Leftists such as William T. Quick really do view Iraqis as less than human!
http://dailypundit.com/?p=25101

“What can you expect of Islamist barbarian savages?” They are scorpions. Don’t be surprised when they act like it. And when they do, kill them, and burn out the nests that spawn and support them.
- - Bill Quick, today, in response to Ledeen

The right wing brain is demented to such a degree that it does not even try to be crafty or cunning about saying the evil things they do and what is even more telling is that there is no mention of their words of evil in the public discourse for the most part from main stream media and or academia.

This is a troubling sign of the "see no evil", "hear no evil" collaborators of the full frontal assault on this countries attempt to maintain the unique American fingerprint we have enjoyed for so long as a unique experiment in the governance of a Constitutional Republic.

If the neocon bush crime cartel gets its way we will become a country very much like Nazi Germany of which our boy kings grandfather was the primary financier.

It should be no surprise that the first president to confront the dangers of fearmongering was the most liberal President of the 20th century, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Roosevelt came to office at a time when many elites and intellectuals were arguing either the virtues fascism like Italy or Germany or Communism like Stalins Soviet Union as the necessary path to pull us out of our Great Depression. Roosevelt confronted these talking heads straight on by challenging the root premise of the argument: fear.

9/11 didn't change us, anymore than Oklahoma City or Waco changed us. What changed us, was they way 9/11 was manipulated into some global ideological conflict between East and West, good and evil, Muslim and Christian, freedom and slavery and most of all us and them; a small band of radical idiots with money we gave them for their oil, suddenly elevated to the level of superpower status, a power so great that if we don't go and fight them "there" they will swim over here and subjugate us to their beastly beliefs. No intelligent person should ever have bought into this argument yet our MSM and the majority of Americans bought it hook line and sinker.

I appreciate your explanation of RWA leaders and followers. I think it is important to understand that we can never expect to change the minds of those who post on LittleGreenFootballs or NewsMax, we can and should challenge those in power who goad them on. What is odd is no one has ever explored what terrified people they are. From Reds under the beds to IslamoFascists fighting us here, fear is used as a tool and weilded by people who Franklin Roosevelt would have backhanded across the face and demand they get a grip.

You want to win. Don't attack their logic, attack their cowardice.

Shout out to Shooter242 (nice name you must sleep with your gun by your side). The US under one of the most liberal democracies in history and a person you consider a closet communist (Roosevelt) managed to defeat not one, not two, but three of the worlds biggest fascist authoritarian governments. If you think RWA type government is better than the rest, well I give you the Democratic controlled presidency and Congress versus your heroes Hitler, Tojo and Mussolini.

Thanks for the Umberto Eco/fascism article/link...that was so worth reading--

that Franco Fartini poem at the end "...our hearts are no longer human, but we have read into the eyes of the dead & shall bring freedom on the earth, but clenched tight in the fists of the dead lies the justice to be served"

chilled my bones.

The lesson I take most from Altemeyer's work is indeed the very truth of FDR's most important words: "The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself"

The more fear, the more irrationality, the more foolish society's choices become and the easier manipulated they are by the double-highs.

The thing I ponder now, is how to institutionalize mechanisms that would work against fear consistently in our democratic systems. Ways of promoting rationality and dampening paranoia.

I'm open to suggestions, but reforms are needed so nothing like the last 6 years ever happens again.

Not trying to overload people's brains here with too much new information at once, but....

For those who have already gained some familiarity with rightwing authoritarianism, there's another factor to consider that's at work here, which falls under the general rubric of cognitive development--a field of study begun by Jean Piaget in the early 20th Century, but which has folk antecedents going back to the dawn of time.

The bottom line of where I'm going with this is that folks who operate at low levels of cognitive development tend to project their schematic thinking onto others--which is part of what feeds into accusing liberals of racism in the discourse being discussed here. To continue...

The basic insight of cognitive development is that people change how they think as they grow up. The Bible says, "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." (1 Corinthians 13:11) And, more particularly, a number of cultures recognize distinct stages of life which are characterized not just by different roles, but by different outlooks as well.

