Explain the right wing mind to me.

[TNDemo]

I have a coworker who just told me she absolutely loves GW. Loves his heart. I asked if she minded that he didn't speak English and she says his English is fine. I asked her to tell me one thing he had done right and she was offended I would ask. But then I mentioned the $9 trillion deficit. She just laughed and said, "You believe that??" I asked if they were making it up or what but got no answer. Do they think there is really no deficit?

[Gregorian]

1. Here.

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

[nashville_brook]

5. oh, wow -- i forgot about this -- great answer!

[Emit]

9. Agreed. Altemeyer's work holds the key to the OP's questions n/t

[mike_c]

2. happy right wingers wear blinders....

Nah nah nah-- I can't see anything wrong!

[Tipring]

24. an answer

Exactly right and if you hold them by the ears and point them so thaey have to look they just close their eyes.

[nashville_brook]

3. it's "authoritarianism" -- some people are socialized to it

wilhelm reich's Mass Psychology of Fascism offers a decent explanation.

[Kutjara]

4. "Right wing" and "mind" are two things that don't...

...belong in the same sentence.

[Tipring]

22. And a mind is a terrible thing

to waste. Too bad about the righties.

[otohara]

6. You Can Fool 30% of the People All The Time

she's living proof.

[displacedtexan]

7. They can't count.

They can't empathize.

They can't see beyond their own greed.

They blame you for their own lack of success.

The powerful ones count on the stupid ones to keep them propped up.

[Warpy]

8. I think they're all living on credit cards

and don't think the deficit makes any difference. I think they think they're solidly middle class even though their net worth is in the negative numbers and the loss of a job is going to send them right into bankruptcy.

Right wingers live in an alternate universe where the laws of physics and economics have been suspended, a happy Never Never Land where everything is nice and predictable and attractive and bad things never happen except in places they've only seen pictures of, never to them.

Right wingers also think they have a divine right to go through their lives completely unoffended and untroubled by reality.

This cow is a lost cause. She'll have to be buried by adverse events before she starts to shake off her sunny belief in a perfect right wing world where the only problems in her life are sour lefties who poop on her parade with their silly little facts.

[ret5hd]

10. All you need is right here:

[theoldman]

11. Your co-worker lives in a world of total ignorance and there

is no way that you can educate her. Just for fun you can drop a few facts on her every day. I guarantee that you will never run out of facts that she does not believe.

[jobycom]

12. Do you understand the mindset of any fundamentalist?

Including fundamentalists on our side? They pick one thing that they believe is true, and never change their mind on it. The facts that contradict it are wrong, that's all. One either reconciles contradictory facts to that subject, or one simply rejects the facts as wrong, or part of an agenda to mislead. Pick any conspiracy theory on either side--the photos were forged, the bodies were switched, the witnesses killed, the building dynamited (Repubs had their CTers over the OKC bombing, remember)... etc. Facts are created to make it real, facts that don't are denied.

I don't know what causes this. Some people say it has to do with the hardwiring of the brain, others that it's a psychological need for certainty in a world where there is none, or for a daddy figure when their own was other too brutal or too absent. I don't know. I guess everyone has some belief they hold onto like that, but in some people, the need to hold on to some belief is complete, and affects everything they think.

Maybe it's just personal insecurity, or even guilt. They can't question Bush because it means they were wrong earlier, and that calls everything they believe into question. I mean, face it, if you supported the Iraqi invasion wholeheartedly, changing your mind now means admitting you supported the slaughter of a million innocent people. Most people can't do that. Most will, however, take the "I was fooled" escape, so they can change their opinion and blame Bush for their support. And that's a reasonable thing to do, anyway. But some can't let themselves believe that.

So when they encounter a detail that threatens to awaken them, they reject that detail and revert to their own beliefs, factual or not.

[CrispyQ]

13. "Deficits don't matter."

I would be :rofl: if it weren't so damned :cry:

:banghead:

[Lone_Star_Dem]

14. People like that don't think

Not for themselves anyway. That's the problem.

[Cheap_Trick]

15. to be a right winger the first thing you need is...

a lobotomy. and a trust fund doesn't hurt. and an overpowering feeling of entitlement. (all those dickheads are entitled to is my foot up their asses)

[wuushew]

16. what kind of winger is she?

(A) Bush works for Jeebus and is doing his will

(B) I'm going to be rich some day and I need that tax cut.

(C) My mailman looked at me funny so there must be an Al Queda cell in the neighborhood.


