The Right never cared when it was Bush doing it. They don’t care about civil rights; they care that he’s black and is a Democrat.
If your meaning Gitmo detainees, Bush started that and I (far from a legal expert ) cannot see how if Obama released the detainees to go back home, they would become instant heroes/martyrs to exactly what they probably were against and innocent of or pariah’s in their own community causing either their death or shunning or recruited into the terrorist network because there is no way any of those detainees do not have alot of burning hatred towards the US right now.
( their health care, outside of the torture,has to be superior to what they had back home not to mention food and shelter. yeah the room service is from Chateau Mengele. ) The Lip Service from the WhackJob religious leaders…would be a verbal blow job. They would have 72 virgins a day.
They cannot be relocated and released to the public here in the US, they would be dead sooner or later by some paranoid religious right nutter, unless they moved to Dearborn, MI. However, that would be admiting they made a mistake setting themselves up for a lawsuit and a shit-ton of flack from the Arab countries. And no one voluntarily moves to Michigan.
Personally, what should be done is the Government needs to say they were released and flown back to the homeland (some type of deal will be made with the countries to keep their fn mouths shut.) and transfer everyone to maximum security prisons all over the country in states with the Death Penalty. New ID’s and backgrounds tell them to behave for X time and they will be given a new house/bank account and everything if they keep their mouths shut forever. After a few weeks /months/whatever, have some lifer take care of the problem in exchange for a carton of cigarettes. Then the killer gets the solitary confinement and after a few years of litigation, the Death Penalty. Problem solved. No one believes a death row inmates tales.
It isn’t moral. It isn’t ethical. But the detainees are screwed. The government is screwed by policies put in place by a previous administration.
I’m sure there is a better way, but this seems tidier.
A lot of countries have managed to get rid of guns. I still remember visiting Asia and watching the news of a weapons cache seizure, it was swords and hatchets. I almost laughed out loud. No wonder they’re so skinny over there, running fast can mean never having to worry about crime.
And Democrats support it now because they think that he’s infallible and will take their devotion to the extent of cheerleading for murder. Both sides need to start acting like moral people.
That doesn’t sound like many Democrats I know of. It’s more that the choice was between Obama and Romney; not that they like Obama, much less think he’s infallible.
Obama did work briefly in the private sector, for a Chicago law firm, before becoming a State Senator.
Why is running a business such a huge asset to being a President but, say, being a community worker or a senator - or, for that matter, any of the many other jobs held by Presidents - are not? What’s so special about being a business owner? What even makes you think “business owner” is a clear concept at all? It it really the same thing running two completely different types or sizes of business? Can you even demonstrate that business owners make good Presidents? Eisenhower was a fine President, but until taking office was a career soldier who had never held a private job. Herbert Hoover was a fantastic businessman and a failure as President.
The government of the United States is not the same as any given business.
Right-wing paranoia in the US today comes from the same place it always came from, the fevered brains of Americans, who brought it from a Europe bristling with conspiracies and plots and secret societies and bloody pogroms and reigns of terrors and you-name-its. It came with us.
Do we need to draw a big fat line from the anti-Catholic societies and the Know-Nothings and the Anti-Masonic Party and the rest, to the KKK and the John Birch Society and the Minutemen, to the various cracked pots and kookmongers that infest our political culture today? Yes we do, apparently.
Fear sells. It puts asses on seats and money in donation funds. Make 'em afraid of the Papist, of the Mason, of Perfidious Albion, of the Negro, of the Anarchist, of the Communist, of the Socialist, of the Homosexual Agenda, of the Black Helicopters of the fearsome United Nations, of the Islamofascist. You will never go broke underestimating the fear of the American public. They love a good scare.
Sure, the hippies were paranoid, but as it turns out, Nixon really WAS out to get them. But the typical white Ward Cleavers of America don’t really have that much to be afraid of, not really.
Not that the fear-industrial complex is going to admit it. There’s no money in “relax.”
One Particular Study seems to indicate that liberal-types have larger forebrain structures that specialize in analyzing complexity, while conservative-types have a larger amygdala, the part of the brain dedicated to identifying threats (sometimes also lovingly known as the “lizard brain”). Yes, there are probably weaknesses in the methodology of the study, and perhaps inherent bias, but at least it reaffirms what we already thought.
The election is long over. At some point “we had to support a war criminal because he had a better health care plan than the other war criminal” will stop working as an excuse.
Can you provide a cite for this?
I have to agree that there is a fear-industrial complex, my own view on it is that whoever is affected the most depends on the time period and circumstances, it just so happens that the perfect storm of fear is taking place mostly on the right side of politics just now.
