BBC: Why do people often vote against their own interests?

[depakid]

Americans voicing their anger at the healthcare proposals at a "town hall meeting"
------------

...Last year, in a series of "town-hall meetings" across the country, Americans got the chance to debate President Obama's proposed healthcare reforms.What happened was an explosion of rage and barely suppressed violence.

...it is striking that the people who most dislike the whole idea of healthcare reform - the ones who think it is socialist, godless, a step on the road to a police state - are often the ones it seems designed to help. In Texas, where barely two-thirds of the population have full health insurance and over a fifth of all children have no cover at all, opposition to the legislation is currently running at 87%.

Anger

Instead, to many of those who lose out under the existing system, reform still seems like the ultimate betrayal. Why are so many American voters enraged by attempts to change a horribly inefficient system that leaves them with premiums they often cannot afford?

Why are they manning the barricades to defend insurance companies that routinely deny claims and cancel policies?

It might be tempting to put the whole thing down to what the historian Richard Hofstadter back in the 1960s called "the paranoid style" of American politics, in which God, guns and race get mixed into a toxic stew of resentment at anything coming out of Washington. But that would be a mistake.

If people vote against their own interests, it is not because they do not understand what is in their interest or have not yet had it properly explained to them.

They do it because they resent having their interests decided for them by politicians who think they know best. There is nothing voters hate more than having things explained to them as though they were idiots. As the saying goes, in politics, when you are explaining, you are losing. And that makes anything as complex or as messy as healthcare reform a very hard sell.

Stories not facts

In his book The Political Brain, psychologist Drew Westen, an exasperated Democrat, tried to show why the Right often wins the argument even when the Left is confident that it has the facts on its side. For Mr Westen, stories always trump statistics, which means the politician with the best stories is going to win: "One of the fallacies that politicians often have on the Left is that things are obvious, when they are not obvious.

Reverse revolution

Thomas Frank, the author of the best-selling book What's The Matter with Kansas, is an even more exasperated Democrat and he goes further than Mr Westen. He believes that the voters' preference for emotional engagement over reasonable argument has allowed the Republican Party to blind them to their own real interests.

The Republicans have learnt how to stoke up resentment against the patronising liberal elite, all those do-gooders who assume they know what poor people ought to be thinking. Right-wing politics has become a vehicle for channelling this popular anger against intellectual snobs. The result is that many of America's poorest citizens have a deep emotional attachment to a party that serves the interests of its richest.

Thomas Frank says that whatever disadvantaged Americans think they are voting for, they get something quite different:

"You vote to strike a blow against elitism and you receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated than ever before in our life times, workers have been stripped of power, and CEOs are rewarded in a manner that is beyond imagining.

"It's like a French Revolution in reverse in which the workers come pouring down the street screaming more power to the aristocracy."

More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8474611.stm

[TeeYiYi]

1. Just to argue. ...nt

TYY

[KT2000]

2. "More power to the aristocracy!

if that doesn't say it all
:rofl:

[hay rick]

4. Exactly. nt

[Go2Peace]

18. We are in a new age of very powerful influence science (Propaganda). This period is very different

and serious.

The Republican party is VERY aware of the science of what triggers the mind and what creates our perceptions. They are great at this because they are the corporate class, which has used these mind altering techniques for many years, they call it "Marketing".

"Marketing", is no longer just about making a nice advertisement. It is about manipulating people's perceptions. It is a science that is becoming truly mind altering, and Republicans practice this with a vengence.

This current experiment is much more serious than just "the way we are", this is indeed like "1984", they have been purposely messing with people's minds, over a period of many years, and they have achieved truly remarkable mind control.

The Democrats have to "discover" this. In some ways they have been altered by it as well and are not questioning it effectively. They are behind in linguistic and subconcious science by 50 years. They still think that a logical argument will change people's minds... well it will for some, but many minds are full of stories that it will take serious work to get through.

That is why it is so important not to appear "bi-partisan". We have to contrast so seriously that it breaks through a form of mind control.

[pansypoo53219]

3. stupid stupid stupid

principle.

[Meldread]

5. There is a perfect line in there, that illustrates it perfectly.

"They do it because they resent having their interests decided for them by politicians who think they know best."

It is bred into the very bones of American's to resent power and the establishment. Unlike many, I believe this is a wonderful thing. A world full of skeptics is always more preferable than a world where everyone is looking to become true believers.

The key to bringing them over to our side is to create in them an eager want for whatever we're proposing. You begin by establishing a dialog that eventually leads them to the conclusion you've already arrived at; effectively allowing them to believe that they were the ones who came up with the idea, which in turn makes you the individual who has the power to implement it for them.

The Republican's do something similar, but it is much more crude - but also easily effective. They play off base emotions, mainly fear, to arise in the populous an eager want... an eager want to stop whatever the Democrat / Liberal happens to be proposing.

[rpannier]

8. I've said to people that the person most responsible for the success of the republikkans is

Capt Oxycotin, Rush Limbaugh.

When Al Franken used to play that little blurb from his show I used to think how well he framed an issue for the 'Water Cooler.' When you got three minutes to talk about something before heading back for work.

Statistics and all take a long time to explain and they are dry.
Rush's stories are short, simple, direct and stay with you longer - It's irrelevant that the analysis is totally incorrect

[ashling]

6. This question is sort of arrogant

OK, I read What's the matter with Kansas too - a great book with a prescient thesis - but you have to admit that there is a certain arrogance to the question - at least in the way it is used as a rhetorical question in exasperation to color the other side as stupid, ignorant, moronic, whatever.

