The Irrationality Of Rational Politics (The Political Brain Part 1)

Neuroscience and psychology research prove that voters do not appeal to reason and logic when choosing a candidate. Republicans fail to be surprised.

Scott Brown’s recent victory over Martha Coakley for the U.S. senate seat in Massachusetts is reminiscent of George W Bush’s two “victories” over equally impotent Democrats; both cases clearly demonstrate that voters do not appeal to logic and reason when selecting a candidate. In his book The Political Brain, renowned psychologist Drew Westen cites evidence from the fields of psychology and neuroscience indicating that “what passes for reasoning in politics is more often rationalization, motivated by efforts to ‘reason’ to emotionally satisfying conclusions” (xi). In other words, people usually rely on their emotional (gut) feeling about a candidate rather than actually giving a shit about what the person is going to do in office. This is how our brain works in relation to most things in our world. We like things based on our gut feelings about them, which are largely derived from the implicit (unconscious) activation of various bundles of thoughts and images, known as associative networks (3). The ability to strategically play to these associative networks is crucial to any successful political campaign. Unfortunately, recent history shows that the GOP is much more skilled at this game than the Democrats.

Whether they realize it or not, Republicans seem to have a more accurate understanding of how the brain actually works. They seem to have figured out intuitively what “the philosopher David Hume recognized three centuries ago: that reason is a slave to emotion.” Democrats, on the other hand, display an “irrational emotional commitment to rationality—one that renders them, ironically, impervious to both scientific evidence on how the political mind and brain work and to an accurate diagnosis of why their campaigns repeatedly fail” (15). This almost exclusive reliance on rationality leads Democrats to focus their campaign strategies on what actually appear to be quite insignificant things like “facts, figures, policy statements, costs and benefits, and appeals to intellect and expertise.” It is unfortunate that appeals to reason and intellect are insufficient to move voters, but this reality must be accepted by Democrats if they hope to win elections this fall. They should also familiarize themselves with the strategies Westen outlines in his book that describe how candidates can speak more to the emotional rather than the logical brain of voters.

Dr. Westen’s (among loads of other) research clearly demonstrates the overwhelming power of implicit associative networks. For example, in focus groups, the vast majority of people support universal health care plans, but only when the term itself is not explicitly referred to. When the exact same plan is then revealed to fall under the universal health umbrella, almost nobody supports it. Westen explains how this is due to the successful branding by the GOP of the term universal health care itself. For most Americans, simply hearing that term alone primes the implicit negative associations of “big and personal clinics, socialized medicine, and the idea of being separated from your doctor.” Westen advocates that Democrats do away with this term altogether in their public discourse for this very reason.

Another example of where Republicans have been extremely successful at employing negative branding strategies is in the association of Democrats with liberal elites, or ivory tower intellectuals that cannot possibly be in tune with mainstream America. So how exactly can Democrats combat this already successful branding of them by the GOP? Well, the most important thing a candidate can do is win over the (emotional) hearts and minds of the people. This is done most effectively when they are able to communicate a sense of passion through weaving together a coherent and emotion-laden narrative that plays on specific positive networks of association and/or directly combats negative associations.

The associative network that leads people to perceive Democrats as weak on national defense is yet another glaring example of a successful brand-job by the GOP, an association that Obama consistently concerns himself with trying to refute. Unfortunately, as it stands now, more or less maintaining the status-quo with national defense seems the only way that Obama and other Democrats feel they can quell this nasty association of them with big blubbering vaginas. If Democratic strategists paid more attention to Westen’s work, however, candidates might begin to counter this type of branding that all too often contributes to them losing elections.

In the following clip, Dr. Westen gives an example of what Democrats should have been saying all along in response to the claim that they do not support the troops (by favoring withdrawal). His example demonstrates how the Democrats should be stealing from the GOP playbook in order to win over the hearts and minds of the public by using passionate speech which appeals to the emotional rather than reasoning faculties of the brain.



References

Westen, Drew. The Political Brain: The Role Of Emotion In Deciding The Fate Of The Nation. Public Affairs: New York, 2007.

