Given that, it seems Obama is directing both barrels of this shotgun at the American public. And that might explain his remarkable success as evidenced by his creation of what we conservatives call the 'Kool-Ade intoxicated' crowd.
Knowing you are a professional, I would love to get your opinion on the behavior of this crowd vis-a-vis their complete reliance on character assassination and their assiduous avoidance of anything like rational thinking, logic, and empirical reasoning. It has been my experience that cults are conditioned to check their minds and consciences at the door (i.e. relegate their minds to group leaders).
Does it seem to you that this is what we are witnessing in the Left's purely emotional (limbic) attacks on conservatives who oppose Obama ("racists, teabaggers, etc.") and in blaming them for the Tucson shooting for example?
“Does it seem to you that this is what we are witnessing in the Left’s purely emotional (limbic) attacks on conservatives”
I wrote a book on Political psychologies. The whole theory of it is on my profile page for free, if you’re curious. It relates to this statement of yours, in that the Conservative psychology evolved to compete with others, as a means of advancing the species’ evolution. In order to compete (as in War, economics, etc) we needed to have a firm grasp of reality, an excellent ability to assimilate data unemotionally, and the ability to use the data to correctly plot our actions, in order to compete most effectively. We needed to perceive reality, and mold our actions to it correctly, as if we did not, we would lose the competition, and fail evolutionarily.
Liberals are Anticompetitors. They evolved to avoid competition, as they probably would have failed at it in our evolutionary past, when competitions were more physical and violent. Thus they had no need for our rigorously logical natures, as their fortunes did not rise and fall on their performance in perceiving reality, and operating in free competition.
In other areas, such as walking the fine line of a traitorous subversive in group competitions, it is even helpful to the Liberal to behave wholly driven by emotion, and absent logic, as the path they walk must be inherently illogical, and runs counter to the very nature of our species. Thus to pursue the evolutionarily advantageous strategy of traito, one must feel that Al Qaida members are human, and must never be tortured, or killed brutally, just to kill them. They are just as decent as Americans, and deserve court procedings, even if those procedings might set them free to kill us. Liberals didn’t need logic to harvest the benefits of treason. In fact, logic would be a liability.
In the end, much of Liberalism comes from deeply conditioned hatred/envy of successful peers burned into them in childhood, and an inability to process fear. Their brain literally cannot deal with it - the structures within it will not handle it. So if logic calls for an acknowledgment of danger (fear), and adaptation to it, they will see danger, deny it to avoid amygdala (fear) stimulation, and then they will do what they were emotionally conditioned to do in childhood. Appease a bully to seek his friendship, punish the successful children whom they envy and hate, etc.
This type of brain function was all was just an effective way evolution found to make the Liberal do all of the the honorless, disloyal, selfish things which would benefit an evolutionary loser but which logic would tend to argue against.
“Does it seem to you that this is what we are witnessing in the Left’s purely emotional (limbic) attacks on conservatives who oppose Obama (”racists, teabaggers, etc.”) and in blaming them for the Tucson shooting for example?”
The same thing is true on both sides of the political spectrum, just more prevalent in the emotional left. Why would many conservatives who follow Rush call themselves “Ditto Heads??” I may agree with a lot of what Rush says, but would never refer to myself as a dittohead for anyone. This is the same mentality utilized to get the posses of old times together and the formation of lynch mobs. Please, give me logical facts and allow me to make a decision while considering the emotional attributes. But to put the emotional attributes first causes us to only see the facts supporting our emotional decision and to be blind to all others. This is when we are easily manipulated.