The Pied Pipering of America
We’ve all heard the old world story about the Pied Piper—the one where the elders hire the colorful clown to rid the village of pesky rats and when there’s a payment dispute the Pied Piper plays the magic flute once again. But this time he leads the villagers’ naïve children to their death. Historians say it’s a symbolic retelling of the Black Death during the dark ages.
Is America being led into a new dark age? Some say we are and point to our increasing ills: a corrupt Supreme Court privately entertained by corporations, White House-sanctioned torture, economic growth based on the perpetual selling of debt, increased reliance on finite resources, political agendas financed by big business and the Reaganomic elimination of the middle class.
Who are the Pied Pipers leading the American death march? Who’s paying these pipers? But more importantly, who are the naïve followers of the piper?
The Republican masses can be likened to lemmings. They are easily manipulated into followship pacts even when the end result or cause is nonsensical. This is primarily due to a common education level and conservative conditioning.
The education breakdown of the Republican population fits into a Gaussian distribution curve that is centered at the high school level. Since the bulk of the Republican followship has a mid-level education there is a lack of critical thinking typically associated with higher education. In contrast, the Democrat population has a bimodal distribution with peaks occurring in the disenchanted and critical thinking areas— these groups lack a followship mentality.
In addition, Cognitive Science tells us that Republicans have an authoritarian mind set. Their hierarchical structure begins with God and descends to country, father, mother, children, pets and so on. This conservative conditioning creates obedience, especially toward authoritarian leaders.
The Pied Pipering of America has been made easy by the Republican Party. Their authoritarian conditioning and lack of critical thinking creates a simple-minded mass followship. This is a Pied Piper’s dream. With a single playing of the political flute the whole group can be steered toward the highest bidder.
How do we fix this? Should we fix this?
-Roger Ingalls
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Roger Ingalls is well travelled and has seen the good and bad of many foreign governments. He hopes his blogging will encourage readers to think more deeply about the American political system and its impact on US citizens and the international community.
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I have 2 points of disagreement with you.
First one Is the education issue your chart actually shows that Democrats successfully draw on 2 different groups. A less educated group, that often is at the lower end of the wage scale and more likely in need of government assistance from time to time. They are susceptible to mass market appeal and are more likely to accept someone based on an emotion reaction. Soundly like Followship to me. And a more educated group, that by definition are part of academia. I say by definition because to earn a doctorate you must conduct original research and publish in the accepted academic journals. They depend in large part on government funds to do that research. The very natural of peer review, i.e. having enough colleagues agree with their view points to get published makes them very susceptible to group think. Once again there is more Followship. So in the end the Democrats are equally as likely, and in some ways more likely follow each other than Republicans. Because of their dependence on government they are also following their pocket book, as Democrats have historically increased government spend to bride voters in both camps.
Second point of disagreement is about the authoritarian mind set stemming from a top down world view beginning with God. Let’s take a quick look at God. God wants worship from those who chose him. If you believe in God, you believe that we were created with free will. That we all have a spark of the divine that even God respects to make decisions. So a belief in God leaded you in the end to leave others alone and respect their choices. Academics aggregate and approximate solutions from a large pool of data, until they come to what they see, as defendable and publishable conclusions by removing the un-need. God not needed and god is gone. Free will is not needed, so instinct and social conditioning take over. This makes them prone to cookie cutter solutions that ignore people’s rights. Which view sound more prone to authoritarianism and Followship. You guessed it Democrats.
Will-
Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it…not too many people wants to be controversial.
Here are my random comments in return: 1) I’ve been involved with a lot of PhDs and their original work (I’ve hired a crap load) and there is nothing friendly or followship-like in a peer review process, it’s actaully quite the opposite and down right hostile. 2) Most funding for academia (original work) is now corporate funded–something like 70% and not through gov grants and this has becoming a big problem, very slanted. 3) I’m not sure how you define “increase gov spend” but it is well documented the Republican administrations grossly out spend Democrats, this point can’t really be argued unless I misunderstood what you meant. 4) The whole God-Authoritarian-Conservative-Followship thing I just took and ran with it because it fit my argument. My studies are more in the physical sciences and not in life sciences so I can’t really argue from an educated point of view–I just used the prevailing thoughts of the psycho-science guys. Actually, I’m not a big believer in the psycho-studies but it fit my case so I used it!
Thanks for the feedback-
Roger.
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