~Wolf

Fung Wah Bus Lines: Ride At Your Own Risk

Apparently “Fung Wah” is Chinese for “Shit Happens”

I like reading Slate because I can always count on it to entertain me with some crazy-ass article about grass-eating Japanese men or a Christopher Hitchens column doing cartwheels in response to the death of Jerry Falwell. But this morning when I opened up slate.com I found myself drawn to an article on the best discount bus lines in the country. Why I felt compelled to read it I don’t know; I haven’t been on a private bus line in seven years and I don’t plan on being on one any time soon. However, the article turned out to be one of the most unintentionally funny pieces I’ve read in awhile for the plain fact that it maintains that the Fung Wah bus company is one of the best discount lines. Here’s the reviewer’s final assessment on Fung Wah: “For my money, all $15 of it, that’s worth the risk.”

What “risk” is she talking about, you ask? Well, New Englanders and New Yorkers are quite familiar with the comically calamitous ineptitude of Fung Wah, which provides service back and forth between New York and Boston, as well as Providence. Since about 2005, Fung Wah has made headlines with startling frequency owing to a series of literally unbelievable mishaps; and yet, here’s this reviewer from Slate claiming that the cheapo ticket prices are “worth the risk,” as in worth the risk of injury or death. Think I’m exaggerating? Let’s review Fung Wah’s record, not just as a public service for those searching for a discount bus line, but for the sake of a good laugh too. And believe me, collectively these incidents make for goddamn top-notch hilarity.

August 16, 2005: A New York-bound bus catches fire on Interstate 91 near Meriden, Connecticut. The passengers criticize the driver for being totally worthless during the evacuation of the bus.

Fung Wah afire

September 2005: In a prophetic safety assessment of Fung Wah bus drivers, federal regulators give them a collective score of 73 out of 100—100 being the worst score possible. The national average is 24 out of 100. Still, Massachusetts state regulators insist the bus line is safe.

September 6, 2006: A Fung Wah bus rolls over in Auburn, Massachusetts (site of the isolation tank story) and causes minor injuries to 34 passengers. Excessive speed is cited as a factor and the company is fined.

January 3, 2007: In Framingham, Massachusetts, a New York-bound bus loses its two rear wheels. No injuries are reported.

February 14, 2007: The driver of a New York-bound bus loses control in a winter storm and hits a guardrail on the Massachusetts Turnpike (I-90 in Allston). No injuries are reported.

Yet another Fung Wah fuck-up

March 23, 2007: A New York-bound bus becomes stuck on a concrete barrier in front of a tollbooth on the Massachusetts Turnpike at Route 128 in Weston, when the bus drives up on a cement lane divider. The driver had entered an automobile-only lane and tried to change lanes. No one is injured in the incident, but the bus is taken out of service and passengers board another Fung Wah bus that arrives later. Lucky them.

Rare photo of a Fung Wah bus that isn't on fire or crashed into something

It’s worth mentioning that on June 23, 2008 a Fung Wah bus boarding passengers was inexplicably nailed by a dump truck in New York’s Chinatown, forcing the bus into a bank and causing a traffic light to fall on a woman who later died. While the dump truck’s company was found at fault, one has to wonder whether Fung Wah has some seriously negative Feng Shui.

Now, I’m not saying that Fung Wah ought to be put out of business because I really don’t care. Indeed, if I’m feeling adventurous the next time I have to go to New York, I might just look under my couch cushions for enough change to buy myself a ticket and enjoy the ride. But for a reviewer of a major online magazine to say that Fung Wah is “worth the risk” as if she’s talking about buying stock in the company instead of actually using its services, is insane.

Fung Wah’s first and only foray into air travel also ended in disaster

I should also mention that in January when three friends and I were driving down to D.C. for Obama’s inauguration in blizzard conditions on the Mass Pike, a Fung Wah bus blew by us in the left lane as if it were 70 degrees out with clear skies. It was clearly driving way too fast for those conditions, especially for a cumbersome bus. “I think we can expect to see that bus again,” I told my travel companions, “Off the road.” I was wrong. We didn’t see it again, so naturally I assumed that the bus had crashed, but in a ditch so big we couldn’t see it.

So that’s the deal with Fung Wah. The next time you’re looking for a bus to take you to Boston or New York, remember what you’ve read here. And if you should ever find yourself standing on the side of a highway in Connecticut waiting for crews to clear your bus off the road so you can board another one of Fung Wah’s death traps, don’t say you weren’t warned.

