Conservatives and Viral E-Fables
As many have noted, lunatic right-wing viral e-mails are like an internet plague. Farhi is pretty up-front about saying that this particular brand of lunacy is characteristic of the right, to his credit. Hell, I get crazy e-mails from a friends octogenarian father every now and again...invariably anti-Obama, always transparently dopey. Apparently there is even a wingnut e-mail asserting that Snopes.com is a liberal plot...
Farhi briefly considers the claim that this afflicts the right rather than the left because the right is faster to adapt new technology to disseminating information, and rightly rejects the hypothesis on solid grounds.
Look: the American right has largely gone batty. There is simply no doubt that the collective right-wing mind in America is deranged. The reason that they take to such e-mails is not because of any generic, sanity-neutral fact about technology. It's not clear what the reason is, but it's not that.
My guess? It's more along these lines: the derangement of the right-wing mind has two facets. First, it's become less intelligent. Second, it's become less honest. These things can feed on each other. They've become more willing to accept claims that anyone can see are likely to be false out of a kind of cognitive incontinence--they've let their hatred get out of control, and it leads them to accept things they could, with even minimal self-control, see to be bullshit. Such cognitive incontinence is almost indistinguishable from stupidity, and, in fact, it leads to a kind of cognitive flaccidity and genuine inability to think. What begins as unwillingness to engage in self-criticism ends in an inability to do so. They feed themselves on a steady diet of hatred, eventually losing the ability to be objective, and eventually losing much of their ability to reason.
The e-mail business is of a piece with their love of Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and Rick Perry. It should not come as a surprise to anyone.
[h/t Statisticasaurus rex]
As many have noted, lunatic right-wing viral e-mails are like an internet plague. Farhi is pretty up-front about saying that this particular brand of lunacy is characteristic of the right, to his credit. Hell, I get crazy e-mails from a friends octogenarian father every now and again...invariably anti-Obama, always transparently dopey. Apparently there is even a wingnut e-mail asserting that Snopes.com is a liberal plot...
Farhi briefly considers the claim that this afflicts the right rather than the left because the right is faster to adapt new technology to disseminating information, and rightly rejects the hypothesis on solid grounds.
Look: the American right has largely gone batty. There is simply no doubt that the collective right-wing mind in America is deranged. The reason that they take to such e-mails is not because of any generic, sanity-neutral fact about technology. It's not clear what the reason is, but it's not that.
My guess? It's more along these lines: the derangement of the right-wing mind has two facets. First, it's become less intelligent. Second, it's become less honest. These things can feed on each other. They've become more willing to accept claims that anyone can see are likely to be false out of a kind of cognitive incontinence--they've let their hatred get out of control, and it leads them to accept things they could, with even minimal self-control, see to be bullshit. Such cognitive incontinence is almost indistinguishable from stupidity, and, in fact, it leads to a kind of cognitive flaccidity and genuine inability to think. What begins as unwillingness to engage in self-criticism ends in an inability to do so. They feed themselves on a steady diet of hatred, eventually losing the ability to be objective, and eventually losing much of their ability to reason.
The e-mail business is of a piece with their love of Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and Rick Perry. It should not come as a surprise to anyone.
[h/t Statisticasaurus rex]
posted by Winston Smith at
6:59 PM
6 Comments:
The answer is conservatives need constant reinforcing of their beliefs, otherwise some of the actual evidence of outright blatant dangerous racism, kowtowing to the 1%, and desire to drive the American people into penury and wage slavery would seep in from the numerous examples present each and every day.
Yeah, but why do they seem to so *enjoy* / *seek out* this reinforcement? We all do it to some extent...but it seems pathological with a large chunk of the right...
Thanks for the pointer. The story about Snopes.com sounds like something out of the Onion.Yet again, truthiness is stranger than fiction.
As for why this might be: the Culture War' has largely been an attack on Enlightenment values. Enough attacks on reason, and people start valuing belief over reason.
While I do think reason is overrated in politics--passion informed by reason is the most important driver of justice and good government--allowing belief to trump reason is a cardinal sin.
--mac
Thanks for the pointer. The story about Snopes.com sounds like something out of the Onion.Yet again, truthiness is stranger than fiction.
As for why this might be: the Culture War' has largely been an attack on Enlightenment values. Enough attacks on reason, and people start valuing belief over reason.
While I do think reason is overrated in politics--passion informed by reason is the most important driver of justice and good government--allowing belief to trump reason is a cardinal sin.
--mac
Those of us who live in consensus reality don't feel the need to continually assert it. We who remember psychedelic realities may recall how opposed it was to the consensus.
Conservatism has become nothing more than a tribe - race, religion, obedience to the divine right of wealth. Loyalty trumps reality.
Liberalism is a way of thinking about the world. Reality and diversity of opinion are values.
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