...can only be used by family and/or friends who are able to do an intervention, and who's going to be able to do that when they're all into it? :shrug:
I was predicting during the 2008 election that when it was over there was going to be a great need for a lot of interventions & deprogramming because these nutjobs have been brainwashed in exact the same way cult members have. Facts do not come into their thought processes at all, they
believe what they WANT, and have been programmed, to
believe.
It gets worse, there was a fascinating paper that came out in 2008 which goes into detail about how this mental illness isn't just psychological, it's also physiological.
The abstract alone gives a good explanation why Faux news' viewers could actually be described as victims...
Political Attitudes Vary with Physiological TraitsAlthough political views have been thought to arise largely from individuals' experiences, recent research suggests that they may have a biological basis. We present evidence that variations in political attitudes correlate with physiological traits. In a group of 46 adult participants with strong political beliefs, individuals with measurably lower physical sensitivities to sudden noises and threatening visual images were more likely to support foreign aid, liberal immigration policies, pacifism, and gun control, whereas individuals displaying measurably higher physiological reactions to those same stimuli were more likely to favor defense spending, capital punishment, patriotism, and the Iraq War. Thus, the degree to which individuals are physiologically responsive to threat appears to indicate the degree to which they advocate policies that protect the existing social structure from both external (outgroup) and internal (norm-violator) threats.
Full paper:
http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1026&context=poliscifacpub There was another paper that came out that year about cognitive dissonance and Republicans but I can't remember the title of it.
BTW I've found the transcript for Rachel's show which is linked to in the OP, if you think it could be of use:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40027383/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show/Also, I've recently posted a clip of Bill Maher saying the same sort of thing you did about Stewart but, unlike Rachel, he didn't mince his words:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9497478 I like both Maher and Stewart a great deal and have a lot of admiration for the work they do but I don't uncritically agree with everything either of them say.