Mike Huckabee gets owned by MD on twitter re: comparing skateboards to guns

[ehrnst]

6. The area of the brain that gets triggered by fear and defense

shuts down intellectual processes for fight or flight.

From an evolutionary standpoint it's great if you're being pursued by a sabre toothed tiger, when stopping to analyze alternate reactions to running would get you killed, but in the modern world, it can prevent one from even seeing that there isn't an actual attack, let alone a life threatening one. For gun humpers, their fear of "the others" overrides any data that indicates those "others" aren't the threat, but overreacting to a threat really becomes a threat in itself.

I believe that research has shown that the brains of liberals (not in the lefty political sense, but the classic tendency to "look at all sides of an issue" sense) have fewer fear reactions, while those farther away from classic liberal POV are more prone to fear responses and resistant to new data. Spock vs Kirk, as it were.

Conspiracy theorists usually have anxieties that they seek to frame as a response to an actual threat - they seek validation for their fear that others don't seem to have. I see a lot of that with people with dulalistic world views as well - to acknowledge grey area requires calm consideration, and outrage doesn't promote that.

Trump feels best when people are at each other's throats and chaos abounds. He promotes it. Those on the right functioning from fear and anxiety and dualistic world views see validation in him. He hates who they hate, and the gun industry needs fear of the "other" to stay in business.

Neither his fans nor the gun industry will EVER abandon their support of him, no matter what he says or does.