The loose ends of how humans seem to cycle through ridiculous repetitions of conflict driven by prejudice and propaganda remain to be tied up and tied down to the underlying biology. But the question remains more superficially how to live day to day.
It does not help the effort that individual cases vary in terms of their causes. How did any of us arrive at this moment and where we stand on political and social matters?
I think Hannah Arendt has done the best job historically still. Others who have sliced out different angles too often ignore the individual variations.
How propaganda works seems to fail to consider how a system that drives the majority of people to live lives of quiet desperation will also disable pretty much everyone from thinking clearly or focusing enough time and attention on political questions to avoid following biases and taking shortcuts in understanding and decisions like posting online and voting with serious consequences.
“I don’t really care” seems to be the underlying message, but it is actually simpler.
When “who I am” mixes with a cacophony of binary questions, for or against, with this but without that, do you want to live like they did in Venezuela or go on eating ramen and peanut butter on cheap bread, what are you some kind of a sissy or a…, etc., ad infinitum, is it any wonder people as they vote or respond fire a shot over their shoulder and run to the comfort of overeating, ultramarathons, binge watching, doom scrolling, the church, the sports fan crowd, online searching for a handle, an angle that gives the illusion of control and understanding others don’t have, a tribe that has their six, even if it’s a lie?
The psychology and even brain stuff is relatively simple. I have already bored the heck out of anyone who has tried to read my explanations. For most of us this kind of reading about psychology and neuroscience falls into the category of lying to ourselves about how we are different from the statistics. Dunning-Kruger doesn’t apply to us. Those others are crazy and why should we waste time trying to figure their irrational stupidity?
The takeaway ought to be that the apparently stupidest person you or I have ever seen online is also you and me. We are the same in our off moments, in situations we cannot be bothered to read closely and think deeply about. The last forty or fifty years for those of us old enough to have lived through them is as much our fault or to our credit as anyone else’s.
Yes, I know I should just stop, even if I am only talking to myself here.
For example, how can anyone vote for either of the Mikes, Rogers or Collins, against the Jewish sitting senator on the one hand and the Muslim candidate on the other? Are those the reasons the openly white supremacist Nazi guy and islamophobia are preferred? The right-winger in the wheelchair in Texas is nothing like Democrats in wheelchairs, FDR or Josh Turek. But some will use physical “handicaps” as a reason for or against, but then vote the other way depending on party affiliation.
Many already accept that transgender is some kind important delineator, the same way abortion has been, without asking whether these are not matters of personal autonomy and why should we focus on that above the open criminality of elected officials?
There, too, we see bizarre splits. Are the elected Democrats more corrupt than the elected Republicans? For most that question comes down to a sports team fan loyalty answer, not a very serious basis for making decisions with obviously serious consequences. Which team is yours, and it might as well be football or American Idol.
But with politics we also see a whole lot of us who lie to ourselves and claim to be Libertarians, Green, or some other “independent” because the two parties with all the real power are both bad, or some other oddly personal, self-satisfied cover story for why we choose an identity label outside the two parties, with some quirky mix of positions that might as well be fashion choices.
I wear a button, a hat, or a T-shirt and that somehow makes me different at the gas pump or in relationships with people who can’t afford insulin or rent. I label myself something to feel unique.
We all want to be good, on the right side of history, or maybe we do not care that extent. We create convoluted narratives and compartmentalized responses to the needlessly binary for-or-against questions.
I still see folks caught up in the same kind of false statistical arguments. Because the majority of stupid people tend to hold “conservative” political positions does not mean all reactionaries are always wrong, any more than scores on biased tests warrant serious debate about whether the completely unscientific classifications of race and sex can be used to justify unequal protections and opportunity under the law.
The outcomes on tests have widely varied contexts and causation chains just like my apparent stupidity in many matters some equally foolishly biased persons scoffing at me for my sheeplike opinion about voter I.D. rules.
None of us are free from these blind spots in reasoning and morality. I like you, even when I notice how stupid you happen to be in one context or another, the same way I continue to like myself when I know full well of situations in the past when I was thinking poorly.
Even now my best moments happen to be when I acknowledge I have a prejudicial feeling, when I look down on someone else in the immediate instant or react negatively against another human for some superficial signifier, a tattoo, a bad haircut, what seems to be the wrong expression of values. I am the idiot I despise.
For everything we see and condemn in the moment there has been an individual chain of causation leading to that moment. I have finally recognized on the one hand I have the luxury of withholding judgment and action, but on the other, I also see obviously I need to act smarter against the easy option of condemning all the fools who continue to fall for fear and seek the comfort of their abusive relationships in political affiliations.
Most of us don’t know when we’re acting out of needless, groundless fear. We all do it all of the time. We put up with conditions we know we do not want because it is familiar. Difference is scary. We have been educated, trained, like animals in the lab, to be afraid of actions in some areas, while jumping into other behavior in others to displace our fear and anxiety.
We act out in the wrong directions when we are enabled, given license to do so. That’s where the misdirection works best. We know we are afraid to stand up for ourselves on the job, but we feel great when we point the finger at others, women in jobs for instance, when we are given license to do so.
Propaganda works because things have been narrowed to yes-no and we all have been shaped into these stupid creatures who blithely think we are smarter than we are or can’t be bothered and have better things to think about and that superficial difference equals death threat level danger when the dog whistles whisper or the buzz words bellow.
Is that who we are now?
