• Party-Brain: a peculiar form of unreason – UPDATE

    I recently posted about the very unnerving fact that the Barack H Obama foundation, run by the current US President’s brother, has flattering pictures of an architect of two genocides.

    I found myself arguing against a host of minutiae, all of which seemed to be obsessed, not with the demonstrable facts (go take a look at the pics) but that this was supportive of the US right.  Now, I am willing to bet you a year’s salary that my interlocutor would not have been so quick to object if similar pictures had been found on, say the Bush foundation website, showing Jeb Bush with his arms around the leader of the Aryan Nations.

    This is something I have noticed – the influence of political party allegiance.  The party-brain replaces what is accurate with what is helpful to one’s side.  Everyone has biases of course, but they are more easily corrected if they run on ideological lines rather than allegiance to a party.   I’ve noticed that this is particularly pronounced in the US; two examples that spring to mind are Bill Maher forgetting that it was Clinton who signed DOMA (and bragged about it on Christian radio shows), or the always amusing spectacle of Sean Hannity trying to defend Falwell.  The Hitch had a good article on this: Thinking like an Apparatchik.

    Moral: There is no such thing as a collective brain.

    UPDATE: A really ripe example from this page.  What’s striking is not the flimsy arguments but the pathetic tone of “How can someone doubt our dear leader”?

    Category: Life and Reason

    Article by: The Prussian