Posted by "Gummo" over at the Crack Den:
One of the most valuable courses I took in college was called The History and Psychology of the Holocaust.
For one assignment, the professors had us read Sartre's Anti-Semite & Jew. The day it was due they asked the lecture hall at large what we all thought of it. People heaped praise on how it destroyed every anti-Semitic argument step-by-step.
The psych professor listened for a minute then said, Forget it. It's crap. We were aghast.
He then explained that you can never trump an emotional argument with a logical one; that the emotional brain is eons older and more powerful than the relatively recent overlay of logic and reason and that people will always reject a logical argument in favor of an emotional one.
It was a powerful lesson, one I've never forgotten, and one the fascists have used to their advantage for the last hundred years.
7:50:11 AM MST 12/17/10
And now we have a study showing that those people who watch Fox News are, despite the strength with which they hold their opinions, the least-informed about important current issues. We have What's the Matter With Kansas, The Movie. We have two years of exhorbitant tax cuts for the richest 6,600 families in the country and 13 months of unemployemnt benefit extensions for those millions of people who are likely permanently out of their jobs.
It's like Xmas every day. For spin and propaganda.
Oh, what's that under your holiday tree? Bullshit. The gifts and toys may all have been made in China, Mexico, Pakistan, and Indonesia, but the bullshit is pure Yoo-Ess-of-Ay.
Have some more.
From ludkmr, who voted for Debs who also regularly contributes to the semi-illustrious Crack Den. Like many there, too many to catalogue deservedly, he has interesting things to say:
The press in this country started out as one person/one printing press operations. In reading the history of the colonial press I found the style and content amazingly similar to blogging.
[T]here were a few powerful papers around when the amendment was written and the revolution owed them, but by and large the right of those small operations to publish unfettered was what it was intended to protect.
7:58:26 AM MST 12/17/10
Today'a U.S. major media are just yesterday's Soviet Pravda on steroids and crystal-laced three-martini lunches. Today's bloggers are samizdat. That is, after you sort through all the redstate freerepublic little green republichick manure-piles. This is, after all, a country in which people are allowed some degree of mean-spiritedness and abject stupidity.
It's sickening.
Glint.
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3 comments:
Unfortunately this was the reason the founders didn't really want 1 man = 1 vote. Why we have an electoral college. Why originally the senate was made up of appointees from the state legislatures.
Never underestimate the ability of the media to manipulate the masses. After all we elected Ronald Reagan as president of the United States 2x's when he probably was already affected by Alzheimers.
I'm anxious to see 'What's the Matter With Kansas?' though it will undoubtedly be frustrating for exactly the reason you say: emotionally-held arguments are impervious to logic. Frank makes a rational argument in his book, which will necessarily elude the very people we wish to reach.
The equating of early press with blogging is intriguing.
Emotional trauma is impervious to logic. It takes supreme effort to simultaneously admit 1) I am fucked up 2) I now feel great pain and grief and 3) I now have to accept my fucked upness without clear recourse as to what is next. These are gargantuan tasks which leaves amenity toward addictions. Fox news is such an addiction, a creation of drama where reality could be present. The reality would be much worse.
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