You’re only occasionally “dismissive”, personally; but the Generic Conservative seems to drip with contempt and hatred (kind of a vitriolic superset of dismissive). Ever watch Fox “News” or sample a few of the rightwing blogs? Also, it’s pretty clear from the outside that The Conservative Movement has a rigid set of minimum standards for showing contempt for and dismissing liberals, and sometimes it seems like otherwise decent conservative people feel obligated to conform to the group’s beliefs rather than their own. I understand that conservatives are obligated to be nasty shits sometimes, just for the street cred. Much of the violent ideation is just for show, a very basic primate display of fear and aggression that strengthens bonds with other members of the tribe.

You’re mischaracterizing what I’ve reported about the findings of research into the relationship between mental architecture and political viewpoint. I have never once claimed that conservatism is a “mental deficiency”. What the research shows is simply that conservatism is really a personality type more than a political philosophy. Imagine my chagrin to realize that for all these decades I’ve been arguing with a personality type. What a waste. No wonder I never once made the slightest dent in any conservative skull. You’re born that way.

As a general personality type (one too widespread to call a “disorder”, though perhaps “syndrome” would be appropriate), conservatives consistently test high for sensitivity to threats, and to have a related strong aversion to perceptions of “impurity” or “uncleanliness”. Notice your visceral reaction to a the perception that I’m saying you have a “mental deficiency”, that is, a disease. Ewwwwww!

We can all think of lots of things that make conservatives squirm and go “ewwwww”. Like what gay people do in their bedrooms. Conservatives are very consistent.

I’d say you have a ways to go if you feel you have to put quotes around ‘the [Liberal] “philosophy”‘. Now that, actually, is dismissive. I stand corrected by me. See how naturally you slip into that conservative contempt?

Sure, I put quotes in ‘Fox “News”‘. But then credible academic analyses of its reporting shows it’s flat-out factually wrong more than half the time; and that Fox “News” viewers would be better-informed if the turned off the TV and ignored the news entirely. So I stand by my quotes. I dismiss Fox “News” with good reason.

I listen to NPR more than I watch Fox “News”, but not very much in real terms. I recommend a news aggregator like Google News or News Republic, to get a genuinely balanced view of the entire spectrum of reporting. My morning routine starts with tapping the News Republic app in my tablet. I’d say that my style of grazing for information is generally true of liberals, while settling on one trusted Authority like Fox “News” is more the conservative (personality) style. In other words, you’re projecting when you assume Liberals have any one such Authority for their news and information.

Where did the conservative personality come from? It’s been speculated that things like the threat sensitivity are avatars of behaviors that had considerable survival value early in our species’ history. Once upon a time, it was smart to imagine a terroristtiger behind every bush.

That would mean that conservatism is not an aberration or a “mental deficiency”, but something perfectly normal.

Like an appendix.

My money’s on old Neanderthal genes.

(Sorry, I just had to. I crack me up sometimes.)

And I’m not including the RobVG brand of conservative. I know if we sat down and discussed matters we would wind up finding common ground. I believe we say the same thing from different perspectives. I know him to be a reasonable, very interesting guy.

And keep running into “He made me do it” excuse.

(I wonder if Conservative’s kids get away with that.)

There were people who leaned either left or right on some issues, some of the time. But it was rarely all the way all the time, and there was always some overlap, some shades of gray.

But somewhere between Goldwater and Reagan things changed. It became ugly and doctrinaire, ideological, and once you picked a position on one issue, you were expected to fall into line on every other. It became Us vs Them, my way or the highway, if you’re not with me you’re agin me. There were only two choices, patriot vs traitor, freedom vs slavery, good vs evil. Nazi vs Communist. And I don’t have to tell you who always claimed to be on the right side and their opponents were always, always, in the wrong. There was no middle ground. “Maybe” became a dirty word, “moderate” became an insult, “compromise” came to mean cowardice, and thoughtfulness and reason became weakness and indecision.

I’m old enough to have seen it happen, all in my lifetime. Maybe there’s no way I can convince anyone else, but I don’t doubt it for a moment. I saw it happen right before my eyes and it is all very real and painful to me. America is afraid, and where there’s fear, there’s ignorance, then anger, and hatred soon follows. And evil men move in to exploit that hatred for their own profit and power–and they always seemed to carry a flag, a Bible, and a gun.

Sooner or later, no matter how well you understand, or how well you can see both sides of an argument; as much as you may hate to do it, whether you like it or not, you have to pick sides. I picked sides in 1969, right after I got back from the service. And it wasn’t because I was against the Vietnam war, it was because I could see clearly into the hearts of those who weren’t.

I’ve read a little about “The Venus Project” with great interest. They are planning a “resource economy” where natural resources and the means of production are “allocated” equitably and efficiently with the emphasis on conservation. I’ll reserve my main criticisms possibly for another time but I think their vision requires a fundamental change in human nature, mainly overcoming greed and the lust for power. They claim that our system fosters these negative traits but I’m not quite buying that.

I even listened to NPR for about nine months but I got to a point where I couldn’t stomach it anymore. NPR is to liberals as FOXNEWS is to wingers.

