Intellect vs gut

[nadinbrzezinski]

at an intellectual level I get it. The US is getting closed down and for reasons I can theorize. But this is exactly what is going on. Fear, plus all the reactions and we are getting closed down... no, I don't have to imagine how living in a closed society feels like, as we are getting there.

But there are no jackboots! True, this is inverted totalitarism... but it is a closed society nonetheless.

Now at a gut level, I am having a visceral reaction. At a gut level I don't understand how people can agree to take every crazy step in that direction. How can fear be so powerful that you are willing to do that?

Perhaps since I did some crazy shit in my youth, where being borderline "insane" I don't get this. I mean most people run OUT of a fire, not into a fire... and most folks run AWAY from the bullets, not crawl into a fire fight... but I just don't get it. What can make somebody so afraid? Regardless now I know HOW formerly open societies are closed down... and it is with the full cooperation of the inmates.

That is not a lesson I wanted to learn... and soon it will be time to decide, shut up or face the music. Yes, we are moving there

[applegrove]

1. Peoples guts rule them. And the GOP boxes in their followers what with

anti-abortion this and tax cut(racism) that. There is nowhere else for them to go but to love deregulation or all their fears will seemingly come true. It has nothing to do with intellect.

[H2O Man]

2. Recommended.

It is a voluntary submission to totalitarian authority. However, the face of that authority is what Erich Fromm spoke of as "anonymous," rather than "overt."

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. Remember Hannah Arendt

I figure those two will become subversive soon.

[AdHocSolver]

4. U.S. culture is designed to teach subservience to authority, and to eschew independent thought.

Education in the U.S. is designed to promote the authoritarian personality, and has been for years. Whether public school or private school, most educational institutions are set up like factories, in which students are marched lockstep through assembly lines, and in which discipline is prized over knowledge or expertise.

The job environment is the same. Workers are drudges because most work is designed to be mindless, and the least capable are routinely picked for management positions where they make the decisions as to how the organization will screw up.

People see the failure, stupidity, and corruption everyday. However, they are trained from pre-kindergarten onward to not acknowledge it and not discuss it with others.

People anesthetize themselves to their reality in many ways. Booze, drugs, neuroses, television watching for hours, nonstop cell phone talking are ways of escaping reality which prevents thinking about and solving problems.

People escape reality in ways that essentially promote passivity and isolation and serve to distract the individual. The culture discourages empathy and understanding, and above all discourages people from identifying with "others".

The concept is promoted that those who are down on their luck "deserve" it because they were somehow "bad" or "failures" so none of them will admit that they are being exploited and that they should ally themselves with other exploited people to fight their situation.

The Powers That Be allow the "tea party" advocates to work together because it allows the tea party types to identify with others like themselves in a way that furthers the right wing agenda, while at the same time provides an outlet for the tea partiers to vent their anger and frustration in "approved" ways.

In other words, the Powers That Be effectively use divide-and-conquer techniques to maintain the status quo.

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. Anomie

Yep, we've even talked about that here.

[AdHocSolver]

6. Alienation and distrust are promoted in an atmosphere of condescension and hypercriticism.

Politics should NOT be merely a marketplace of ideas. Politics operates in a marketplace when the people lack understanding of how different policies affect society. Such people are easily swayed by sound bites and slogans, as they lack understanding of the economic and legal issues by which to judge different policies and their effects. Government policies are "sold" just like laundry detergent and margarine, and Wall Street, with the help of Madison Avenue, runs our society.

Those people who lack the intellectual tools to question their social environment without feeling intimidated will merely accept at face value what authority figures tell them. They will accept the rantings of right wing pundits because it sounds reasonable to them, and the right wing pundits are careful to all be on the same page. If they agree, it must be true. This partially explains the phenomenon of the tea baggers.

Another part of the tea bagger phenomenon is that it gives people who inhabit a culture of disconnection an opportunity to connect to others who share their opinions and feelings, those opinions having been planted and approved of by the Powers That Be.

School and work environments are extremely judgmental. Many bosses constantly critice and micromanage those under them which is galling in that those selected for management positions typically know less about the jobs that they supervise than the person doing the job. The educational model that is geared to "teaching to the test" implicitly forces teachers into a role that is controlling and condescending. Few people have the expertise or the fortitude to question bosses and teachers. The power that they have over you makes it not worth the effort. (Of course, NCLB and RTTT are designed to remove what little influence teachers had in the classroom.)

My teaching experienced brought to the fore how little actual learning takes place in schools. (I blame the system, not the teachers.) Little knowledge of the subject matter is retained once the student gets past the test. Often the subject matter is watered down, or at least fragmented, so that remembering anything useful is difficult anyways.

The bottom line is that Americans are engaged in a psychosocial war that is well-planned and well-financed by right wing demogogues, and most of the people are unaware of it.

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. I know and you know

Why I said at intellectual level I get it...

[opihimoimoi]

8. 5 Star Post...thank you...well said