How do you negotiate with crazy people?

[andrewducker]

• 67 percent of Republicans (and 40 percent of Americans overall) believe that Obama is a socialist.
• 57 percent of Republicans (32 percent overall) believe that Obama is a Muslim
• 45 percent of Republicans (25 percent overall) agree with the Birthers in their belief that Obama was "not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president"
• 38 percent of Republicans (20 percent overall) say that Obama is "doing many of the things that Hitler did"
• Scariest of all, 24 percent of Republicans (14 percent overall) say that Obama "may be the Antichrist."

From

I mean, I know a lot of, say, Conservatives in the UK have beliefs I don't agree with.  But the vast majority of them, so far as I can tell, just have different experiences to me, and different opinions about how things should be organised.  They don't believe that the leader of the oppositon is the fucking antichrist, or other things that can be disproved by 30 seconds with Google.

Comments

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

You don't negotiate.

You say, "Hey we have at least another nine months of a majority in both houses of Congress, so fuck you all, we are going to push our legislation through. If you'd like to be part of the process, fine, but if you are just going to say 'no' to everything we try to do, fuck off, we'll win anyway."

[wildeabandon.livejournal.com]

ISTR there was a similar story going around a little while ago, and a closer look at the polling methodology revealed it to be deeply suspect. I'm inclined to reserve judgement until I know a lot more.

[asim.livejournal.com]

I list 3 other polls with similar results in a comment here. I assure you others can be found with a brief search in Google, as I did.

[matgb]

I just went to look; 2K+ people surveyed by Harris, who I respect enough.

I'll look at the proper methodology when I've time, but odds are it's wrong because it's taking the numbers from registered Repubs, which isn't the same thing as those who voted repub.

[simont]

Obama is "doing many of the things that Hitler did"

... eating, sleeping, attending meetings, participating in the process of government, being commander in chief of his nation's armed forces, ...

[andrewducker]

I hear he also loves dogs. Clearly he _is_ Hitler!

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

...attempting to rejuvenate the economy and give people jobs, diverges from the prevailing ideal racist aesthetic, charismatic, from Hawaii/Austria, widely depicted making a specific "extreme" hand gesture...

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

Thank you! You and I had the same thought...

[meihua.livejournal.com]

Wow, those simpletons are fucking idiots, right?

Well, no.

Their idea of "political engagement" is different. They don't really care much who is in Washington as long as that person gets the hell off their lawn, in every sense. They aren't particularly interested in whether or not that person's a socialist, or a Muslim, or whatever. What seems like a really important distinction to us is irrelevant to them and it's not based on the same level of judgement. It's more like asking, "Is Tom Cruise a golfer?" Well, uh, I dunno. Don't have a clue, don't really care. Maybe? I'd probably tick a box marked "might be a golfer".

And the mainstream political discourse completely excludes them. It's all about "is this plan or that plan good for the nation". But most of them couldn't give a fuck about this or that plan - they don't want any plans at all, they want Washington to shut the hell up and stop giving them plans.

So when the few people who understand that, who speak to them, say, "Hell with these damn Washington politicans and their socialism", then, well, obviously that's who they'll listen to. "Socialism" is redefined to mean "Letting my neighbours use my lawn". "Facism" is redefined as "Telling me what to do with my lawn".

It's perfectly reasonable and I'm sure that if I lived in the South and had similar political priorities, I'd come out with some of the same kind of things.

Ok, so some of the antichrist stuff is harder to swallow.

But damn if I'm not fed up of this kind of "haha lol they so stupid" analysis of the voting priorities of those who have been identified as "Republican".

[andrewducker]

Nobody is judging every Republican. I'm talking about the 45% who believe he has no right to govern because he was born abroad (with no evidence to back this up). The 57% who think that because he's got a funny name and a different colour of skin he must be a Muslim. The 34% who believe that a mythical source of all evil sent him to earth to bring about the apocalypse.

If people want to have a small government and think that voting Republican will get them it then they're merely completely ignorant of actual behaviour of the previous Republican administrations. If they want to believe blatant lies and idiocy then they deserve to be called on that.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

That's very interesting. Even though I'm still anxious about some of those statistics (even if the real proportions are much lower), I was literally unsure how some of those points took hold, and that's a good explanation of how someone could be thinking (that I might or might not still think it's awful, but at least can understand what people DO want, rather than just treat them as incomprehensibly hopeless).

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

They aren't particularly interested in whether or not that person's a socialist, or a Muslim, or whatever.

No, sorry, you're wrong here. This is dead fucking serious to a lot of Americans. America has had exactly one President who wasn't a Protestant Christian, and we killed him, and I think it'll be a long time before we get another. Mitt Romney's religion (he's a Mormon) is a major factor in why he's unlikely to be run by the Republicans. Religion in American politics--religion in America, period!--matters in a way that you probably have trouble understanding on a visceral level. It is flat out not equivalent to "golfing" in the way that you wrote it off to be.

