26
Oct
Paging Gary Farber
The Democrats need you, according to the Hill:
His memo is sharply critical of Republican policies but also suggests a neurological explanation for Republican message success: By using emotional appeals and warning of dire threats, Republicans can trigger neurons called “amygdalae” in the temporal lobe, which is the seat of the “fight or flight” response in the brain.
Personally, if the Democrats want my support, the part of the body they need to stimulate is their backbone (some pictures here, so the feckless losers might figure out what we are talking about). I didn’t vote for them in 2006 because I liked their policies or suddenly became a convert to liberalism. I voted for them because only a mindless fool could look back at the past two administrations and not realize what a disaster Bush “conservatism” has been.
I voted for the Democrats not to advance their agenda, but because I had hoped they would stand up to Bush. They haven’t.
Svensker
That must be Queen Amygdala, the one who said:
Or was that Queen Schumer, who said:
One of those.
Dreggas
Fixed.
Jake
Well, listening to Republicans often fills me with the urge to punch someone in the face…
Now, no one tell the Republicans that human beings can’t maintain any emotion for extended amounts of time.
Jon H
Careful, the might think you mean the repellent Marty Peretz’s Spine blog.
capelza
I keep hoping there is some super secret Democratic plan that Congress is going to unleash when the Republics least expect it.
A girl has to have her fantasies, you know. :(
Billy K
Dot hey even HAVE an agenda? I’m (literally) a card-carrying Democrat who visits several lefty sites a day and I’m not aware of any agenda. Hell, even if their agenda sucked, I’d be happy if they HAD one, cause that means they’d at least have something to wake up in the morning for. Does this crop even care about anything? (SCHIP doesn’t count. They stumbled into that more than anything.)
Billy K
I thought that for about 6 months. Then I gave up.
gypsy howell
Shhhhh…. Don’t wake her up. Capelza is still in Happy Dream Land, where democrats remember why we elected them, and they have courage and stand up to the creeping fascism that is our government. Let her have a few more moments of peace, OK? The truth will rear its ugly head soon enough.
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
No, really, it doesn’t. It sounds much more like half-Santa Claus, quarter-Al Jazeera, quarter-Al Gore.
The Democrats would do well to bury this moron immediately. In a crashing display of utter dimwittedness, for this clown’s sole example of how the Donks’ message sounds like an “audit report on defense logistics,” he chooses an message in which they (wait for it!) sent a 12-year-old kid to give a national address to push a “Bush hates kids” meme.
Ummmm, suddenly I trust the Democrats’ audit reports on defense logistics even less now.
So a dim bulb from a party that campaigns on “Bush/Cheney are Evil Incarnate and push seniors in wheelchairs down the stairs” says that the Donks are not “emotional” enough?
A party that pushes a “warning of dire threats” scenario regarding catastrophic global warming (with pictures of polar bears struggling on melting ice, no doubt whilst writing a Democratic audit report on defense logistics) isn’t trying to frighten voters enough?
A party that has the Little Ball Of Hate as the DNC Chair, a man who actually said “I hate Republicans and everything they stand for,” is just too darn cerebral?
A party that has vitriolic supporters shouting down and attacking conservative speakers, students attacking military recruiters and defacing recruitment stations and military gravesites, lunatics attacking their neighbors and murdering citizens of foreign countries who have troops in Iraq—they’re not emotional enough?
I’d tend to go the other way—the Democrats have so few substantial answers to the problems of the day (besides “more government money for everyone!”—another highly nuanced, intellectual appeal to be sure) that emotional appeal is all they have. Whatever votes they have garnered, it’s not due to any of their technical, emotionless (fictional) policies.
capelza
Oh I am wide awake! And would love to bitch at my reps, though the Dem ones for the most are are on the side of good…but then I live in the “liberal cesspool” of Oregon.
They still get a regular earful, though…
The Other Andrew
EEEL—are you saying that conservatives have “substantial answers to the problems of the day”? Please do enlighten us.
Also, I like that bit about Democrats spending a lot. Unfortunately, it isn’t 1999, so it doesn’t really work.
Helena Montana
Republicrats. They’re all cowardly, corrupt, really stupid Republicrats. Talk about fiddling while Rome burns…
ThymeZone
I have no particular quibble with your post in general, but John, you’re as much a social liberal as anyone here.
Just curious, what do you think separates you from “liberalism” nowadays? If it’s fiscal policy, then …. I’m afraid the GOP has pretty much squandered that angle. Three of the five presidents who raised federal spending the most recently are Republicans, not dems.
