Remember long ago in 2007 when a rookie senator from Illinois used a paltry hundred million dollars in seed money he got from Wall Street and other Joe Moneybags special interests to build his own cult of personality? Remember how the media gushed about his ability to recruit young people from college campuses and enlist them into a virtual army to win the caucus states?
Ever wonder how so many smart kids could be so fucking stupid?
Study: Many college students not learning to think critically
An unprecedented study that followed several thousand undergraduates through four years of college found that large numbers didn’t learn the critical thinking, complex reasoning and written communication skills that are widely assumed to be at the core of a college education.
Many of the students graduated without knowing how to sift fact from opinion, make a clear written argument or objectively review conflicting reports of a situation or event, according to New York University sociologist Richard Arum, lead author of the study. The students, for example, couldn’t determine the cause of an increase in neighborhood crime or how best to respond without being swayed by emotional testimony and political spin.
There’s the answer.
Filed under: Barack Obama, General, Presidential Election 2008, zombies | Tagged: Obamanation |
The Confluence 
Maybe some people don’t like being called racists all the time.
Note the fact that “white men” are being identified as a group that needs to be marketed to more effectively so that they will once again choose the Democratic Corporate Brand. Who cares about policy, issues, or the real needs of citizens, or efficient and effective government… that stuff is so boring and too hard to think about. Propaganda (PR, media spin, pro pundits), on the other had, is fun and easy to do.
The triumph of PR over policy
They might start by not declaring that they don’t need vast groups of working class voters, or by restraining the need to vilify people who ask questions, like “Joe the plumber.”
I think it will be a long time before working and middle class people forget what happened to that guy.
I think they lost a big portion of a generation.
John Lewis was a loyal Hillary supporter who was hit upon for not throwing his backing to the One. As a result he was threatened with loss of his seat, and he went into hiding. Eventually, he succumbed to the candidate whose life experience was so different from his that even being half-African was always an advantage. Lewis’s payback was to introduce the Ted Kennedy video at the Convention so that a living legacy of the Civik Rights movement could be associated with the One.
Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) said Democrats need to “go all out” to win back white Southern voters before the next election.
Hey, maybe they should nominate a token white woman.
lol, yeah that might work
hmmmm, those voters voted for Hillary Clinton, (yup all those Joe six pack voters who were supposed to hate her) same as white women did. Then they all got called racist while stealing their votes in MI and FL. Wonder why they would possibly leave the party? Or maybe it is just because Donna Brazille said those voters were not needed.
In addition the president that was forced on us is NOT acting like a democrat. Where is the freaking disconnect folks?
Maybe this would help… (/snark)
What happens when mom unplugs teens for 6 months? http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110118/ap_on_hi_te/us_fea_parenting_teens_unplugged
Perhaps a better explanation…
The Disadvantages of an Elite Education – Our best universities have forgotten that the reason they exist is to make minds, not careers http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-disadvantages-of-an-elite-education/
Says it all!
The line I use on facebook that pretty much shuts up any Obot is:
Progressives don’t stand with the people, they exist to campaign for Obama, no matter how much lip service they might give to the contrary. The elite wins every time because non-elites allow themselves to be divided and conquered. Men win because women allow themselves to be divided and conquered. It’s a sad thing to watch happen in real time.
That’s a great line. I will steal it.
But that paradox has haunted the left since the 19th century. Perhaps earlier.
This is why Bismarck could allow the peasants to vote. Often, the peasants were even more conservative than he was!
It makes sense for peasants to be conservative — change is rarely for the better in their experience. There’s always some rich nobles spouting off beautiful words, and in the end it’s the crops they planted that get trampled, the huts they live in that get burned, their children that get dragged off to fight for the noble causes.
Many a revolution has ended up with lots of dead peasants and a more repressive government than the one it replaced.
You don’t have to be young to be unable to think critically.
But in the end, it didn’t really matter. The Obama campaign circumvented the analytical portion of the brain and went straight for the amygdala. It appealed to boomers who came of age in the civil rights era and the Vietnam War and just before the feminist movement really took off. They scared the bejesus out of young women who worry about their reproductive rights. And they appealed to young, naive voters who thought they were smart and sexy and popular because they were the ones they were waiting for. It was like some political psychologist had mapped out all of the archetypes in the left’s psyche. And the left fell for it hook, line and sinker, just like any Bush lover would have done in 2000 and 2004.
