Reading: Limbic politics

As a matter of professional training and personal temperament, I have a blind spot in my view of contemporary politics.

Last week on his tour through Portland, SEIU president Andy Stern remarked that Democrats select presidential candidates as if they were looking for someone to win on "Jeopardy!"--a wonk brimming with facts and details. By comparison, said Stern, the Republicans look for someone who could win on "American Idol"--someone the audience feels they "like" and can "relate to."

This, my friends, is hard cheese for your humble narrator.

I really want--and sometimes manage--to believe the old pseudo-aristotelian principle that appeal to reason, through argument, analysis, critical thinking, and such, is not only ethically superior to naked appeals to audience emotion, but practically superior as well: It's not only right, it generally works better.

At times, it's a belief I cling to more out of loyalty to my professional tribe than because of some great preponderance of supporting evidence from the public arena.

Which brings us to Billmon, over at the Whiskey Bar. He's been pretty much getting in touch with his Inner Eeyore about the state of American politics for some time now, I grant you. But he's got an argument (there's that word!) today that deserves our attention, even if it isn't much fun for late-modernity rationalists.

In a nutshell, it's this: Taken in the aggregate, American voting and opinion patterns haven't really been ruled by the part of the mind that's about all that aristotelian good stuff, for quite some time now. Rather, it's being run by the pleasure-seeking/pain-avoiding parts of the mind (and pleasure/pain were the heart of Aristotle's theory of the emotions). Don't look for the light bulb over the voters' heads, in other words, but rather for a warm, tingly glow originating somewhat farther south.

The sexual corruption "issue" may be hurting the Rovians this year, given the GOP's reliance on its fundamentalist Christian base. But over the long run, I have to think limbic politics still work in their favor. Democrats and liberals now tend to insist on pitching their political tents higher up the cerebral slope, where rationality and the "real issues" can dominate the landscape. Having been beaten so many times down in the emotional swamps, they're determined to stay clear of them entirely. But the Rovian political strategy, if not the entire modern conservative movement -- like most authoritarian and/or fascist ideologies -- is entirely about emotional manipulation. Sex and death.

Give it a read (including his proposed epitath for the American republic). Then go raid the refrigerator for comfort food. If Billmon's wrong, the carbs will help you get on your feet and back to fighting the good fight for Truth, Justice, and the American Way.

And if he's right, then comfort food is probably what we were waiting for all along, anyway.

(Billmon's piece is going onto the Readings List in the sidebar. Graphic borrowed from here.)