Many millions of Americans are simply delusional

[MannyGoldstein]

Reading about the Beck craziness, and looking at my inbox's recent emails from crazy-right acquaintances, it strikes me that there are a lot of people unable to see reality. They're mad as hell, and they have every right to be mad - unfortunately they don't know what they actually should be angry about, so they make stuff up.

We had the same situation in the early 1930s. The New Deal solved the problem then, but it looks like we're stuck with the Old Deal for at least a few more years.

Sorry, I don't see this ending well unless something good starts happening for working Americans. Any thoughts are appreciated - this is not making me feel cheerful.

[Curmudgeoness]

1. There isn't much to be cheerful about right now. But I do believe

that things will improve for American workers. At some point, the government and the powers that run this country will realize that they cannot have too much discontent in the lower ranks of workers and unemployed. This was one of the things that they knew in the 1930's---that there would be a full revolution if something wasn't done. Let's just hope that the power brokers still know that they have to throw crumbs to the rest of us.

[mrcheerful]

2. My grandfather lived through those years and his hate of republicons never softened

over the years. Gramps didn't like banks, he used credit unions from the day they started, he dispised people on wall street and told anyone that there was no such thing as investing in the stock market, it was just as bad as going to Vegas in his eyes. He threw his TV out and canceled his news paper subscription the day Reagan won the election and never read another paper for the rest of his life. He said Reagan was just another Hoover.

[demosincebirth]

8. I would have loved your grandfather. nt

[kentuck]

3. I believe that Bush and the Repubs put us in a very deep hole...

..and most of those "delusional" American know it. In fact, they voted for it. I think guilt is a big part of their delusion. They refuse to accept responsibility for their actions. So now, they make shit up rather than face the truth.

[demosincebirth]

9. They don't know they are delusional...thats part of being delusional.

[Fuzz]

10. +1

[ladjf]

4. Eventually, any species that "makes up" the truth will perish. The

problem is, many others who were thinking more clearly (objectively) will also go down with them. nt

[gulliver]

5. Yep, and Dems are missing the whole party.

You can't eliminate what you are calling delusion, imo. People feel a certain way emotionally en masse, and they fill in the rationalizations needed to support the feeling. Facts don't have much bearing if they are rejected out of hand for failing to support the feelings. That's why Dems need to deal with more than facts, and that's why Republicans avoid facts.

I love us Dems, but we need to get out our drums and start playing some music for the natives. Otherwise, we go in the pot.

[hfojvt]

6. maybe if more people listened to Michael Bolton

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qy2XMYh99js

[BeHereNow]

7. K&R for the warning factor-

Hitler's job was made easier by the fact that the Good Germans
were looking for some one to blame.

With pie holes like Beck speaking to the delusional disenfranchised
"murikkkans" and a church in Florida announcing it's plan
to burn the holy book of "those" people, we have a recipe for disaster.

BHN

[Odin2005]

11. I used to think that people were inherently rational and sensible, and..

...like Socrates, thought stupid shit was the result of ignorance, not enough knowledge, and that if people had the right information they will make the right choice. I cannot believe that naively optimistic view of humanity anymore. Most people are inhierently irrational and do things based on their gut and make a reasonable-sounding rationalization for their gut feelings. Appealing to reason and facts just makes people think you are calling them stupid and they dig in their heels because they come to identify with their beliefs and assimilate them into their self-image, criticism of beliefs is taken as a personal insult.

[TheKentuckian]

12. A discouraging but important lesson to internalize

[nadinbrzezinski]

14. This is the Rational vs Irrational view of politics

and is as old as oh Plato and Aristotle.

The Republic vs Politics is that stark.

[Odin2005]

15. Anthropos esi politikon zoon.

:)

[nadinbrzezinski]

16. I am still going over the republic

and Plato has stopped being one of my all times favs... hey what happens when you actually ahem read the damn thing years, err decades, after college.

I do recommend the Barnes and Noble Edition... great job in the clarity of English. NO I don't do Greek...

:-)

[Odin2005]

17. Plato was a totalitarian creep, EWWW!!!

He puts his ideas in Socrates' mouth; but the real Socrates, the humble man who admitted his own ignorance, would be disgusted with Plato's arrogant reactionary totalitarianism that would silence people like Socrates.