The last thing the Obama camp wanted was for voters to think critically. That’s why they amped up the drama. It was all gut. And the mob was swayed and voted everything away.
I always go with my gut. Paraphrasing Wimpy, I’d gladly pay you tomorrow for a hamburger today.
Yeah, but when you go into debt servitude to get an edjucayshun they oughta teach you that critical thinking stuff.
My point is that even the best educated with plenty of critical thinking skills falls victim to the the right emotional manipulation.
I still contend that if you grew up fundy and managed to resist it, you are probably immunized against it to some extent. You know when someone is pushing your buttons to make you convert.
The question is, did the Obama supporters learn anything or are they just as vulnerable as before?
There should be a word for that trait- vulnerability to emotional manipulation. There probably is and I’m just not thinking of what it is…
Jonathan Raban had an article in the London Review of Books explaining that attending an Obama primary event was, for progressives, the kind of emotional experience equivalent to attending black or evangelical churches — and he thought that was a wonderful new experience for these voters. At the time I thought — well, if you’d spent time in black and evangelical churches, as I did as a child, you wouldn’t find the experience so extraordinary and maybe you’d be better able to look more on Obama with more skepticism.
I think that article spoke both to the campaign’s emotional manipulation and to the disconnect between the experiences of Obama’s younger urban intellectual elite supporters and the voters in those racist states (Appalachians, you know) who might still be liberal, Democratic or even “progressive” but who’d been exposed to that kind of manipulation before.
It also raised the question for me of just who is the racist then: the young white voter who’s never been to a black church and finds it all so fascinating, in the way an anthropologist might, or the older white voter who has participated in that part of African-American culture and yet rejects that form of faith and politicking.
It isn’t just undergrads either. There are plenty of people getting doctorate degrees (especially in the social sciences and humanities) that aren’t stellar critical thinkers, either. Hell, there are PROFESSORS I’ve had who weren’t.
Ditto. I’ve met a lot of phds who did their best work in graduate schools and are just coasting now. Even sciencey types do not necessarily apply their critical thinking skills to the wider world.
Graduate school or early years after that can burn you out too. You’re worked like a slave and you’re pushed and you try to make a name for yourself, and you end up brain fried. I have a lot of math friends like that.
If you ever wondered why your math professors are absent minded, or have abstracted away the entire concept of matching outfits (stripes and plaids anyone), you know why. There’s nothing left up there.
http://www.openculture.com/2010/09/the_illustrated_guide_to_a_phd.html
I went to a 40K/yr college to learn me some engineering, now I are one.
I had to tell my professors that pi are round.
I like pi
to how many places?
As many places as I can find them. Esp. the cherry ones.
Cornbread are square.
What’s the square root of cornbread?
Since obama apparently HAD to win, I am thankful for the way over the top Hillary-hate that started right away – it forced me to look closer at obama and what was going on.
It meant I didn’t fall for the targeted BS.
I wonder how the 24×7 kid targeted programming/commercials have played with their ability to discern?
I’m in that demographic. If I hadn’t already been a strong Clintonista, Obama’s campaign would have pushed a lot of my buttons; did anyway, actually.
Hard to believe that anyone would fake all that good stuff….
“It was like some political psychologist had mapped out all of the archetypes in the left’s psyche. And the left fell for it hook, line and sinker, just like any Bush lover would have done in 2000 and 2004.”
Actually, it was George Lakoff (Prof of linguistics at UCB and consultant to the Dem Party) and his Rockridge think tank (which closed shop once BO got elected). I heard Lakoff say outright in an interview (before the 2008 election) that the Dems needed a leader who could connect emotionally to the masses:
http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/10/27_lakoff.shtml
Lakoff: “Rockridge’s job is to reframe public debate, to create balance from a progressive perspective. It’s one thing to analyze language and thought, it’s another thing to create it. That’s what we’re about. It’s a matter of asking ‘What are the central ideas of progressive thought from a moral perspective?'” […]
“…especially white men” Great, John Lewis, you can’t ask for my southern white woman vote? You’re as spineless as your president who never asked for women’s vote after the great primary, but expected it, or didn’t give a damn about it. Probably the latter.