The last election in the view of many on the right just confirmed those fears, the fear monger media they rely the most is still making a lot of money.
Their larger amygdalas.
msmith537,
others have touched on the fact that this has a biological basis. fact is, it’s a huge thing. and interestingly, libertarians like me appear to be a third category but not enough research has been done on us 
for a decent summary of all kinds of cool shit, read “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion” : Jonathan Haidt
Hell, you seem to me a go getter type which means you’ll do international travel quite a bit. And also I reckon you’re the kind of chap who spreads ideas amongst people (didn’t you say you worked for McKinsey?) Next time in the UK you can have my copy if you want. Gratis. It’s that important you read it.
Yes, it would have been better to simply ask “why does the right wing believe these things”. My first reaction, probably similar to other right wingers, is to get defensive about having their beliefs labeled as “paranoid” rather than attempt to answer an honest question.
But anyway, to answer one of the questions, that some tyrannical governemnt will come in the future isn’t something that we all necessarily believe, just that it takes so little to be prepared for that eventuality, so why not. The same AR-15 that might fight tyranny in the future can be used for target shooting, hunting varments, or just collecting and having; stocking up on weapons just for tyrannical governments or SHTF scenarios is a tiny minority of even the right wingers.
Ironic, then, that liberals are the ones who fail to comprehend or properly analyze the complexity of so many issues, and who propose simple solutions to complex problems.
You must be a climate scientist. “It confirms our existing prejudices, that’s how we can tell it’s Good Science!”
[quote=“msmith537, post:1, topic:647551”]
I don’t want to make this about gun control or any other particular political topic. But based on the rantings I’ve read from various right-wing sources, there appears to be what I would almost consider a psychotic level of paranoia. Typical themes include:
[LIST]
[li]I need to protect myself and my family from some theoretical tyranical government.[/li][/QUOTE]
Just taking this first item, it comes for the Founding Fathers. Why do you think the 2nd amendment was put there?
n.b.: I don’t subscribe to this myself, but I don’t understand why it’s a mystery to understand why the 2nd amendment was put in place.
Working as a plaintiff’s civil rights attorney does not count as “private sector experience” in my book.
Yes, not all businessmen would be good presidents, and not all good presidents need be businessmen. However - conservatives believe that the incentives of the private sector are the most efficient and most effective means of generating wealth, innovation, and technological progress in society. The health of the US economy depends on the health and growth of private sector businesses, and the government depends on taking its share of the wealth created by private sector businesses in order to function. So I think someone who has experience running a business of any type, who has knowledge of the conflicting demands, pressures, and difficulties involved in running a business, is the optimal presidential candidate, independent of other factors, because fundamentally every other goal a president might want to pursue is dependent on the existence of a strong economy to support it. Most optimally would be someone who founded a business and grew it to around 500 employees. I am not so keen about people who run very small businesses, since these are often not demonstrably successful, or very large businesses, since these are usually so powerful as to be able to benefit from distortion of the market, and so large and sprawling as to be able to tolerate inefficiency and waste for quite some time before collapsing.
Obama has demonstrated that he does not understand how businesses operate, how they choose to make investments, how they choose to hire and fire employees, and so forth. I voted for him in 2008 because I naively assumed that, since he was obviously intelligent, he would at least have an academic understanding of this stuff. In practice, he does not.
I concede that there are “liberals” who sometimes react badly to things and fail to appropriately address complex situations. It seems to me that I have known LW and RW types that do not really fit the pattern. But I have not known RW types who seem to grasp complexity beyond the narrow focus they want to apply to it. Chaos theory makes conservatives’ heads hurt, all solutions must be straight-line to them, IME.
“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.” H. L. Mencken
In this case you are completely ignoring that the prejudice of the scientists for many years was that the CO2 rise was not going to be a problem, so the easiest solution was to ignore it, problem was that wile looking for ways to shot down commie planes with heat seeking missiles Plass and others were looking for the actual wavelengths and absorption lines of CO2 in different atmospheric layers, they found that the assumptions of the past were wrong.
The current consensus was the result of demonstrating to others, and with experiments, that yep, our past prejudices were wrong, it is unfortunate that currently many Republicans have decided to ignore the evidence and pump up accusations of prejudice that in reality were dealt with more than 50 years ago. They are ignoring the history of the real prejudices that were dismissed and why.
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
The simplest solution that is wrong, and coming from most Republicans, is to do nothing.
You talk like we had a third option.