There are several highly interesting long posts on the psychological makeup of those who interpret the Hezbollah War (and the world) in irrational terms.
Perhaps the most interesting is at ShrinkWrapped, which I would recommend reading in its entirety.
But Richard Landes also has some good insights, though his tone deteriorates somewhat as he gets worked up over the abusive nonsense he is fisking. Landes's analysis is "The 'Left' Takes on the Qana Affair: Fisking the Daily Kos". What is stunning is that the Kos diarist Smintheus seems to trust the motives of Hezbollah more than he does those of conservative bloggers. Although he doesn't say so flatly, he seems to me to find it hard to believe that in the midst of such a tragedy as Qana, Hezbollah could be so callous as to stage photos of the bodies of the dead children pulled from the rubble.
This brings to mind the last great supposed Israeli massacre, Jenin, where a gullible world press falsely reported hundreds of Palestinians massacred, when even Fatah ended up claiming that there were 56 deaths, compared to the 23 lost by the Israelis at Jenin (apparently, it was a battle, not a massacre). Mark Steyn recalls a failed attempt to stage one of the deaths there:
Anxious to lend the west’s agitated humanitarians a helping hand, a group of Palestinians in Jenin held a funeral a week ago for one of their massacred compatriots and invited a cameraman along. The deceased, covered in a shroud, was being borne on a stretcher to his final resting place when, alas, his bearers stumbled and the body fell to the ground. The “corpse” picked himself up, dusted himself off and climbed back on the stretcher to start all over again. Unfortunately, the clumsy pallbearers managed to drop him a second time. At this point, the crowd, who apparently weren’t in on the scheme, fled in terror. The stiff, meanwhile, had had enough of his bungling bearers and flounced off in a huff.
Because I am traveling on Saturday, I will turn on comments for only 11 hours.
If these people can do this consistently, we may have to pay more attention to David Bernstein's direct translation of Hezbollah's name.
Accusing "liberals" of schizophrenia in a schizophrenic way. Priceless. That shrink needs a shrink.
I dunno, beneath all that fascinating political discussion is some psychology and epistemology that's guaranteed to be more interesting than the politics above when the politics are irrational, self-contradictory, and at odds with reality.
Well, sure. But do you think this approach would really work with someone, say, who feels certain that the US government was behind 9/11? What sort of logic or evidence would persuade such a person?
For another example, think of all the vast evidence we have of the Holocaust. The Nazis were meticulous record keepers, for one, and then there're thousands of eye witnesses, not only the victims and the perpetraters, but the soldiers from several different countries who liberated the camps and saw everything.
Yet, there are still loads of Holocaust deniers out there, including whole countries of them in the Middle East. It can't be that all these folks just haven't seen that last bit of evidence that will finally persuade them; if all the films, documents, and eye witnesses weren't enough, nothing possibly could be.
I think the point that Lindgrin is making is that people who are deeply, emotionally invested in an idea may strongly resist all "evidence and reasoning." At that point, what? You're no longer having a political discussion; you've moved into the psycological. A person who insists that George Bush engineered 9/11 just isn't rational, and pretending that he is and trying to engage him intelligently is just silly.
Makes me want to leave the blogosphere. Or if this number is correct - "More than a third of the American public suspects that federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States" - and these ones are also correct - 22% of Americans believe that "Saddam Hussein helped plan and support the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001" - then maybe I should just head down to Mexico. Is it really true that less than half of the country rejects both of those "theories"? And that second poll number is down, significantly, over the past few years - it was in the 70s through 2003 (at least in a different poll).
I would like to talk to some of those people who believe that both Saddam Hussein and the US government are behind the 9/11 attacks. Or those who used to think one and now think the other. And it shouldn't be too hard - at least one out of every 12 Americans is in one of those groups, if we trust the polls (and that's leaving out the 9/13/01 numbers). Now that is depressing. But thinking about it somehow makes me less depressed. So I'll go back over this comment I'm writing, clean up the language (can't have any references to bodily functions!), and post it.
Looking back over those posts there are a few other nice depressing bits that actually make me less depressed. There's this cute little observation: "The modern world ... is well on the way to repudiating traditional welfare state liberalism." And this is a rather charming bit of rhetoric (mocking liberal thinking): "Evidence for global warming? No problem. Evidence for global jihad warming? What are you talking about?" And on a second reading, those little things like the abrupt shift from criticizing the left for being so confident that they know what is going on in Lebanon to criticizing them based on the assumption that you know exactly what is happening in Lebanon is pretty amusing. (Check it out - it's right where the two Rightie posts come together, with ShrinkWrapped quoting Landes). Maybe laughter is the best medicine.
One reason people believe such nonsense is that they are exposed to political propaganda, such as Michael Moore's 9/11. Even those on the right who believe that the Clinton administration covered up the Middle Eastern connection to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing don't believe that the Clinton administration actually planned it. Rather, they believe at most that the FBI had prior warning and tried to stop it, but something went awry.
Of course.
BTW, I just looked at 2000 General Social Survey data and less than half of both Democrats and Republicans believe in evolution, an issue raised in the comments.
Quite depressing!
Republicans are slightly but significantly less likely than non-Republicans to believe in evolution, while Democrats do not differ from non-Democrats in their disbelief in evolution.
OK, Erasmussimo. I was talking about the obvious nuts, not level-headed psycho-political theorizing. ShrinkWrapped and his subjects aren't being too level-headed; which makes them more interesting, just not for the reasons they think :)
Can we extend the mommy/daddy metaphor?
paternal->conservative
maternal->liberal
I'm guessing fraternal->libertarian
So,
sororal-> ???
senile avuncular -> pat buchaninism ??
...8 sentences earlier...
This is puerile crap.