It assumes that the questioner is the arbiter of what the other guy's interest is. That borders on meddling in other people's business.

Why do first responders run into burning buildings?

:shrug:

[jgraz]

7. It's not arrogance when the other side actually *is* stupid, ignorant and moronic

This was an explicit strategy of the Repukes: to cultivate an electorate that is too stupid to notice they're being fleeced. After four decades, they've succeeded.

These people are not the equivalent of first responders running into burning buildings. They're the equivalent of children playing with matches.

[hay rick]

11. Children playing with matches.

Doubling up on the arrogance here. But- and I quote Homer Simpson here- "it's funny because it's true."

My take on the Republican party: a party which benefits a handful of wealthy and powerful people by shamelessly appealing to the ignorance, fears, and prejudices of tens of millions of self-styled "conservatives." The mainstream media is totally complicit.

These people are in touch with their nightmares, not with reality.

Oops. Tripled up!

[ashling]

19. All I'm saying is that the question on the face of it

this question assumes that the questioner has the ability/authority/omniscience to proscribe the interests for another individual.

I realize that this thread may not have been the best place to pose that rhetorical conundrum.

I started my post by admitting that Frank has a prescient thesis and makes a good point. I don't necessarily disagree with him.

People have a lot of different interests. Why do we vote for taxes that help they other guy but not us. I'm not ascribing any of these altruistic tendencies to these people, I was just ruminating on the question per se.

[ShamelessHussy]

10. that is only true if you couldn't identify what is in corporations interest vs the people

but that is how the reTHUGs spin it, an it will resonate with the ignorant, as does the corporations.

and so it goes...

[WCGreen]

9. I think it is very simple... they fear the unknown and that any change, even

change that logically will improve their lives, is view with, at best, skepticism and at worst, out right fear of the unknown.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

13. Exactly.

Conservatives tend to be afraid, and so they want to hold onto what they know. Even when that hurts them.

[Faygo Kid]

12. They very often ARE idiots.

They do what a radio commentator who is a walking insane asylum but worth half a billion dollars tells them to do. Crazed.

[Igel]

14. Eh. People.

Yesterday I could read threads that said, essentially, "why don't people just get out of the way and let Obama and a few others do what's good for them?" At the same time, I read threads saying how wonderful democracy is. Some of them could even muster a bit of respect for the principle.

On the one hand, there's an impulse to say, "I know what's best. What's best should be imposed on people, even if the vast majority are too stupid to understand what I know is best for them. They can't be trusted to understand their own needs--just trust me. The essence of true democracy is to define 'people' to be 'those like me' and to force the others to do as we want. That's real freedom."

On the other hand, there's also a desire to be able to say, "Democracy is good because it empowers people to take control of their own future, so that even if they make mistakes at least they're their *own* mistakes. And even if that makes for a system that I find repulsive, so be it--I respect the idea of democracy so much that I allow for errors and just try to make the best of a situation that could still be far, far worse."

The two impulses can't be reconciled--one is utterly totalitarian in spirit, even if the goals are good; the other is utterly democratic in spirit, even if the outcome is brutish. The best that you can get is a kind of compromise, a mish-mash of places where government intrudes on freedom and where personal rights and democracy make for what some would judge to be imperfect.

No party is immune from the need to find a compromise. No party lacks those who can't get over their own importance and totalitarian impulses.

[Meldread]

16. Absolutely. +100

I find it odd that a lot of people do not see the hypocrisy in their own beliefs. Here on these forums, we'd be united against any right wing totalitarian who attempted to roll back our freedoms and impose their world view upon us. Yet, at the same time, so many people here would turn to embrace a left wing totalitarian who attempted to impose their will upon us. They do not see the hypocrisy in that view, nor do they see why people would oppose them. They seem to lack the ability to understand the thinking of the other side; for just as they believe THEY know what is best for everyone (and therefore imposing that world view upon everyone is a good thing), at the same time the right wing totalitarians believe exactly the same thing.

In a democratic system, both sides have to make their arguments before the people, and convince the people whether or not they're good ideas. In a totalitarian system, one side wins, and the other side is oppressed - often violently.

I believe that overtime the best ideas will emerge and be accepted, even if the system is imperfect and there are a few false starts along the way.

[libodem]

15. Don't know why

But I have a small anecdote regarding my LDS, Republican ex-mother-inlaw. My granddaughter, and her great granddaughter, was born on Jan 25th last year. When I called to let her know of the birth we talked generally about 'stuff'. She was already bitter and disgusted and feeling threatened by a liberal agenda she imagined was going to destroy the country. These people are a 'brand' oriented and 'other' phobic.
They seem to be blind to the hypocrisy of excusing with impunity anything their 'brand' does as necessary but the other side doing the exact same thing is horrifying. I seriously see conservative religious organizations as brainwashing a lot of their members into a group think.
I almost believe that the blind obedience that holds them to their faith makes them vulnerable to anyone with authority in a 3 piece suit and a smooth talk with god and country as the theme to get all riled up with fury at any threat to their values and beliefs.
In other words they don't or can't think for themselves. They are literalistic, traditionalist, reactionary, concrete thinkers.

[classysassy]

17. I would say brainwashed

if they had a brain.(Pavlovian reflect).