Tea Party: Why Are Democrats Destroying America? Answer: Your Brain.

Conservative republican brain theory: relentless negative repetition serving as the keystone of the long term electoral and fundraising tactics of the extreme right have created permanent connections in the republican brain. These hard-wired relationships cause anger coupled with self-righteousness whenever they hear the words “Obama” or “democrat”. No kidding: say the words and watch the eyes.

OK, Here It Goes Again: we experienced another uptick of “democrats = destroy” incoming searches today, so I think it’s time to deal with the hardwired negativity neural connections problem that’s taking over the conservative right.

At first, POLITUSIC was putting these GOParanoid, “democrats destroy America” search phrases into the Bests category. It was entertaining how right wing media has convinced a small, but very loud swath of the country that democrats want to destroy America; blow up the economy, kill God, etc. At first it was entertaining, and an interesting study in the extreme right wing media machine’s ability to create enemies of all people who oppose the Tea Party purification efforts.

However, given the number of visits this website now gets from people who believe, “Democrats want to ruin America“… I’m beginning to think… well, yes… these people are serious. Serious in condition, and even more oblivious to the inverted self-fulfilling prophecy that’s created every time they spread such paranoid beliefs. As such, we can give no more free passes, and No Sympathy for buying their Tea Party Tumblers from the king of all snake oil salesmen: it’s time to get serious about this problem.

Democrats = Angry Is Hardwired Into The Tea Party Brain.

We touched on this concept earlier when addressing the root cause of us all generally being American Idiots. It’s a matter of how the brain makes permanent connections, and thereafter accesses memories. If someone shouts “destruction” and “democrat” into a person’s ear enough times, then the white matter makes that physical connection between the two grey matter parts of their brain that store those concepts. Smile = Happy, Frown = Sad, Democrats = Angry.

The brain doesn’t care if the connection is True or not; it makes the connection anyway, because the relationship has been repeated so many times.

These connections are the first step in the reality building process. Once the connections are made, relational concepts (i.e. someone says a noun and you think of the first adjective that comes to mind) are more like an addiction, or the plumbing in your upstairs bathroom than they are a matter of free will and on-the-spot rationalization.

This is precisely what has happened to the extreme right-wing brain ever since Obama was elected President (the first time): they have been hardwired to neurally relate “democrats” and “Obama” with every possible negative adjective or verb that the right wing media has been able to shout at them more than three times.

The word connections pounded into their heads, via their televisions and car radios by their beloved right-wing media have become soldered into their heads (Smile = Happy, Frown = Sad, Democrats = Angry). The result is that they have been removed from the political and cultural reality that exists outside of the republican news bubble.

What the Tea Party feels is very much their personal reality, it’s just not reality for all the rest of us… admittedly, nor is the reality of a daily Daily Kos reader the same as the rest of the country – therein cozily hides our problem: sneaking in between the inner-self-built realities of political party activists.

A Decade of Republican Negative Word Association And Its Impact On The Tea Party Brain.

As long as we’re discussing how the republican brain works, something that’s even more telling about Tea Party tenacity is the issue of negative word overload, and how that can impact the brain’s ability to manage emotions. NO positive words have come out of the GOP since even before Obama was elected; possibly 2 full decades. None. George W. Bush’s time was riddled with fear-mongering, and hate of Other. His father was all about “evil”, and during Bubba Clinton the republican message was wholly negative campaigning as their election strategy (mainly due to the children’s book, and he’ll-give-you-an-award-if-you-pay-for-it Pusherman, Newt GingRich). The GOP brain has been browbeaten with decades of apocalyptic messaging.

The business of republicanism never promotes a positive or optimistic image. It promotes fighting against impending Doom. It promotes being angry and fighting against democrats.

GOParanoid hits its base over their heads with stories of the destruction, and the end their lives. It really is scary if you listen to it. Once the GOP marketing imagery has an adequate number of dragons and fire raining from the sky, they demand “for the sake of freedom itself” that those people who are causing the alleged destruction (i.e. The Enemy) must be conquered by any means possible. What constitutes “The Impending Doom” that the Republican Party creates for its fundraising efforts changes all the time. It might be the Democratic Party, a blue dress, gun regulations, Saddam, healthcare, the EPA, logic, lightbulbs, LISTERINE, a vaccine, the EPA again, or Al Qaeda – no matter what the target is for the week, the methodology is always the same:

1. Paint a doomsday picture of the future;
2. Tag the Enemy as the cause;
3. Say the Enemy is un-American;
4. Declare a moral war on the Enemy;

Words are important. Context is important.

If over exposed, negative words cause damage to the republican brain and, importantly, one’s ability to control emotions. The result? On one side of the reaction spectrum, a lack of emotional control causes temper tantrums; on the other side, impotence.

(Now think: “Republicans in Congress”. See? Connections in the brain.)

The Republican Base Has Battered Person Syndrome.

The Republican Party base has battered people syndrome; triggered by the deep emotional turmoil sprouted from years of negative messaging bull fertilizer that’s been scattered on the extreme right-wing fields of America. All the behavior we see (like the poorest states in the country who need it the most are rejecting Medicaid expansion, because of the label “Obamacare”) is textbook battered syndrome behavior. Even when the GOP tries to motivate or compliment its base, they wrap it in a negativity blanket to keep the base afraid of going outside of the republican bubble.

