If American freedom fighters expect to defeat an authoritarian takeover on their own soil, they need to win the battle of ideas and emotions at the ballot box.
Awash in so much personal weaponry, a US shoot-em-up civil war would be a really, really bad idea. So naturally, the Republican base, in rapidly increasing percentages, are itching for exactly that.
Just ask the CEOs of the bullet factories. They're profiteering like there's no tomorrow (and no peace), continually playing catch-up to replace their deadly stock on the empty shelves as the crazies make runs on all the gun shops across the country.
Show up on November 8th and "Throw the bums out!" Free, fair, and peaceful elections to defeat an implacable enemy is a wild concept.
How should the Democrats respond to this?
Mr. Hartman is mostly correct about the scope of the GOP 2022-24 advertising approach:
"Republican strategists know that a terrorized populace will quickly defer to a strongman authoritarian leader who promises to keep them safe from the evil monsters they’ve identified."
However, in all fairness, the fear campaign we have all lived through during 2019-22 may have been the most harrowing, and, sadly, the one leaving the most mental agony and fear with our current children (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8445752/). For those of us who have been in the classrooms and wore masks, we can attest to the worst fear we have ever seen in children, and we don't call them 'spreaders.' (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32371442/)
The political nightmare that we have all allowed to be a permanent fear machine in all public campaigns ought to shame all of us adults born since post WWII; it's a cancer we stood by and allowed to happen. Blaming one political party, or both, do not solve the problem, when we are 'it.' Surprisingly, one by one, we have the power to simply say no, simply turn off the TV, and simply contribute to peace makers and cancel subscriptions to media that don't have a balance.
For progressives not to flock together, instead of living among their conservative co-citizens is not a bad idea either.
For conservatives to be mindful that their future may rest on conceding some slack on things such as insane laws that allow pharmaceuticals to advertise in support of addicting drugs, and laws that allow students to become perpetual slaves to mindless debts. Perhaps the word 'discussing' is a better term than 'arguing and name calling.'
"Conceding some slack"!? Boy, that's the mother of all understatements! The "problem" to solve is the Republican Party going full fascist, which has earned the blame it so richly deserves.
How about tell your Republican buddies to quit lying about everything. Tell them to quit undermining democracy by disenfranchising Democratic voters. Tell them to support policies that help working people and their families more than their obscenely wealthy donors lording over us mere mortals. Tell them to quit destroying OUR planet and poisoning OUR air, land, water, and food. Ask them if Biden won the election fair and square.
The list is long, but that would be a good start. Otherwise, how do you "discuss" anything with closed-minded science deniers, disease spreaders, and purveyors of deadly lies who don't care about the truth or the plight of the less fortunate, all the while moralizing and preaching to everyone about God and religion without a hint of self-awareness or irony?
By the way, I've lived and worked among phony conservatives and radical Christianists in the real world my whole life and know of what I speak, as do most other liberals in red states. So don't assume too much there, Teach -- like this turd pulled from the butt: progressives "flock together." You are strongly insinuating with no evidence -- a typical troll tactic -- that Democrats have not been trying mightily for decades to reason with Republicans every step of the way on all the weighty issues. To no avail.
So, what rock do you recommend living under? The typical responses --for decades! -- from the increasingly isolated cult of Fox "News" adherents and gluttons of whacked-out conspiracies on far-right websites are ridicule, name calling, denial, deflection, or deafening silence. Republicans' communication "skills" were on full display as they shamelessly and falsely tore into Ketanji Brown Jackson, trying to ruin her exemplary reputation in front of the world to score cheap political points with their sub-cult of sick QAnon fanatics, who fantasize about holding mass executions of liberals, progressives, and Democrats.
So much for having a "discussion" with overt racists and flat-out liars. You're preaching/teaching to the wrong party and the wrong audience.