Posted on 08/26/2007 1:19:34 PM PDT by John Jorsett
Between 2000 and 2006, a specter haunted the community of fundamentalist Democrats. Members of this community looked around and observed their moral and intellectual superiority. They observed that their policies were better for the middle classes. And yet the middle classes did not support Democrats. They tended to vote, in large numbers, for the morally and intellectually inferior party, the one, moreover, that catered to the interests of the rich.
How could this be?
Serious thinkers set to work, and produced a long shelf of books answering this question. Their answers tended to rely on similar themes. First, Democrats lose because they are too intelligent. Their arguments are too complicated for American voters. Second, Democrats lose because they are too tolerant. They refuse to cater to racism and hatred. Finally, Democrats lose because they are not good at the dark art of politics. Republicans, though they are knuckle-dragging simpletons when it comes to policy, are devilishly clever when it comes to electioneering. They have brilliant political consultants like Lee Atwater and Karl Rove, who frame issues so fiendishly, they can fool the American people into voting against their own best interests.
This literature was never taken seriously by sophisticated Democrats, but it thrived nonetheless. Still, you’d think it would be pretty much extinct now that Democrats are winning and Republicans are in the midst of a historic meltdown.
But Drew Westen, a professor of psychology at Emory University, has come forth with a late entry in the field, and his book, “The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation,” is enjoying a vogue. He takes an interesting dollop of neuroscience and uses it to coat the conventional clichés of the Why Democrats Lose genre.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Huh?
BWAHAHAHAHAHA This has to be satire!
I . . . who took the money?
Who took the money away?
I . . . it’s always showtime
Here at the edge of the stage
I, i, i, wake up and wonder
What was the place, what was the name?
We wanna wait, but here we go again...
I . . . takes over slowly
But doesn’t last very long
I . . . no need to worry
Evr’ything’s under control
O - u - t but no hard feelings
What do you know? take you away
We’re being taken for a ride again
I got a girlfriend that’s better than that
She has the smoke in her eyes
She’s moving up, going right through my house
She’s ginna give me surprise
Better than this, know that it’s right
I think you can if you like
I git a girlfriend with bows in her hair
And nothing is better than that
Down, down in the basement
We hear the sound of machines
I, i, I’m driving in circles
Come to my senses sometimes
Why, why, why, why start it over?
Nothing was lost, everthing’s free
I don’t care how impossible it seems
Somebody calls you but you cannot hear
Get closer to be far away
Only one look and that’s all that we need
Maybe that’s all that it takes
All that it takes, all that it takes
All that it takes, all that it takes
I got a girlfriend that’s betther than that
And she goes wherever she likes. (there she goes...)
I got a girlfriend that’s better than that
Now everyone’s getting involved
She’s moving up going right through my heart
We might not ever get caught
Going right through (try to stay cool) going through, staying cool
I got a girlfriend that’s better than that
And nothing is better than you
I got a girlfriend thats better that this
And you don’t remember at all
As we get older and stop making sense
You won’t find her waiting long
Stop making sense, stop making sense...stop making sense, making sense
I got a girlfriend that’s better than that
And nothing is better that this
( is it? )
(Talking Heads, 1984 Stop Making Sense tour)
First, note the author of this piece is David Brooks, a somewhat conservative writer.
Next, the article actually ridicules the conjecture that the Democrats lost because they were too intellectual.
Rather, he concludes, politicians win when they convince the voters they have better policies
Five sentences that fully explain why illicit drug use is destructive to the brain.
The guy would do better to study how and why that smug sense of superiority that is so widespread on the left blinds them to elementary uses of empirically based reasoning. So many of our social and political debates are dominated by leftist slogans which feel good to those morally and intellectually “superior” beings, but which crash-and-burn in the face of reality, including the reality of a majority of US voters who are not foaming-at-the-mouth leftists.
The only reason the left does as well as it does in this country is through use of emotional appeals, sanctimonious propaganda, and flagrant demagoguery. A more fact-and-evidence based politics centered on sound reasoning will NOT help the Demagogues!
I beg to differ....
Methinks they got this one backwards!
The Times has been publishing tripe like this for a generation. Until one of two things happens, the Times will continue to publish this tripe. Either the Times will go out of business, or new owners will fire the current employees and the Times will become a real newspaper again. Can anyone else posit a third alternative?
Congressman Billybob
Every sentence, every example, every phrase in this piece is a simple bald-faced lie. How can you begin to argue/discuss anything with an individual or group of people who are so far divorced from reality?
The conclusion of the piece above
///////////////////////////:
The best way to win votes — and this will be a shocker — is to offer people an accurate view of the world and a set of policies that seem likely to produce good results.
This is how you make voters happy.
David Brooks is an Op-Ed columnist for The Times.
Let them continue to believe this and they will find themselves in pleasant company with others of their stripe confined in the very dark hole of denial. This illustrates what I find most disgusting about the left. They are mental midgets with superiority complexes.
They are driven by emotional fictions. What they envision for the middle class is that that the middle class never have a chance to be anything but the middle class and the poor never have a chance to be anything but poor. They are faithless creatures that rely on poisoning the minds of the disadvantaged with envy and casting the rich as mythological demons who desire to keep them down.
They do not call the middle class, poor and disadvantaged to greatness but instead call them to the dark prison of resentment where their self styled saviors supply them all they need, a warm bed, health care, a square meal, and a tv set. The only thing missing from that picture is the orange jumpsuit.
Hey BB,
The Times piece (by David Brooks) actually ATTACKS the premise of the book.
Let’s work on those reading skills, huh?
BD
Democraps have won a lot in my lifetime and there’s really no big secret to why. It’s not too hard to convince people that if they’ve got problems in their lives Big Brother’s there to solve them.However the proposition that D’craps are the rational political party is a joke. Take emotion out of the equation and there would be no Democrap Party !!!
In practice Rat policies are a disaster for the middle class — and for society as a whole.
Oh my, this goes way beyond self-righteous blathering, and aims right into a realm of precocious arrogance not yet even known!
That’s eloquent.
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