Keeping in mind that liberalism is a more of a worldview than a coherent political strategy ….. and that “conservatism” has apparently failed completely to achieve any of its supposed goals, and most miserably failed WRT fiscal restraint, its supposedly most sacrosanct tenet, I am wondering what it is that makes you think that holding onto some charming model of anti-liberalism still works for you?
I ask only in the most friendly and nurturing way. I swear.
gypsy howell
capelza, I was making a little joke. I hope you knew that. :-)
I sure wish I could go back to sleep.
John Cole
When people start shit with me, I throw it back in their god damned faces. That alone separates me from the current crop of liberals.
Balloon Juice
[...] Paging Gary Farber [...]
ThymeZone
Well … so do I. But anyway, that’s a comment about people, but not about liberalism.
Just trying to figure it out. Your famous break over the Schiavo thing was a pretty liberal (liberaltarian, if you like) gesture. Your social views are as liberal as mine, ANAICT.
What would it take to get you to join up with our team?
Snarky Shark
That alone separates me from the current crop of liberals
Considering that the term liberal means anybody not goose-stepping to the reich-wing drum-beat, thats a pretty big net you are casting there John.
Now if you are talking about our so called ‘liberal’ leadership, you are spot the fuck on.
But I know a bunch of ‘liberals’ that have a full combat load for their assault rifles and are ready to fuck some fascist shit right the fuck up.
I think you would like them.
And for all the red-necks who think they will win Civil War v2.3, there is a big difference between sitting your fat ass in a blind and busting a cap in Bambi, and going mono o mono with something that can shoot you back.
I live in Texas, and I can tell you the red-neck agenda is on the way out. Half the fat asses around here would die from a heart attack just getting trained up. In an ever increasingly complicated world, stupid and proud of it aint gonna ‘git er done’
Zifnab
Democrat spending has been hamstrung repeatedly since Carter. Any Republican that tells you differently is trying to sell you something (like a War with Iran).
Living in 1980 is going to win Republicans elections like its 1960.
You know, liberals aren’t all pussies, even if all our elected representatives are. That said, I would totally love to string ever “liberal” Senator up by his or her heels and beat’m with a bamboo cane for not filibustering the hell out of every bad bill that’s been passed since ‘00.
Tsulagi
I thought a good part of the answer was in his post: A spine. Rather than the current repeated practice of going turtle retreating into their shell when the other guys get mad at them and call them names.
ThymeZone
Can’t agree. And that’s my point. The spine thing is a complaint about people doing or not doing things.
Liberalism is a worldview, it either hold together or it doesn’t, whether some particular congress critters nobly represent it or not.
I can’t find that John is anything but a pretty liberal thinker, trapped in a conservative party. I think he’d be happier in ours. So some Dems are wishy washy. At least they aren’t fucking crazy assed lunatics who read Rapture books and think they’re nonfiction.
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
Really? Just let me know when the Dems plan to cut anything when they take control of Congr… oh, wait, they already have! I guess you weren’t paying attention to the S-CHIP thing—mo’ money, mo’ money, mo’ money! Heck, they won’t even cut the funding to a war you thought they didn’t support!
Pug
...sent a 12-year-old kid to give a national address to push a “Bush hates kids” meme.
Maybe the meme was really that some 12-year old kids’ families need a little help with medical bills, even if they don’t live in grinding poverty.
I always wonder why folks like Mr. Lambchop accuse Dems of being obssessed with Bush when it is they who are, in fact, obssessed with Bush.
They worship him. It is like a cult that 24% of the people in America belong to.
jcricket
One word. Say it with me. PROJECTION!
It is they who are obsessed with sex or digging into people’s private lives. It is they who have a “derangement syndrome”. It is they who are unhinged.
The list goes on. Pretty much any time they accuse someone else of something untoward, it’s because they’re assuming everyone else is as corrupt, morally bankrupt or paranoid as they are.
capelza
I sure wish I could go back to sleep.
I figured you were..and I’d love to go to sleep and wake up in a sane country with brave politcians…now that IS fantasy. :(
Snarky shark…all those brave, brave war porn boys (and girls maybe)...my favourite fantasy is them invading Iran and being confronted with chador clad women armed with AK-47s…trained to kill while wearing a chador.
The American civil war v2.0..that could be won by the Blue states cutting off their funds. They’s have to pay for their own stuff. Though, as much as I love the South for it’s scenery and many of the people and the graves of my ancestors, I’d just let them leave as lonmg as they took Bush and Bill Kristol with them.
Dreggas
Shit count me in as one of those gun toting liberaltarians that would fuck someone’s shit up if they got in my face. You confuse liberalism with another bad stereotype of the left…pacifism. Not all of us believe in PC turn the other cheek bullshit as we are, after all, the reality based community.