Our differences very well may go beyond upbringing or indoctrination, and you have brought up more than once that we are wired differently. You’ve also shared the “research” that portrays conservatism as a mental deficiency. I‘d say you consider conservative/capitalist ideology as “an illegitimate position”.

I think it boils down to our gut reactions to social, economic and political events. If we can replace the reaction with consideration and patience there might be more to discuss.

It never did. It was never planned that way or conceived that way. The conscious and deliberate model for American government has always been the Roman Republic’s Senate–a collegium of rich, slave-owning landholders only united in a desire to prevent any one of their own from becoming King, presiding over a large and troublesome population of plebes. By 18th century standards, this arrangement was certainly the progressive alternative to Divine Right of Kings and a hereditary aristocracy, but it had nothing to do with Athenian Democracy. These men could read Ancient Greek, and they wanted no part of that.

As for your interpretation of the two-party State, that also can be traced back to colonial times. The urbanized, commercial North, and the feudal, rural South. The issues may have changed, but their geographical and demographic divisions still echo the 18th century. Nixon’s Southern Strategy merely restored the balance, it did not upset it.

Our founders may have been commoners, members of the new aristocracy of Property, but they were intelligent and capable men, highly educated intellectuals, but also men of action–business, politics, war. They were resigned to sharing power, but only with their peers. They feared the rabble even more than they feared the nobility–or their slaves.

Everywhere in the original Constitution we see the scaffolding that ensures popular elections do not elect our leaders-what we call today “checks and balances”. Only the House is elected by popular vote, and then only from a limited franchise, white Gentlemen of Property.

Over the centuries, this skeleton has been slowly and gradually democratized, but to this day it still survives in the Electoral College and bicameral legislature. The founders feared the tyranny of the majority because they were most decidedly a tiny minority. It is why they have always conceived of freedom as an individual achievement of the exceptional, not the inherent right of all in the community.

This isn’t actually a digression from bowser’s root topic. In the gap was some thinking about how America’s always been to some degree an oligarchy, and it’s not really the case that a particular war made our character, but rather that the interests of oligarchs have given us a militant national character. Someday when I have the time, I want to research my hunch that no country has been involved in as many wars as America. The interests of our oligarchs require constant vigilance.

America hasn’t had a functional democracy for quite some time, and it sure seems to me like the two “parties” represent two factions of Corporation World to implement an oligarchy-in-fact under cover of raucous democratic politics. Republicans represent the old-school faction, Koch and other energy interests, mining and other resource extraction, and heavy manufacturing. Democrats represent finance and technology, and I really think American politics can usefully be understood as the two factions jockeying for advantage.

And I have to be honest, as a grizzled old techie: High tech has contributed mightily to inequality as well. It’s not that tech is inherently evil, but that in our system, capitalists control it and use it to build and consolidate their fortunes. The way we do the business of technology is one of the things killing the middle class. C.f. Uber and the whole evil “sharing economy”.

Words fail me to describe my lack of excitement at the news that Hillary will run for President to cure inequality and save the middle class. Really? There she is, at the intersection of Wall Street and Tech Way…whose interests will Hillary really guard?

I’m not optimistic. I think we remain on track to live out Elysium some day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outland_%28film%29

Political economics is only coming more to the forefront as time goes on. Just today, Hillary announced she’s going to run for President as some sort of champion of the people, focusing on the hot issue of financial inequality. Great, the She-Wolf of Wall Street will save us from capitalism…

Remember that week in January when Mitt was toying with running again, and Mitt 3.0 was also going to solve the problem of inequality? A lot of other Republicans initially jumped on that bandwagon, but everybody dropped it within a week, and nothing’s been heard from Republicans about it until recently. The latest Republican “thinking” on the issue is, of course, to double down on the very policies that created the problem in the first place, by again reducing taxes on the “job creators” and “reducing burdensome regulation” of course and ad nauseum.

This is what I mean by “anti-conservative/anti-capitalist” being a legitimate point of view: There’s now scientific evidence that conservative economic policies enrich the already rich, destroy the middle class, and vindictively torment the poor. Republicans ran from the issue because they realize how bad they’re going to look when people dig into the problem.

Talk to me after you’ve read Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the 21st Century”. Then we can discuss the U-shaped graph of inequality over time, and how its major inflection points exactly track changes in government economic policy. We can discuss how the graph of inequality is also a graph of the influence of conservative economic policies.

Key takeaway: It all started going bad for the middle class around 1980. Remember what happened in 1980?

So sure, let’s discuss. But let’s discuss it for real. Is the truth that a rising tide lifts all boats? Or has the old folk saying that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer been the real wisdom all along? Is capitalism a panacea, or the problem?

We don’t need to resort to faith, we have hard facts. If you won’t run from them, I’ll talk about them.

One other thing: I’d love to pick up the discuss about the move “Elysium”. I finally watched it, coincidentally while reading “Capital in the 21st Century”, and the movie struck me almost like a sober documentary about where we’re headed. Since when have the rich not isolated themselves as far from the rabble–from us–as possible? If the new aristocrats can build themselves castles in space, they damn well will. (“Astrocrats”?) Just ask Richard Branson. Or Elon Musk.