-Max

"Breaking Bad" Finale Goes out with a Bang

Poor Walter. All the guy wants to do is make and sell meth, pay for his cancer treatments, and maybe have some money left over for his family in case he croaks. That being said, his occasional aloofness from Skyler and Walter Jr. doesn’t help his situation. The illicit nature of his extracurricular activities has prevented Walter from cluing his wife in on what he has done to ensure the family isn’t in debt for the next 200 years, and she has been understandably suspicious of him. However, in the last minutes of the season two finale ("ABQ"), Skyler lost it. After ruling out the possibility of Walter having an affair with Gretchen, Skyler found out that Walter is almost all caught up on his gargantuan medical bills, and naturally connects this with Walter’s strange behavior. But rather than ask Walter where he got the money to pay off the expenses, she tells him to move out of his house while she goes to Hank and Marie’s for a few days with the baby. Walter offers to tell her everything if she stays, but she isn’t interested. Doesn’t want to know. Apparently isn’t even curious. She’d rather leave the matter unresolved so she can probably bone her boss and not feel guilty. Was Skyler being a bitch? Feel free to comment.

Remember that Skyler is the one who got Walter into this mess. He heard the words “terminal cancer” from the doctor and was ready to mail it in. No financially-crippling surgeries. No painful chemotherapy. Walter was ready to die instead of gearing up for a long battle he might not win, but one that would definitely jeopardize his family’s financial future. Convinced mainly by Skyler to fight it, Walter started making meth out of practical necessity.

As I mentioned in my review of Breaking Bad, many critics have the awful habit of engaging in haughty moralizations of works of fiction instead of examining them on more aesthetic grounds. A few of the reviews I had the displeasure of reading explicitly blame Walter for the plane crash because he let Jane die, and her death caused her father to screw up in the air traffic control room, which caused to planes to collide in midair. As such, according to one hack, “This is on Walt’s head, every last bit of it, and so it feels right for fiery judgment to be rained down on that head,” in a reference to the hitherto mysterious pink teddy bear in his pool. What a stupidly simplistic view.

It is easy for these amateur ethicists isolate and blame Walter because of the obvious connection that can be made. But why not single out Sklyer for pleading with Walter to fight his cancer? Had he ignored her entreaties, Jane would likely still be alive. Or why not blame Jesse for spilling the beans to Jane about the whole operation? That made her a potential threat to Walter, and given the chance to save her life, he declined on pragmatic grounds.

The critics blame Walter because they are lazy. They see that the show revolves around him, and therefore his entire fictional world must also. But Walter is one man, even if he is the man in the show. To single him out as the primary author of such unforeseen catastrophes is to elevate him to a level of importance that no mortal could reasonably lay claim to. From its pilot episode up until last night, Breaking Bad has been one long chain of causes and events brought on by the capriciousness of fate. The crank critics can engage in their childish game of “what if” in their anemic attempts to sound deep or profound, but their moral indignation only prevents from seeing, with total clarity, that what happened could not have happened any other way.

-Max

"Breaking Bad" Smokes the Competition

There are very few shows on television I consider worthy of my attention. In fact, you could count the number of these programs on one hand—specifically the hand of Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown. Two of these “shows” are Red Sox and Patriots games, so that should tell you what I think about the state of American television.

But in this vast and barren wasteland of cookie-cutter sitcoms, self-righteous talk-show hosts, and mind-blowingly idiotic reality TV shows with patently absurd premises, there is Breaking Bad on AMC. Breaking Bad—created by former X-Files producer Vince Gilligan—is quite simply the best show on television. How do I know this if I don’t watch other “hit” TV shows? Recall your Philosophy 101 course and St. Anselm’s ontological argument. Remember how he spoke of “that than which nothing greater can be conceived?” He was referring to Breaking Bad. So was Plato when he wrote of the ideal Form of a television drama. So who am I to question the wisdom of a monk and a philosopher?