Bombadil
John sez:
Looking forward to 2008, Charlie Pierce lays out your Republican choices:
Doesn’t look any better for you then.
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
Even granting that (which I don’t really buy, after seeing the two-week kerfuffle)... “Give More People More Money” is not a terribly complex solution to problems, is it? Is it like an audit report on defense logistics? It’s the exact opposite, really.
CT Voter
Democratic leaders were apparently unimpressed with the whole “your message sucks” theme.
Dude. It’s really really working. That’s why approval rates for Congress are so skyhigh these days! These people are clowns.
capelza
I do havepne problem with waving around the Congressinal approval rating. Individually most of the members of Congress have much better approval ratings from their own constituents. It must be everyone else’s congresscritter who is “bad”.
Comparing the President’s approval (or lack there of) rating with Congress’s overall is rather misleading.
But the point will sink home..in my fantasy world.
Neo
Is “lost” a “NewD irection” ?
CT Voter
That comparison doesn’t even need to be done. Just compare approval ratings for Congress over time. People think poorly of this Congress. Could be for a variety of reasons, but if that “agressive campaign” of the Democrats were working, wouldn’t people be a little less disapproving?
Gary Farber
Thanks for the shout out, John (gollikins, it’s been ages since I’ve had a link or e-mail response or comment or anything from you), but The Hill should hire more careful writers, since this is sorta not-so-accurate: “Republicans can trigger neurons called ‘amygdalae’ in the temporal lobe….”
(Your link to me is kinda garbled up with Google HTML, but no matter.)
The amygdala, of course, is a part of the brain; the brain is made of neurons, but no one says that neurons are “called” such-and-such body part, any more than we say, “let me shake your skin cells and hand bones sheathed in musculature, known as the hand.”
Sane phrasing would be “Republicans can trigger the amygdala, the part of the brain that….”
But I fear I’m responsible for so much, if not as much as The Left.
Thanks again.
tBone
That was easy.
ThymeZone
Well, actually it’s totally misleading. It means essentially nothing, and it won’t translate into seats for the GOP in 2008. That’s the only thing that counts.
But hey, it’s always good for a few hours of blogchurn, so that’s why it gets rolled out once a week.
blogenfreude
I emailed the DNC with what I thought was the perfect message: “We’ll undo everything Bush has done.”
kritter
Isn’t it a little asinine to keep blaming Democrats for big government programs, when Bush has actually increased the size of government more than they ever could hope to? Massive amounts of tax dollars are being spent on his Medicare prescrition plan, which Congressional Republicans voted in during his first term. The Dept of Homeland Security has become an unwieldy behemoth, and the defense budget is astronomical. When money is spent on our own children’s health, its a waste, but no bid contracts for big defense donors for weapons systems that are often outdated or dont serve a relevant purpose, are seldom mentioned by so-called fiscal conservatives.
I would like to see bolder action from the Democrats on the FISA bill and war funding, however.
Jess
So far the Iraq war has cost every American man, woman and child $8000, according to the Congressional Budget Office. How much would an increase of S-CHIP cost? I’ve heard it was about what three weeks of the war is costing—have you heard differently, EEEL? Or are you just trying to ignore that bit of inconvenient information?
jcricket
The only time when big government programs are inherently bad is when they are proposed/implemented/run by Republicans and their incompetent appointees.
Republicans hate government. It’s “always the problem”. Therefore whatever they implement vis a vis government programs is designed to grab a few votes/support their corporate interests – not to actually help people. Because that would be impossible (a government program that works and helps people).
One of the best examples of this is the right-wing’s vehement opposition to government-run healthcare. Even when they do implement a piece of healthcare within the government (Medicare Part D) it’s a crony-filled giveaway to big Pharma.
They know, that any properly funded and run (not stuffed with hacks at the top) government program (of which there have been many in the past) destroys their fundamental “selling point” to Americans. As a Republican strategist argued during the 1993/4 healthcare debates, Republicans must “kill” government run healthcare as an idea, because if the Democrats pass it, they will be seen as the defender of the middle class.
In other words, Republicans know that there are times when a government run program will be better for most people than what the private sector can provide. But their rigid philosophy can’t abide by that.
To me this spells the eventual death of the Republican party as we know it. Any political party whose main goal is the destruction of the system it’s in will fracture under the weight of its own idiocy eventually.
Billy K
There are plenty of Dems who do as well – just very few in office (God Bless Jim Webb). For example – most of Daily Kos.
I think you’re a Kos Kid now.