Studies indicate there are distinct psychological differences between conservative and liberal biology. Although other factors certainly contribute to belief systems, conservatives tend to rely on a heightened threat-based awareness to inform their decisions and therefore, perceive the world as far more threatening and dangerous than it really is. This begins to explain why they are so focused on guns, law enforcement, military and religion. This type of hardwiring compels conservative republicans to respond to a complicated world with emotion and tone of voice, rather than critical thinking. However, one of the more curious things about emotions is they can be, to a certain extent, contagious. An individual might feel angry, frustrated or anxious because others around that person are feeling the same way. Accordingly, this emotional contagion is worsened through a daily diet of right-wing demagoguery and erroneous facts that serves to validate the calcified thinking and abstract uncertainty of republican voters. This is a political psychosis that impedes the self-awareness necessary for a FOX-educated, predominately white-male demographic to question their own motives and recognize the perilous consequences of their choices. Individualism and choice are the cornerstones of republican values. Consequently, when they choose to abandon facts and subscribe to appalling conspiracy theories, it illustrates their inability to reason. Similarly, when they support policies that promote latent racism, perpetual war, corporate welfare, mass incarceration and deconstruction of the administrative state, it also reveals the hypocrisy of their values.
This is the unfortunate result of an uninformed people, who celebrate a limited worldview by abandoning facts, dismissing global comparisons, condemning science, and even hating their own government. A gullible electorate who supports a succession of political dunces, religious zealots, tyrants and hypocrites each more crude, sophomoric and troubling than the last. A recklessness that scoffs at the dangers of unfettered capitalism, concentration of wealth and privatization -all policies designed to unravel democracy and systematically dismantle the middle-class.
The culmination of this calcified thinking is the likes of Donald Trump. A dimwitted, improvisational amateur with a tenuous grasp on reality and a limited understanding of government. History has proven time and again that oligarchs and fascist love an uneducated populace and will exploit the notion that if nothing is true, then no one can criticize power because there is no basis upon which to do so. Ultimately however, the only thing more dangerous than biology, emotional contagion, right-wing disinformation or foreign meddling in our democracy is the dangerous impact of an uninformed electorate who have lost their ability to reason and have instead chosen to engage in willful ignorance as an act of civil disobedience.
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