Now nearing the end of its second season, Breaking Bad centers on the life of Walter White (Bryan Cranston), a fifty year-old high school chemistry teacher who is totally overqualified for his job. In the first episode of season one he learns he has terminal lung cancer. Worried that his pregnant wife Skyler (Anna Gun) and teenage son Walter Jr. (R.J. Mitte) who has mild cerebral palsy will be in dire financial straits once he is gone, he hooks up with his former slacker student and druggie Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) to cook crystal meth and sell it on the streets. Eventually, Walter is persuaded by his family to try to fight the cancer by undergoing a very expensive and what is at first a none-too-promising treatment regimen. Ironically, Walter’s decision to fight for his life indirectly puts his life in danger because in his eyes, he has no choice but to keep cooking meth with Jesse to pay for his treatment. All the while, he becomes more deeply involved in the dangerous world of drug dealing, and stares into the face of death on a few occasions.

The penultimate episode of season two aired on Sunday, and it featured the most powerful scene in the entire series thus far. I know I’ve already summarized the basic plot of the show for those who aren’t familiar, but this scene is worth recounting. If you haven’t seen it yet, this paragraph contains spoilers, so consider yourself warned. At the beginning of the episode Walter sells almost forty pounds of meth he and Jesse made for $1.2 million (causing him to miss the birth of his daughter), but he is reluctant to give Jesse his share because he is genuinely concerned that he will blow it on drugs. This leads Jesse to tell his recently relapsed girlfriend Jane—who introduced him to heroin—all about what he and Walter have been up to, prompting her to call Walter and threaten to tell the police about his meth-making if he didn’t give Jesse his half, which Walter then does. But Walter returns to Jesse’s apartment soon after, apparently to have a serious talk about his drug use. He finds Jesse and Jane in bed, both too high on smack to wake up. Suddenly Jane—who is lying on her back—starts vomiting and choking. Walter immediately rushes over to her side of the bed and extends his arms to turn her over when…he pauses. And slowly he withdraws his hands and proceeds to stand there and watch her choke for what seems like an eternity until she is choking no more. He covers his mouth, even shedding a tear at his necessary inaction.

While it was likely that Jane never would have gone to the police, she knew too much just the same; plus she was a drug addict, and as Walter’s buyer told him in the previous episode, “You can never trust a drug addict.” Walter is too smart and pragmatic to let a fluke opportunity such as that pass him by. It was him or her. Advantage Walter. He is a survivor. What was remarkable about this scene was that it managed to be so powerful and badass without a word said or a shot fired. The lesson here is plain enough: Walter is scrupulous only when he can afford to be so. The rest of the time he is practical.

What I love most about Breaking Bad is the rampant depravity in just about every episode. The show’s very name is a colloquialism from the American south which means “going wrong.” Indeed, Walter breaks bad out of sheer necessity. Jesse has already broken bad by the time Walter teams up with him. And obviously the shady characters these two encounter in their dealings aren’t saints, including their newfound shyster lawyer Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk) who’s as sardonic and funny as he is crooked. Even Walter’s family is not immune. His wife Skyler seems to be on the verge of having an affair with her boss. His sister-in-law is a chronic shoplifter, maybe even a kleptomaniac. Oh and by the way, Walter’s brother-in-law Hank (Dean Norris), with whom he has a tense relationship on occasion, is a DEA agent who happened to come upon Walter’s product in a bust. It turns out the DEA is astonished almost to the point of admiration at the purity of his crystal, and naturally they set about tracking down this mythical meth-man they know only by his alias: “Heisenberg,” so chosen by Walter after the quantum physicist Werner Heisenberg. It was he who formulated the famous uncertainty principle, which states that it is impossible to measure simultaneously both the position of a particle and its momentum. The more that is known about one of the properties, the less can be known about the other. Walter's choice of alias is quite instructive.

Does all this sound implausible? Maybe on paper, but the compelling storyline and its subplots are made convincing and brought to life by a skilled cast led by the estimable Emmy-winning Cranston, who makes Walter White the most dynamic character on television, fictitious or otherwise. He is extremely intelligent and mild-mannered, but as viewers know, Walter has actually had to kill two drug dealers because they were probably going to kill him. Despite the death he encounters with almost startling regularity, Walter is undeterred.