I need to understand her pattern of ignorance to prepare appropriate rebutal.

[shain from kane]

17. "...a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."

Actually, Churchill said this about the Soviet Union, but it seems to fit anything that can't be easily explained.

[Javaman]

18. Remember that old commercial with the egg frying that said, "this is your brain on drugs?"

well, that IS the repube brain.

[WilliamPitt]

19. There isn't just one mind

There are several species.

Decentus Candefendideasicus: my grandfather belonged to this species. He was an Irish Catholic rock-ribbed old-school conservative, and was the best man I have ever known in my life...and he could defend all of his beliefs seamlessly. I didn't agree, but you have to respect a mind at work.

Uninformedus Minimus: the least dangerous of the three types of Uninformedus, the Minimus doesn't really follow the news unless the guys on his favorite shock-jock/sports-talk radio show happen to get into a topic. Minimus is a good person, works hard, and is "right-wing" because that's the default position for a brain that doesn't know any better.

Uninformedus Maximus: This species has sharper teeth but is still not too bright. An avid fan of Fox news, Savage, Scarborough and Jay Severin, Maximus also secretly loves Rush, but can't tell that to his Maximus buddies, because they think Rush is passe...even though they listen to him, too. Maximus appears to be fierce upon first encounter, but it becomes quickly obvious that his only defenses are lame Bill-O lines, "liberal media" cracks and a transparent "I'm a Libertarian" camoflauge that everyone can see through. Somehow thinks war is peace.

Uninformedus Berzerkus Rex: Masturbates to Ann Coulter, legitimately fantasizes about being a Minuteman shooting Mexicans down on the border, loves the war but believes he serves his country by sticking it to the liberals on the home front, is totally dysfunctional in any social setting, hasn't had a date since Winger went platinum, loves FreeRepublic, is despised by his co-workers, sleeps on sheets that smell like Satan's Own Asshole, thinks all gay people should be executed, and is generally the poster child for the value of childhood diagnoses of severe anti-social potentially-violent mental disorders...oh, yeah, and he can prove that Hillary had Vince Foster whacked by Janet Reno's trigger-men.

Fetusis Firstis: A simple breed. Votes straight-line anti-choice. Period. Supports the death penalty. Thinks G.W. Bush is on armchair-to-armchair relations with God. And is part of the single most dependable voting bloc in the history of democracy.

Biggus Buckus: Very few have seen this one. It lives in the rarefied air reserved for creatures with at least twelve digits to the left of the decimal on their bank statement. CEO of a defense corporation, or oil concern, or both. These creatures know what the real deal is, and use all the other species as useful idiot shock-troops to keep everyone distracted about gay marriage and abortion and the Ten Commandments and the like, while they make sure there will always be war and that they will always get paid.

[bunkerbuster1]

21. That's good stuff, that is.

You just cough it up on the fly or did you have it tucked away for another project? In any case, me likee.

[WilliamPitt]

23. On the fly

Like everything else. :)

[A Brand New World]

25. Great response! I wish I had your gift with words!!

n/t (Because I don't have the gift with words.)

[ladjf]

20. Gognitive disorder.

[damntexdem]

26. I don't understand the question.

Why would you use 'right wing' and 'mind' in the same sentence?

[hfojvt]

27. some good answers in this thread, but you got the deficit wrong

National debt is $9 trillion. The deficit is not nearly that big, being just the current year's addition to said debt. I am not sure what she meant - if she thought you were talking about trade deficit or projected budget deficits. Possibly was just a nervouse response to a hostile line of questioning, or she was saying that the defict (or debt), while it exists, cannot be blamed on Bush. Nobody likes to be put on the spot.

[annabanana]

28. kickin' for #19. .

(to good to be buried)

[bobthedrummer]

29. Take some time with this archived thread-everyone...

"Information Warfare Ammo-Dump #2" (6-13-2007)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1104149


IMPEACH CHENEY FIRST

[Bluebear]

30. Stunningly incurious. Raised to not even fathom that authority can be wrong.

An overdose of Paul Harvey, Reader's Digest. and the Hall of Presidents exhibit at Disney = my country, right or wrong, and you don't even need to turn on the news to know that our President is always right, unless he receives oral sex.

[Elwood P Dowd]

31. Bush's own cabinet members publish the budget and current account deficits.

Ask her if his own people are lying. Has she never heard of The Department Of Treasury and The Department Of Commerce?
BTW, the total annual budget and current account deficits under Bush are now 1.1 trillion dollars a year!