We're still fighting about whether evolution versus "God created it all" ought to be taught in our public schools because of religious beliefs. Ditto "abstinence only" sex education vs. education that actually teaches things, ditto whether or not pharmacists have a religious right to not dispense prescribed medicine that they have a religious objection to, ditto the place of homosexuals in society (second class citizen or "to be converted"?), ditto ad nauseum.

You asked in another comment whether or not, if you went into the US and asked people, you'd really find 14 out of a 100 people who said that President Obama "may be the Antichrist"?

The answer is: In some areas you'd find far fewer than that. In other areas you'd find it to be a widespread, hardheld conviction. Of course the same thing can be said in America about snakehandling, spontaneous healings, speaking in tongues, feng shui, the imminent Apocalypse, and people rising from the dead.

Do they really?

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

Thanks to evangelism, belief to many Americans seems to be an active thing, rather than a result of evidence and experience. I think most of them choose to "believe" this crap, much as they pray for more faith in God.

Not necessarily crazy just wrongly informed

[pigeonhed.livejournal.com]

1) as defined by their main media sources he is a 'socialist'
2) and 3) they get told this by supposedly reputable sources. Our conservatives are equally lied to by The Daily mail, telegraph, etc.
4) Whilst not defending all of Hitler's policies in any way, as I understand it he did bring in policies to bring Germany out of the depression that were considered perfectly reasonable at the time. The issue is the extrapolation of 'bad man does good and bad things therefore anyone who does same good things will do same bad things' which is again down to media spin.
5) He might be, you never know...

Actually large numbers of the UK population believe easily disproved things on the EU, Immigration, Single Mothers, Climate Change, etc.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

You are in a minority. Most people do not and come to an informed, logical opinion about politics. They form opinions based on gossip, hearsay or even media headlines. This is not unique to the US, it is the same over here and probably in every other country in the world.

[andrewducker]

I know this. And it makes me angry.

Is that a problem?

[meihua.livejournal.com]

I should probably reply to the actual title of your post! :)

> How do you negotiate with crazy people?

First you stop calling them crazy and understand the context.

Then you find common ground and work from that. Most people are angry at the control that big business has over Congress. Common ground, excellent, get together on opposing lobbyists. I think that's one of the biggest deals at the moment and I don't understand why the Left isn't hand in hand with the Tea Party movement protesting it together.

[andrewducker]

Thank you - that was exactly what I was looking for :->

[d-c-m.livejournal.com]

24 percent of Republicans (14 percent overall) say that Obama "may be the Antichrist."
Uh no, that was George W. Bush. Cheney is an archduke from Hell.

Seriously.

;)

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Americans are batshit insane.

[andrewducker]

I'm telling Erin you said that!

[phillipalden.livejournal.com]

One word - Insanity.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I thought about this a bit and compared it to my reaction and the reaction to many serious leftist Americans to Shrub. We use different language, but several of those points sound like they amount to believing that Obama is not a legitimate president and that he's a horrifically bad one.

In fact, on one point, "38 percent of Republicans (20 percent overall) say that Obama is "doing many of the things that Hitler did", if asked that question about Shrub, I would have responded yes in the sense that I saw a whole lot of proto-fascism in his rhetoric and his policies.

What's different here are several points. First off all, many of these people are confusing facts (claims about Obama being a Muslim or not a US citizen) with opinion, and also while I know a whole lot of people who (like myself) believe that Shrub was the worst US president in a century, believing that Obama may be the anti-christ is a seriously greater level of distrust and dislike than any but a tiny fringe of nutty leftists.

So, what I mostly see is a combination of several factors:

Far greater numbers of people oppose Obama than opposed Shrub, which is clearly driven by the fact that the far-right has a much larger mass media presence that the far left.

The people have a strong tendency to confuse facts and opinions.

Many of these people feel a level of hatred and fear regarding Obama that is substantially greater than any but an exceptionally tiny number of people felt about Shrub.

The result of these three factors means that these people's ideas are self-reinforcing, they are largely impervious to reason, and there a far greater likelihood that some of them are going to get violent. Combine this with the obvious racism, homophobia, and similar hatreds common to many, or perhaps most of these people, and the odds of violence are even higher. In short, these people scare me.

[andrewducker]

They scare me too. I understand (at least partially) the reason why they are the way they are, but I'm still angry, frustrated, and scared by the whole tihng.

[cromarty.livejournal.com]

A security guard in Westfield shopping centre in Shepherd's Bush told me Obama was the anti-Christ because he saw me carrying the man's autobiography. He was perfectly serious about it. These views are not just present in America.

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

45 percent of Republicans (25 percent overall) agree with the Birthers in their belief that Obama was "not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president"

Do they know where John McCain was born?

(And, yes, Senator McCain was quite eligible to be President.)

[0olong.livejournal.com]

The fact you think Google can prove Obama is not the Antichrist just goes to show what an America-hating socialist you are.