A vast majority of the reviews of Breaking Bad praise it, and rightfully so. Unfortunately the reviews themselves are bad, as many of their authors have the irritating tendency to allow their own fragile conception of morality taint their understanding of the show, such as this dink who says Walter is in denial about his “unspeakable crimes.” This could not be more wrong. If he were in denial he would be a very boring character. That Walter is very much aware of what he has been doing is precisely what makes him the most interesting person on television. He knows all too well what he has done and why he has done it. Yes, I’m sure for Walter his expensive cancer treatments help him to justify it all in his mind, but I get the sense that justification or no, he would be able live with himself just the same. In fact, he even tells Hank at one point that since he was diagnosed (and started cooking and knocking off dealers) he’s been sleeping better than he ever has.

Or how about this blathering buffoon, who is so taken aback by the actions of our protagonist that he describes Walter as “a guy we’re no longer sure whether to love or to be frightened of.” Rather than concern ourselves with whether we like Walter or are frightened by him, how about we just appreciate the character for what he is, instead of getting caught up the maelstrom of his misdeeds and criminal activity?

But what kind of reviews can you expect from a media that is aesthetically compromised by puerile concerns for morality? As H.L. Mencken once noted, Americans are entirely incapable of examining a book or a play, or in our case a television show, in terms of its artistic merit alone. This silly urge to pass moral judgment on characters in fiction precludes a mature understanding of the work at hand. Morality in Breaking Bad takes on only a secondary consideration, ready to be sacrificed and compromised when the forces of necessity and fate warrant. And that’s what makes the show so damn enthralling.

- Max

A Review of Fox News's Red Eye

It would be a trying task for even the most imaginative human being to envision a satirical news program worse than Fox News’s Red Eye, which can be seen each weeknight at 2:00 am. The program is hosted by a man named Greg Gutfield, who—if his performance on the show is any indication of the sort of person he is, and I believe it is—is one of the most bucolic, classless, childish, and unfunny people I have ever had the displeasure of watching. Gutfield’s three regular blogger panelists, who somehow manage to be his equal in terms of knavery and tastelessness, ought not to have their names mentioned, lest someone erroneously believe that these two young men and one young woman are worth remembering.

Gutfield too, would be a forgettable figure were it not for his nightly “comedic” performances which are so monumentally awful, so humorless, so artificial, so lacking in anything which even remotely might be said to contain an iota of wit, that the viewer is essentially forced to remember this phony man and his equally phony act.

To call Red Eye sophomoric would be to insult greatly television shows which have been accused of having that characteristic. In attempting to be edgy, the show—steered by the inept Gutfield—quite often takes a politically incorrect turn, and fails to achieve, despite its best efforts, a punch line that any half-wit simpleton from America’s Red State backwaters would find worthy of a whiskey-induced chuckle. The regular panelists, however, frequently cannot help but laugh uncontrollably at each other’s “jokes” and “commentary;” and this simply amplifies the pathetic nature of this half-baked project which not even a stoner who is as high as a kite would find amusing.

Concerning the aforementioned “edginess” of the show, Friday’s program featured a fine example Red Eye’s political incorrectness in action. During a segment which lasted about just under three minutes (which, as a length of time for each of the show’s discussion topics, is par for the course, if not longer than the average), host Gutfield and panel doubted the effectiveness of slipping roofies into drinks as a method for male bar patrons to incapacitate unsuspecting females so that they may rape them. Gutfield implied that the so called date rape drug Rohypnol is just some kind of scapegoat which drunk women who have been taken advantage of blame for their having been raped. Subsequently a comment was made or a verbal exchange occurred, which was missed by this observer (attempts to locate a transcript for this and other episodes of Red Eye on foxnews.com were unsuccessful), that prompted uncontrollable laughter from the pack of cackling hyenas, and carried through the break and into the next segment. Who would have thought that slipping women roofies could make for such knee-slapping conversation?

I could reel off some further remarks about other segments on the show, but no description, no matter how illustrative, could do justice to that which is being described. To appreciate truly the stupidity of Red Eye, one must witness it first hand, although I will certainly excuse those who wish to spare themselves from such an unpleasant experience. All in all, Red Eye is a forced, awkward, bombastic piece of programming which attains a level of idiocy which might otherwise be somewhat entertaining were it not for the show’s unbelievably pathetic and contemptible nature.

~Max