However, Piaget began the process of controlled empirical experimentation to study reasoning processes on a concrete micro-level. In doing so, he discovered that thinking changes radically at distinct points (not fixed in time, but distinct in the sense of always consisting of the same sorts of changes) in the developmental process, so that we can speak of distinctly different ways of organizing thought that succeed one another.

While many psychologists followed in Piaget's footsteps, other independent or semi-independent lines of study led to parallel constructs. One of cluster of such constructs deals specifically with how we comprehend different conflicting perspectives. In the online paper, "Structures of geopolitical reasoning"

http://www.perspectus.se/tjordan/Structuresgeopol.html

Swedish social scientist Thomas Jordan discussed a variety of different developmental models, including one that comes from the cluster Jordan identifies as "integrative complexity"--though it is not the one most commonly so identified in American political science, which is due to Tetlock and his colleagues. Nonetheless, it is a highly instructive construct.

A chart I developed for a work in progress summarizes the general characteristics from Jordan's summary:

Table K-3.1

Characteristics of the

Four Levels of Integrative Complexity

1. Low integrative complexity

* Information is interpreted according to simple fixed rules, without considering alternative interpretations.

* Once information is processed in a certain way, it is done. There little room for reinterpretation, or new information that doesn’t fit existing categories, which is routinely rejected or ignored.

* Values, opinions, assumptions, etc. are compartmentalized, allowing contradiction without awareness.

* There are strong feelings of certainty, due to low tolerance for uncertainty.

* Uncertainty is met with aggressiveness.

* There is strong reliance on external authorities.

* Behavior is highly controlled by external conditions

* There are sharp distinctions between categories, but once a threshold is reached, the subject is abruptly shifted from one category to another, and assigned a radically different set of attributes.

* Positions of the conflicting parties are perceived in either/or terms; perspectives are (implicitly) irreconcilable.

2. Moderately low integrative complexity

* Different perspectives are recognized, but remain compartmentalized, they cannot be related to and integrated with each other.

* It’s possible to develop rules for when to use one particular perspective, but once the choice is made, alternative perspectives are ignored. Thus categorizations and conclusions aren’t modified by reflecting on alternative perspectives.

* Because there is no reflection on different perspectives, the choice of which to adopt tends to be arbitrary.

* Probablistic reasoning is common—things can go this or that—but no thought is given to joint outcomes of different perspectives.

* There are reductions in tendencies toward simple good-bad dichotomies, reacting aggressively in response to different perspectives, and relying on external authorities.

* Positions of the conflicting parties are still perceived in irreconcilable either/or terms, despite the possible perception that both positions might have legitimate claims.

3. Moderately high integrative complexity

* There’ s an ability to compare different perspectives with each other, so that even though one is chosen, the implications of other perspectives can still be considered.

* Flexibility in interpretations and evaluations is greatly increased, with increased openness to revision of cognitive decisions in light of different points of view.

* Varying combinations of several perspectives can be considered simultaneously, with conflicting aspects used to gain further understanding.

* One can reflect on one’s own behavior as interpreted from another perspective, and adjust one’s behavior accordingly to reach a desired outcome.

* There is an increased sense of freedom, intentional control and responsibility that comes from being able to use different principles of interpretation.

* Positions of the conflicting parties can be assessed in terms of effects on each other, so conflict resolution can consider both sides, and produce compromise solutions.

4. High integrative complexity

* Thinking is based in hypothetical reflection. Principles of different cognitive perspectives are generated mentally, and serve as guidelines in searching for new information.

* Different perspectives can be integrated within an inclusive framework that explains their functional relationships.

* Rather than avoiding paradox, it can be appreciated as accurately representing real experience—such as simultaneous needs for autonomy and dependence.

* Paradoxes and incompatibilities among perspectives can be actively used to generate new insights and frameworks.

* Positions of the conflicting parties can be assessed as parts of an interacting system, which can be systematically altered to produce a solution that satisfies all parties through a creative rearrangement of their mutual relationships.

Applying this to geopolitical reasoning will take me over the 1000 word limit, so I'll continue in the next post....