Wednesday, February 3, 2010

TROUBLE: STUPID CAN'T BE CURED

Joshua Holland wrote another provocative article. This time he writes:
You Can’t Have Bipartisanship if the GOP Base is Psychotic After defining psychosis, he justifies his diagnosis by the following statistics:

• “Do you believe Barack Obama was born in the United States, or not?” Yes 42%, No 36%, Not Sure 22%.

• “Do you believe Barack Obama wants the terrorists to win?” Yes 24%, No 43%, Not Sure 33%.

• “Do you believe ACORN stole the 2008 election?” Yes 21%, No 24%, Not Sure 55%.

• “Do you believe Barack Obama is a racist who hates White people?” Yes 31%, No 36%, Not Sure 33%.

• “Do you believe your state should secede from the United States?” The answer here is Yes 23%, No 58%, Not Sure 19%. On this basis, Kos declares: “42 percent of Republicans aren’t really patriotic.” Among Republicans in the South, secessionism is stronger at Yes 33%, No 52% Not Sure 15%.

He qualifies his observations by saying, "But only on its face. They’re not actually psychotic, because the reality they hold was carefully crafted for them not only by extremists on the wingnut blogs, but by the mainstream leaders of their party and by Fox News, a major cable outlet." For the entire article, click here. If only the Republicans could have a magic mirror that shows them things as they really are!
Rather than assuming these people are psychotic, they seem to resemble sheep who will follow a wolf in sheep's clothing, misleading them all the way to their own losses for which they take no self-responsibility.

1 comment:

Frank J. Lhota said...

Joshua Holland is right that far too many republicans take wild conspiracy theories seriously, but unfortunately the problem is not limited to the republican base. Polls taken of the American public, including both republicans and democrats, have shown that between 40 and 50% believe that our government knew about the World Trade Center attack in advance and did nothing to prevent it. Only slightly less popular is the belief that the Moon landings were faked. And what about the belief once popular among democrats that in 1980, Ronald Reagan negotiated with Iranian radicals to keep the American hostages captive until after the election?

Applying Holland's standards to the general public leads us to the unfortunate conclusion that we live in a Psychotic society.