On Turning "Conservatives" Into "Liberals"

 
Montreal Simon recently posted about some study that claims there are physical differences between the brains of "conservatives" and "progressives":

Peering inside the brain with MRI scans, researchers at University College London found that self-described conservative students had a larger amygdala than liberals. The amygdala is an almond-shaped structure deep in the brain that is active during states of fear and anxiety.

It also claims that the way to tone down those "conservative" political instincts (defensively shutting themselves inside echo-chambers of ethnic nationalism/xenophobia/homophobia/religious fundamentalism) is to make their environments less stressful and fear-inducing:

Conservatives, it turns out, react more strongly to physical threat than liberals do. In fact, their greater concern with physical safety seems to be determined early in life: In one University of California study, the more fear a 4-year-old showed in a laboratory situation, the more conservative his or her political attitudes were found to be 20 years later.

And many other laboratory studies have found that when adult liberals experienced physical threat, their political and social attitudes became more conservative (temporarily, of course). But no one had ever turned conservatives into liberals.

Which is sort of what I've been trying to say for a long time to liberals who think that all you have to do is vote for a Liberal or a Democrat to be on the side of the angels. The neo-liberal austerity politics practised by the Liberal Party of Canada and the Democratic Party USA have hurt the majority of the population. So do the policies of the Conservative Party of Canada and the Republican Party USA. Both of these right-wing parties have the advantages of 1.) Having a grassroots political base that is more easily manipulated than do liberal parties, 2.) Having access to dog-whistle arguments as to the actual causes of white, working-class woes [ethnic minorities/immigrants/refugees/GLBT people/unions/socialists] that allow them to manipulate their easily-manipulated membership away from elites and towards these convenient scapegoats.

Liberals and Democrats do not have a similar narrative. They can't convincingly rail about lazy Blacks, Musloid rape-fugees, Hollywood degenerates, and etc., because they claim to embrace and support the aspirations of Blacks, immigrants, Muslims, refugees, Hollywood liberals and etc. And they can't rail against the white working class either. And they can't betray their financiers on Wall Street or across corporate America obviously. So what they have to do is lie about caring about ordinary people while enacting policies that hurt them. One of their only "outs" to avoid wholesale condemnation for their fakery and betrayal is that the Republicans/Conservatives are worse.

It remains the case however, that more and more people are turning against mainstream politics. Even the Republicans have been discomfited by Tea-Bagger revolts against their insiders. Eric Cantor's loss to a Tea-Party nominee, and the whole line-up of 2016 leadership hopefuls being destroyed by the buffoonish Donald Trump who spoke out loud and proud [and ultimately falsely] about his opposition to free trade deals; pharmaceutical and health insurance industry gouging; imperialist war; and Wall Street domination of Washington. Trump's rivals couldn't say such things because (strangely) they're not as shameless when it comes to lying as Trump is; they were terrified of alienating their sugar-daddies, and, they're simply cognitively incapable of acting independently.

In 2016, after 8 years of Barack Obama continuing with the imperialist wars in the Middle East, shoveling 90% of the wealth created during his presidency to the wealthiest 1%; arrogating to his office the power to assassinate US citizens without due process of law; bailing-out Wall Street, protecting them from prosecution and using them to staff his cabinet; attacking social security; abandoning single-payer health insurance; pursuing corporate free trade deals; ... well, after all that, many traditional Democrat voters stayed home rather than vote for a candidate who promised more of the same. Helping the nauseating embarrassment Trump to squeeze out an Electoral College victory.

But my main point is that embracing policies that hurt ordinary people (even if they are "less bad" or "lesser evil" than what another party is advocating) is going to make most people angry. Among those who are made angry are the fearful, big amygdala -having "conservatives." And they will NOT welcome refugees, they will protest against them and hate them. They will NOT accept immigrants, they will accuse them of stealing their jobs (while simultaneously blaming them for enlarging the welfare rolls). They will NOT support employment equity or affirmative action. They will instead lash-out on favouritism for minorities and feminists and scream about discrimination against white males. In short: Neo-liberal policies will make the deplorables angry.

Another commentor in another Montreal Simon post made reference to a recent New York Times profile of a Nazi couple. There's a brouhahaha about how the newspaper "normalized" fascism. I think we have to accept that fascists are "normal." If you look at the opinions of Adolph Hitler you will find that for the most part they are just a more built-up sampler of the toxic slurry of idiotic prejudices and delusions (racism, homophobia, "tough on crime", anti-welfare state, anti-unions, militarism, confused morals) of your average Toronto Sun reader. The danger was never to "humanize" Hitler. The danger was to pretend that he wasn't human and so convince ourselves that the distance between ourselves and abominations such as The Holocaust is bigger than it is.

If we want to neutralize fascism we must first reject neo-liberal, imperialist scum-bags like Hillary Clinton and Justin Trudeau. To do otherwise is to subject ourselves to greater horrors in the future.