There is a much longer list of insanity in the American body politic. Go look at the on-line report at Harris.
- He is a domestic enemy that the U.S. Constitutions speaks of (25%)
- He is a racist (23%)
- He is anti-American (23%)
- He wants to use an economic collapse or terrorist attack as an excuse to take dictatorial powers (23%)
- He is doing many of the things that Hitler did (20%)
- He may be the Anti-Christ (14%)
- He wants the terrorists to win (13%)
This is truly scary. There is a large number of crazed people who believe insane things. These are very dangerous people because they will support demogogues who will use this anger and ignorance to get their hands on power. Once that happens, you can kiss your democracy goodbye.
If you want to read some speculation about this phenomenon, read Welcome to Glennbeckistan: Where the Tea Party Rules and Tea-hadis Roam
4 comments:
I know people who believe at least some of those things; that is scary. We humans continue to make the mistake of thinking that we are beyond the murderous tendencies of our past because we have advanced in understanding or education, but we are in any age capable of the atrocities of the past that we are loathe to think of. I am amazed at how easy it is to bring us to violence and the madness necessary to torture or experiment on our fellows and even family. We are only a little bit away from being just like the Germans who let their neighbors get dragged out of their homes and taken to camps out of sight and out of their lives at least for a time. How did they face themselves? How did they justify it in their minds? How did they live with it later in life?
Thomas: People can do horrible things and then deny it later because they rationalize their actions: they blame others, they mis-remember and convince themselves they didn't really do any bad things, they simply refuse to admit that did anything (like the kid caught with his hand stuck in the cookie jar but who adamantly claims he wasn't trying to grab a cookie between meals), etc.
There are some very famous psychology experiments that demonstrate just how inhuman we can be. The Milgram experiment demonstrated that most people will cave in to authority and brutalize others if ordered to. The famous Stanford Prison Experiment demonstrated how quickly torture and abuse can spread if it is allowed by authorities.
I just finished reading about the experiments at links you provided. I had never heard of these experiments (I don't remember them anyway); amazing experiments and results. I just wonder how I would react and how far I would go in such a situation, whether experiment or real life... I do hope to never have to find out, of course and at least tell myself that I would follow my conscience and not simply follow orders.
Thomas: Nobody really knows how they would behave until the situation actually confronts them. About 80% of the people conform. I would like to think that I would resist the pressure because I've always rejected "the herd" and held my own opinion even in the face of punishment by the crowd. But you just don't know until the real situation comes along. I'm hoping that you could withstand the pressure to conform. But there are some classic experiments such as the Asch experiment that demonstrate how powerful our urge is to conform. So powerful that your need to conform will over-rule your own perceptions and you will say short is long and long is short.
And here's the surprising fact about the ability to kill a fellow human being:
"In a squad of 10 men, on average fewer than three ever fired their weapons in combat. Day in, day out — it did not matter how long they had been soldiers, how many months of combat they had seen, or even that the enemy was about to overrun their position. This was what the highly regarded Brigadier General Samuel Lyman Atwood Marshall, better known as S.L.A. Marshall, or 'Slam,' concluded in a series of military journal articles and in his book, Men Against Fire, about America's World War II soldiers." from HistoryNet.com
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