the GOP speaks, and so does the unconscious

Speaking of new Soviet men, The GOP Speaks continues to be a fantastic resource on authoritarian thinking. Short version – chap writes to every county- and state-level Republican chairman in the US and asks them to fill in a questionnaire. Blogs the results as they come in. Here’s number 26.

1) So long as it’s in the opposition, where should the Republican Party focus its energy?

Our first priority should be to stop his legislative agenda.

Second we should work to win as many seats as possible in2010.

Fair enough.

2) What is the most worrisome part of Barack Obama’s presidency?

Without question the country has elected a marxist that hates capitalism and liberty

Something does not work with mai cortex, egad!
An interesting event happens between questions 1 and 2, doesn’t it? His response to question 1 is eminently rational, but the next one is objectively crazy. It doesn’t get any better as the questions go on, either.

One explanation here would be that he answered the question about tactics having thought about it, and then switched off. I don’t think so – the language in the following questions suggests someone getting more and more excited emotionally, more and more engaged.

In fact, I think he started thinking after question 1. As far as political tactics went, he was able to answer in the way we use physical skills – a set of gestures and rules that we internalise to the extent that we don’t think about them.

If you agree with the thesis of Max Blumenthal‘s Republican Gomorrah (and I agree that’ll be a grade one on WhoseKidAreYou) and others like Eric Altemeyer, the US rightwing can be seen as a network of group therapy institutions, repurposed for political ends.

The importance of conversion experiences suggests that they are consciously or unconsciously seeking people who need an external cause to stabilise their personalities; adhering to the cult of personality offers emotional relief, and being given a role to carry out offers validation. The tasks involved are essentially arbitrary, but in this case they are those of a political field operation. Blumenthal goes so far as to suggest that James Dobson’s notorious advice on parenting might even be intended to create more raw material.

That would also suggest that external causes of social insecurity are very important to the movement; no wonder the first item on his checklist was to oppose the legislative agenda. And I think I’ve said before that there’s a lot to be said for the tactics of no; with some money, not many activists, and a lot of no, the teabaggers managed to hold the media’s attention across the whole summer.

But once he completed his actions on encountering a question, code execution continued from the return value…

It is not about race it is about ideology Justice Thomas, Thomas Sowell, Condi Rice, Micheal Steele, Alberto Gonzales and many others on the right are ignored or destroyed by the left but never celebrated….No….It is viable. If you talk the talk walk the walk….Liberty is sacred if they can come for me soon enough they can come for you

Each section between ellipses is the answer to a question. As the excitement mounts, the punctuation disappears – perhaps a handy rough indicator of cognitive load.