They could try to say that.
Which I would just say explains why all the fearless Liberals gravitate to military service, while all the fearful Conservatives want everbody disarmed and helpless, like them, so nobody can fight.
The thing is, I am about truth. For better or worse, Conservatives perceive threat better than Liberals. It is why we want Al Qaida dead, while Liberals want to coexist, and ask what we did to make them angry. It also a trait which is better suited to a violent K-selected world where you need to see threats to deal with them. Only in an r-selected world of free resource availability can you let your threat detection apparatus atrophy, and become stupid.
“Political views are based on value systems. Many value systems transcend logic,”
Yes, that is my point. If you look to how the literature studying ideology characterizes all of its traits, and then look to how the same literature characterizes r/K Selection Theory, you will see they are the same, indicating r/K is just how humans have incorporated r/K into their ideas about governance. r/K has driven these value systems.
“The tactics described in this post seem to have more feel good appeal than usefulness in the real world. “
My blog is run because I spent a lot of time around a Narcissist in childhood, and became quite adroit at manipulating his psychology. When I say that, understand I literally gave him symptoms of a stroke on several occaisions (and other Freepers have since freepmailed me saying they have done the same thing to their Liberal acquaintances - it was not unique). Now, I offer what I learned at my site, and show how the scientific literature describes these very things I discvered myself.
Here, the study I quote specifically says this technique works. Jost may be Liberal but his methodologies are sound, and furthermore, my experience tells me this will work.
The thing with Liberals is that they are Liberal because of a mental vulnerability, relating to threat perception. Adherence to Liberalism, regardless of facts or logic, is actually an attempt to shield the vulnerability. If you understand it, you can make them mentally uncomfortable by exploiting the vulnerability. It is why Liberals never pay attention to logic, and why Conservative logical arguments always fail to sway the Liberal. They are protecting something wholly different.
The biggest key to understanding others, is to realize that picturing how you would respond in their shoes is the least effective way to predict their behavior, or understand their mind. The rapist doesn’t rape because he is horny. The serial killer doesn’t kill because it is a fun diversion from a otherwise enjoyable life. People think differently - so much so, that how you would respond, or what will motivate you may be meaningless in understanding them.
You kind of can’t understand that, though, until you run into a real defective, and spend enough time with them to understand what was happening behind the mask while you knew them. Suddenly, one day, you see two realities, side by side. The reality your mind made up at the time (and which you believe you experienced), composed of your psychology driving their curious behaviors, and a parallel history (the real reality), in which they were motivated by forces you couldn’t have imagined, and would never have believed at the time.
Without that, a lot of what I write, though correct, may not be comprehensible.
Good post.