Since 2008, the talking points keywords from republicans have been: death panels, job killer, freedom killer, train wreck, infiltrate, deny, destroy, undermine, liar, Nazis, terrorism, take away, un-American, disaster, slavery, secretive, mass destruction, war … … The closest I can find to a positive talking point from the GOP is, “Create Jobs” (even taxes get cut). However, “Create Jobs” is always surrounded by other words like “killer” and “disaster” at far greater rates… because they can’t help themselves: hardwired. Being pounded by that much negativity messes up the brain and makes them terrified to leave their abuser.

The most beaten within the Tea Party, for example, don’t really love Freedom as an ideal – if they did, then their policy positions would be very, very different. No… they don’t love Freedom… they deeply hate anyone who they believe are not practicing their own conception of how one ought behave who is blessed with freedom. It’s a huge difference. Freedom as an Ideal vs. Republicanland’s personalized mutation of it.

Mutating moral concepts from “Human Universal” to “Individual Only” is the root cause of most of the hypocrisy we see in America. Consequently, it’s also the cause of the confusion we see when a Tea Party brain is confronted with situations that place their Individual Only “values” into a broader context applicable to other people. Concepts that apply to all people like Freedom, Morality, Social Responsibility, Kindness, etc. in a Tea Party brain exist only inside the Republican Self, not as a Universal Value for all people (all those other people in the United States who the Tea Party tries to deny even exist; especially when it comes to political polls). The GOP Values mutation into “Individual Only” is why they can’t see how, nor why so many of the policies they push restrict and violate Freedom rather than expand or protect it. That’s also how the right wing machine blocks the Tea Party base from accepting – or even hearing about – outside ideas, problems, or solutions. It’s the cause of the deer in the headlights look when confronted with explicit contradiction and hypocrisy running rampant in the conservative right.

Democrats Do Not Wish To Destroy The World. Show’s Over. You Can All Go Home Now.

Ever since the government shutdown of 2013, the far right has increased its destruction searches. That makes sense, and I don’t blame them, really, seeing as Fox News is bending its own brainstem trying to spin the blame. In one segment they call it a “slimdown”, then immediately thereafter they have an exploding graphic with the header “Obama’s Shutdown” and the sound of a dropping anvil in the background. If I watched too much Fox news I’d be confused, too.

To the angry people within the extreme right wing, we’ll tell you again: democrats do not want to destroy America. Get over yourselves. Honestly. It’s tiresome. Voting for a democrat doesn’t automatically register you as a Friend Of The Devil. The devil in this scenario simply wants you to buy his books, and that requires creating an enemy to boost sales. I’m known to get wrapped up in a good narrative, too, but damn people – it’s time to come back to Earth and realize what’s happening. You’re basically in the middle of a very intense blue light special on black friday with Rush Revere controlling the doors to the store.

Whoever is telling you these paranoid theories is trying to sell ad time, and they’re trying to sell books… all you have to do is stop buying. It’s that simple. Stop the cycle, break the connections. Stop buying into the self-perpetuating nightmare of super-conservatism.

Do democrats disagree with some republican policies? Yes. Of course they do. That’s democracy. Are they trying to destroy the world? No! It’s absurd. Just because someone doesn’t agree with you does not mean they’re trying to destroy that belief. If it’s that easy to destroy what you believe, then you should re-evaluate why you believe it in the first place – because the House of Cards belief isn’t very strong.

That seems to be the biggest Tea Party hurdle to governing, which is why they fight with such insane, Alamo-like vigor on every political issue: in their minds opposition equals destruction. That’s why they are behaving the way they are in Congress. Accepting opposition requires understanding grey, but the Tea Party sees only in black and white. Their thought process is: “Since democrats or “Rhinos” don’t support me, my conclusion is they are trying to destroy America!” – there is no middle with these people, no compromise. No reason.

The media fabricated the enemy, and then perpetuated the fable into an out of control Republianland reality that is running off the rails to the point where they can’t even agree with one another anymore. All the while, the businesses of republicanism are pushing, pushing, pushing for monetization of politics – doing so without understanding that in lighting fire under the GOParanoid, they are creating their own Endless Fall by addicting themselves to the negativity, the fervor, and the money it all creates. It’s sort of fascinating to watch: the Don’t Tread On Me Snake is eating its own tail.

Living in a democracy means that we work with people who have different beliefs. Just because I support A, and I do not support B does NOT mean I want to DESTROY B. The world is not black and white, it’s Blue and Green. Get over the destruction fetish, people.

Here on Earth we’re not in Heaven. Nor are we in Hell. We’re in all the complicated places in between. We’re in the middle of the point where life starts and its guaranteed end; during which time compromise happens because that’s what we must do to survive. The world is not a binary system of exist or be destroyed. Many different ideas co-exist in a large society, which is why we do things like vote and respect majority rule… except maybe those in the Tea Party who now appear incapable of understanding democracy, because the word starts with “Dem”.

Break the cycle. Stop the Crazy: Vote Blue.