Tom: “Dear Red America. Having lived in many of your regions — geographical, psychological and economic — I used to have a lot of respect for your wisdom and fortitude. I thought I understood you, and that you often endured a lot of unfair and even prejudicial scorn. That you cannot now see through this huge tub of flaming horseshit and are willing to play dangerous games with the country’s existence is a mystery to me.”
Luke: “Come on, Tom, you can do better than this. Do you think one person who disagrees with you will be persuaded by that? Or are you only virtue signaling? People not only see the world differently, but more importantly, they experience it differently because of differing biology. How much do you believe in free will? I don’t think most people can choose their politics. It springs from their genes. I think Jonathan Haidt’s perspectives of understanding where the different sides come from is more fruitful. Why do people react differently to the same stimuli, such as Trump? It’s more important to understand than to get angry.”
Tom: “This is an expression of how disappointed I am in my countrymen, that they would let this dismal spectacle get this far.”
Luke: “Well, why have they done this? How do you understand that?”
Tom: “I confess it’s a mystery to me, because I don’t think it’s rooted in anything having to do with actual policies, as Trump has nothing coherent to say. I suspect darker motives: latent bigotry, sexism and freewheeling frustration without a clear target. It’s not a good look.”
Luke: “Come on, Tom. You can do better. Use your ability to empathize. People have different politics because they experience life differently. Outside of religious faith, there are no good guys or bad guys in the universe. There are just different forms of life competing for survival and to propagate and they use different evolutionary strategies. Here is a good liberal academic [Jonathan Haidt] who always votes Democratic expending some effort to empathize with those who view the world differently from him.”
David: “You can be an atheist utilitarian and still find room for Good and evil. Go reread Cicero.”
Luke: “Yes, but it is subjective, unless you ascribe it to a transcendent source, which requires faith, and there is no point arguing over faith.”
Tom: “That’s charitable of you, Luke, and I agree that facts are processed differently by everyone, but these kinds of awful and self-defeating political decisions need to be called out.”
Luke: “How much time have you spent in real life listening to people voting for Trump without arguing back against them, but only trying to understand? I find there is nothing human that is alien to me. With some effort, I can see where anyone is coming from and why they act and think the way they do and I can describe what they see and feel without using any negative words.”
Tom: “Luke, tons. I listened to reams of it without saying a peep while working as a reporter in Wyoming, Georgia, Utah and Arizona. I have never seen the vox populi go so wrong or ugly as this year.”
Greg: “Facts are processed by rational people. The irrational, the ones who make up the nationalist base, do not process facts but feelings. The problem begins when they demand that those feelings be given parity with facts in any kind of argument. Vox populi, indeed..”
Luke: “Nobody processes facts without regard to their genetic make-up. We all have instinctual pre-rational reactions that determine our politics. We then rationalize our instincts. Nobody just looks at the facts from a blank slate and idealistically pursues the true and the good.”
“Forgive me, Tom, if you have written this up already, but can you describe the reasons people are voting for Trump using only objective language? No slurs such as racist, bigoted, etc.”
Tom: “Luke, I can’t. I feel like I am living in a parallel reality, because Trump is such an obvious liar and sociopath that I just can’t see why a rational person would want to give him the most precious office this planet can offer.”
Luke: “Of course you can, you just don’t want to expend the effort of empathy. There is no POV on politics that I can’t articulate in objective language.”
Tom: “I have tried many times over the last 12 months and it still doesn’t make sense in the final analysis. Since you seem to have the advantage on me here, can you do it in a few sentences?”
Luke: “People with a strong disgust reflex (it is stronger on the right than on the left) have a stronger reaction against diversity.”
Tom: “So it comes down to the GI tract? Not sure about that.”
Luke: Wikipedia notes: “There is evidence that conservatives are more sensitive to disgust [7] and the insula is involved in the feeling of disgust [8] On the other hand, more ‘liberal’ students tended to have a larger volume of grey matter in the anterior cingulate cortex,[5] a structure of the brain associated with monitoring uncertainty and handling conflicting information.[5][6] It is consistent with previous research suggesting that individuals with a larger ACC have a higher capacity to tolerate uncertainty and conflicts, allowing them to accept more liberal views [9] The authors concluded that, “Although our data do not determine whether these regions play a causal role in the formation of political attitudes, they converge with previous work to suggest a possible link between brain structure and psychological mechanisms that mediate political attitudes.”
Tom: “I’ve read some biological determinalism studies on this — and keep meaning to look at the work of John Alford at Rice U. but it still doesn’t explain the gullibility. Otherwise tough-minded businesspersons in the heartland are willing to take the nation to Trump University because they have a gag reflex? WHY?”
Doug: “Luke Ford, how’s your empathy level with folks like ISIS followers who adhere to an ideology that justifies cold blooded murder in the name of their religion? Surely they have many justifications for their existential conclusions. Do you give them the same benefit of the doubt, “describing what they see and feel without using any negative words?” It seems to me that there is sometimes a manifestation of evil within the human experience that transcends our desire for tolerance and attempts at mutual understanding.”
Luke: “Evil is a statement of religious faith, which is fine. Otherwise, ISIS are just following their group interest.”
“Tom, what percentage of people do you think have free will in their political choices? I’d say almost none. We all have instinctive reactions that the more intelligent try to rationalize. Do you think half the population has free will with their political choices? Tom, do you think you have free will with your political choices?”
Tom: “I sort of see Luke’s point about group interest, though. Last night watching the debate, this quote from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein came to mind. “No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.””
Luke: “Exactly. ISIS has many reasons to believe it is doing the will of Allah. If Hitler had allowed his generals to go for Moscow in August of 1941, Germany would have won WWII and Nazism would be the dominant ideology of the West.”
“When I look back on my life, I don’t I could have ever chosen otherwise based on who I was at the time. Given who you were at the time and your level of understanding? Could you really have chosen differently?”
AR: “This is circular logic, Luke. We all could have made different choices in the past. The fact that we didn’t doesn’t obviate free will. And we’re living in the present, not the past.”
Luke: “We may think we’re living in the present, but the past is never past. I suspect that most of us most of the time have less freedom than we imagine and that we are more in the grip of our genes, our history, our social setting than we would like to admit. Freedom of choice is a faith statement, like good and evil.”
