often lack the intuition about others that many people take for granted
Posted by: Wayne in 2008That headline deals with autism but seems to fit for some pundits …
Headline: Emotion Trumps Logic in the Voting Booth
The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation, by Drew Westen.” Quoting the article’s author, Charles Onyango-Obbo, “Westen has studied elections over the years, and found an inconvenient truth: People almost always vote for the candidate who elicits the right feelings, not the one who presents the best arguments.
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Thomas Frank’s big question in What’s Wrong with Kansas was why do people vote against their own self-interest? And that’s the same thing that a clinical psychologist is looking for, isn’t it? Why do people behave against their own self-interest?
First lets look at Thomas Frank’s question, he appears to be projecting his self-interest onto others. And in doing so does not hear what others take for granted. Not everybody wants a big government to take care of them. Having grown into adulthood, they grew ready to take care of themselves. Not only are they able to take care of themselves but they enjoy it. The emotional appeal that government can take care of them, they understand, comes with a price - free will.
Freedom is by no means perfect, mistakes are made - take for example all the people who did not take creed of the natural cycles of the economy when they refinanced their homes - now they they are having trouble in paying the bank loans. That is what I would call a decision based on emotions or a desire for instant gratification. No alternative to freedom actually works better this is why socialism keeps failing.
So Thomas Frank question seems to be one that lacks maturity and understanding. Kansas did vote for against their best interest, they rejected empty promises from politicians who can show no realist method of delivering. It is not that they want expensive health care, or that they don’t care if others don’t get as much care as they believe they need; expensive health care is the lessor of two evils, the alternative which is being tried in Canada and is failing.
Emotion does play a part, although small, in appraising if a politician can be trusted. It is healthy not to trust any politician, history shows they lie. The mistake the book is appears to have made is that people voted against their interests because of what was promised to them from candidates that earned distrust by misrepresentations of their past, and by a non spiritual rebirth have new beliefs on the issues. In fact they voted for their interests and saw though empty promises that did not match what the politicians had done in the past, saw through apparent misrepresentations of their past, and voted for somebody who could at least deliver what was promised and had not earned distrust. It was for many the lessor of two evils.
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