It does not surprise me that The Granddaddy of Neoconservatism, Leo Strauss, adored Plato.

[CrispyQ]

18. George Lakoff's book "Moral Politics" is all about this.

He says that one of the problems with the dems is that they believe that you can sway people to your side with facts & truth. But, Lakoff says, people are emotionally attached to their views & until you break that emotional attachment all the facts in the world will not matter.

[Odin2005]

22. Yup. People need to listen to Lakoff more.

[Grinchie]

20. Actually, Exposition of their beliefs is what pisses them off.

Actually explaining the reason their belief system doesn't hold water is extremely painful for most people. For example, some Tea Partier asked me about the Arizona fiasco, and I said that we are all composed of the same proteins and chemicals, including the Trees and all the other animals on earth, and we must learn to get along with one another, because the population is growing, whether we like it or not.

The Tea Partier looked like he had been hit with a baseball bat, and retorted that the immigrants bring Crime to America.

I told him to look around at all the crime in our neighborhood, with the desperate crack heads and juvenile delinquent, and he had to shut up. We have no way for immigrants to cross the border where we live.. It's about as isolated on the planet as it gets.

You are also correct about "Gut Decisions". People have no clue about the horrible food we eat on a daily basis. It is very tasty, good looking, delicious, and non nutritious. Americans are loaded with enormous quantities of the wrong kind of fats, depleted starches, and partially toxic sugars. There is not enough nutrition in the Average American's diet for them to operate optimally, whether it be physical or mental exertion. It hurts to think for most of them, and decades of this slow starvation of essential building blocks has created a thought pattern of narrow vision and the total lack of critical thinking.

Unfortunately, poor nutrition is not that easy to see, except when you start watching people at the checkout stand on the supermarket. You see unhealthy, tired, visibly diseased people with carts loaded with Low Fat/No Fat Milk, "Healthy Choice" microwaveable dinners, and suitcases of soda pop. This is one facet of why Americans are so docile and subservient.. The rest is lack of a real education, the lack of a meaningful job or the love of work, and the contagion from the rest of the Socially Diseased urban dwellers that transmit the same bad energy to everyone around them.

Once you snap out of this trap, and start eating Nutritious food, you wake up and can see all the sleepwalkers for who they really are.. Frightened little rabbits that are too afraid to grapple the tough questions that subconciously they know will be coming for them sooner or later.

[raccoon]

21. Good post. nt

[lib2DaBone]

13. Eggs actly. People know something is wrong... but they can't define it..?

I noticed that the TeaBaggers this weekend in Washington were (for the most part) uninformed and clueless.

They were there to protest "something"?. But they were not quite sure what that was?

Of course, snakes like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin are Johnny-on-the-spot. Ready, willing and able to take control of these lost people and "direct" them to the waiting jaws of NecoCon hell.

If you want to fight "terrorism".. look no further than Glenn Beck and Faux News.

[Javaman]

19. I just finished a fantastic book that goes into the perspective of the...

average fox viewing voter.

Here's a review...

Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War by Joe Bageant

"Bageant mixes a reporter's keen analysis, a storyteller's color, and a native son's love of his roots in this absorbing dissection of America's working poor. Returning to his hometown of Winchester, Virginia, after 30 years of life among the elite journalistic class, Bageant sought to answer the question of why the working poor vote for Republicans in apparent opposition to their own interests. On a broader level, he examines issues of economic class distinctions as he drills below the middle-class claims of his hometown. The reality is that two of five residents do not have high-school diplomas and virtually everyone over 50 has serious health problems in a town—and nation—with poor and failing schools and health systems. Still clinging to illusions of personal responsibility and the vain hope of someday achieving wealth, Winchester's residents fall deeper into debt, farther behind in ambitions beyond working in the local factory—if they're lucky—and, along with their children, subject to the de facto draft of economic conscription. Through the lives of his friends and family, Bageant explores the importance of hunting, religion, and redneck pride in what he describes as the "American hologram." A wise, tender, and acerbic look at life among America's working poor."