This is pretty much the typical political argument I always get into at work...

[Curtland1015]

Idiot Boss: Wow I tell ya, that Sarah Palin gave an impressive speech the other night!

Me: Yeah, it's real impressive the way she was able to read what someone else had written for her.

Idiot Boss: No, she wrote that herself.

Me: Of course she didn't. It's a well know fact that one of Bush's speech writer's wrote it for her.

Idiot Boss: (floundering) Well... it's no different than what Obama did. He doesn't write his speeches.

Me: Obama DID write his own speech.

Idiot Boss: Well... she made a really impressive speech the other night. (walks away)


Just the most recent example of what I deal with at work. I hate trying to talk sense into the willingly stupid. They try and argue with you right up until the point they know they're in way over their head, then they say something noncommittal (usually something like, "well, it doesn't matter who you vote for anyway...") and scurry off. It drives me up the wall!

[SheilaT]

1. All you can ever do with

idiots like that is keep on repeating the facts. It may not change them, but at least you have done something to keep them from wallowing blissfully in their ignorance.

Oh, and next time they say it doesn't matter who you vote for, agree whole-heartedly and suggest that they not vote come November.

True story: On election day in 1976, in my psychology class at the junior college I was attending, at the very beginning of class the instructor leaned on his podium and said, "I'm sure all of you here are aware that today is election day. And I hope you are all registered and plan to vote today. However, keep in mind that a low turn-out favors Republicans, and so if you're a Republican, don't vote."

I started laughing quietly, and it was clear I was the ONLY one in the classroom who got it.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. They are delusional

Your idiot boss sounds like my former idiot boss, who came in one day with the news that Obama was a Muslim and had taken his oath of office on the Qur'an. I immediately refuted this, and offered to go online to snopes, but he wouldn't have it. His preacher and Glenn Beck had told him so, and I was only an ignorant woman. I'm soooooo glad I was able to latch onto a new job where the boss and everyone else says Palin is dangerous and sets back the cause of women. (New boss and co-workers are all women, btw. And the boss is a lifelong Republican who has recently discovered "An Inconvenient Truth" and who didn't vote for Bush.)

[Wilber_Stool]

3. Would you like to know why?

Read The Authoritarians.


We meet again. If you are keeping track of my promises, as we roll along
together on the internet, I said in the Introduction that we would figure out why
authoritarian followers think in the bizarre and perplexing way they so often do. The
key to the puzzle springs from Chapter 2's observation that, first and foremost,
followers have mainly copied the beliefs of the authorities in their lives. They have
not developed and thought through their ideas as much as most people have. Thus
almost anything can be found in their heads if their authorities put it there, even stuff
that contradicts other stuff. A filing cabinet or a computer can store quite inconsistent
notions and never lose a minute of sleep over their contradiction. Similarly a high
RWA can have all sorts of illogical, self-contradictory, and widely refuted ideas
rattling around in various boxes in his brain, and never notice it.
So can everybody, of course, and my wife loves to catch inconsistencies in my
reasoning when we’re having a friendly discussion about one of my personal failures.
But research reveals that authoritarian followers drive through life under the influence
of impaired thinking a lot more than most people do, exhibiting sloppy reasoning,
highly compartmentalized beliefs, double standards, hypocrisy, self-blindness, a
profound ethnocentrism, and--to top it all off--a ferocious dogmatism that makes it
unlikely anyone could ever change their minds with evidence or logic. These seven
deadly shortfalls of authoritarian thinking eminently qualify them to follow a wouldbe
dictator. As Hitler is reported to have said,“What good fortune for those in power
that people do not think.”

I really push this book. It's a quick, entertaining read. And it's free.

[Curtland1015]

5. Wow, that is a hell of a quote!

At the risk of sounding like an infommercial, I think I'll give it a try!

[dana_b]

8. thanks!

just bookmarked it and will read soon

[Gabi Hayes]

9. here's a good, brief addendum:

Karl Rove & the Spectre of Freud’s Nephew
by Stephen Bender

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/bender2.html


"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country… We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized… "

So opens Propaganda (1928), one of several strikingly frank analyses of western social psychology written by Edward Bernays. This nephew of Sigmund Freud founded the public relations industry in the United States.

Mr. Bernays lived a fascinating life. He first got involved in high stakes politics when he "warmed up" the dour Calvin Coolidge by arranging the first presidential celebrity photo op in 1928. For the private sector, Bernays engineered a most notorious publicity stunt for the American Tobacco Company, by single-handedly neutralizing the taboo against women smoking in public. He organized a "Torches of Freedom" march down Broadway by ten smoking debutantes during the 1929 Easter Parade. With the help of feminists – some of whom understood the "right to smoke" as libratory – Bernays expertly publicized this spectacle, thus setting in motion the expected stir on op-ed pages across the land.

For Bernays, truth in public affairs did not exist per se. Rather, truth was the product of the "public relations counsel" forging prevailing "public opinion." It should be said that he readily recognized the ethical implications of his work, as witnessed in his later anti-smoking advocacy, after the dangers of cigarettes became known in the late-1950s. He could also be, in his own curious way, a humanitarian – as reflected in his work promoting the NAACP and anti-syphilis public education.

For Bernays, however, the necessity of controlling the public mind was a crucially important matter confronting the better element, a group in which he clearly included himself. In his first work, the hugely influential Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923), Bernays noted that the establishment of public education and the gradual extension of the right to vote caused consternation among western elites. The use of public relations techniques, then, was a way for the minority to "so mold the mind of the masses that they will throw their newly gained strength in the desired direction."

[tbyg52]

4. I just read this to my husband.

He wonders why he hasn't seen you around, since you obviously work in the same place.... ;)

Edited to add:

Hey, Curtland1015! Welcome to DU! :hi:

[Curtland1015]

7. Why thank you. Nice to be here.

I've been haunting this place for EVER, but I only just recently got around to registering. I love it here! I finally have some place to talk "shop" with some like minded people.

[Downtown Hound]

6. That's pretty much typical of the Republican mindset

They tune out facts that don't support their argument, and rigidly adhere to phony ones that do.