Right-wing authoritarians (RWA) – those blocking progress in both houses of our Congress and conniving with ALEC to write oppressive state laws – are not only all about ‘me-my-mine,’ they are also ‘rugged individualists’ with no need for others who believe they have total control of their success. This exaggerated sense of self-confidence naturally leads to an exaggerated dependence on, and belief in, the value of their gut feel. Not only are these RWA driven to delusion by their gut feel, but the for-profit media are equally enamored with spreading these delusional beliefs as news.
To paraphrase George Lakoff, ‘gut feel trumps facts’ – even if for-profit media deigns to present any facts.
Gut feel, and lack of a skeptical free press, is why the RWA are still winning the message wars against Obama, Islam, inequality, peace, empathy, representative governance, unions, tolerance of others not like them, jobs for the unemployed, separation of church and state, peaceful civil disobedience, working together, properly funding public education, lower student loan rates, back ground checks for all gun sales, the government, the IRS, the EPA, the FDA, Executive appointments, consumer protection, minority voter rights, single-payer healthcare, rebuilding our national infrastructure, Medicaid for poor working Americans, preventing more human-made climate disruption, and, most critically, against paying citizenship dues (income taxes) based on use/abuse of public resources, which enables the defeat of most everything else in this list.
RWA gut feel is distracting us from participating in and maintaining our democracy.
Andy Hailey