Also, you’re tres tranparent as you’re scared, at this late junction, that the white men’s vote has departed the party. It left beginning with the republican’s “Southern Strategy” way back when.
No way will that tepid “going all out” to win back Southern voters bring me back to the party. That ’08 dem primary will come back to bite you in the a$$, Obamabots, for a long, long time.
Rep. Giffords voted for John Lewis for minority leader of the House. Go figure.
If your other option is Nancy Pelosi, I can kind of understand.
How exactly do they expect to “go all out to win back the Southern white male vote?” Let me guess: adopting even MORE GOP policies.
Ding, ding, ding!
I see you were ready for the old standby: “do you have a link for that”. 🙂
I’d put money on that.
And, if they can contain themselves, not calling us “racists”. It a sure way to get our backs up and we’ll have to rebel.
I remember all that energy, and where they put it. Just hope in 2012 , they remember that he didn’t bring the CHANGE they were seeking.
Good old turncoat Lewis.
Our democracy absolutely depends on a citizenship that can separate fact from hearsay. A new generation of Americans voted for a clueless slumlord lawyer with no resume, no record of public service, competence or success, with no demonstrated ability to deliver – because he was packaged to look COOL. An explosive combination when manipulated by a corrupted DNC or any charismatic personality with money and power.
My first real exposure with political critical thinking was in a 60s high school English/debating class where we learned how to research any topic, persuade, argue the facts, and tear down arguments. Now they just put up posters in the hallways with pictures of Obama dressed like FDR.
And hand out tee shirts, don’t forget the tee shirts. Together We Bamboozle.
Well, I remember “good old turncoat Lewis” when he announced that he’d decided to switch sides, from supporting HRC to worshipping at the feet of The One.
He had the ashen grey color Black people get when every ounce of blood has drained from their faces, and one could almost see the pistol pointed at his temple, from just off camera (figuratively speaking, of course…)
The Bots had threatened to primary him if he didn’t switch to Obama. So he switched, and two Bots primaried him anyway. He won, with more votes than the two of them combined.
I think there were death threats against Lewis too just as there were for Tavis Smiley who went into hiding for a while. And let’s not forget the Stephanie Tubbs Jones death which occurred on Aug 28th — coincidentally just before the Denver Convention.
O/T … I’m so tired. A long (mostly fun) day of morning-post-writing, babysitting, grocery shopping, parent-checking, SIL visiting and Library Knitting. OK — that is crazy. I never do that much in one day (I never do that much in one week!)
No wonder I’m exhausted.
Did I miss anything exciting?
Just the aliens landing.
Can I give them my mother in law?
Are you trying to start an interstellar war?
(laughing) If it works.
You’d probably end up with some alien’s mother-in-law in exchange.
Is that a warning? Because it sounds more like a promise to me.
The term is “upgrade”
🙂 …. I wonder where I should drop her off…..
(dreaming)
White males?
He got the color wrong.
It’s blue, as in blue collar, punch the clock, working stiffs.
As to the Obama thugs that overran the caucuses, they’re the same type as the “Brooks Brothers” rioters back in 2000 down in Florida. Young republicans, frustrated because all the leadership position were filled in their local college chapter.
And because of all that, now matters are worse. We now have a bipartisan commitment to siphon off the last resources for the bloated owners and bankrupt the country. Well done people. {goes back to drinking}
Who, me worry?
The One will secure their vote.
Lewis may be the first of the Congressional Black Caucus to discover what the Abolitionists proved about them: White women, like HRC and her spouse, put them where they were and “Black Power” was supposed to be deployed as a resource to support their successors. Instead of holding the door for their generous sister, they cut her off at the threshhold, jumped in ahead of her and slammed the door in her face. Now they recognize the “Party” they were so ungentlemanly to shove her out of ain’t much of a party without HER and the girls she would have brought with her.
…and face it: for all his tough talk, Obama’s a first order PANSY with nothing more than weights and a basketball to show for his fighting spirit. When he doesn’t get his way, he whines like his Grandmother’s Little Prince until he makes some goons push his resisters around enough to deliver for him. Whatever happened to the concept of the PRESIDENT DELIVERING FOR us?