According to Adorno, in psychoanalysis only the exaggerations are true. If you wished to characterize the Democrats and the Republicans in terms of true exaggerations, you might say that the Republicans have become the Party of Psychosis while the Democrats have become the Party of Neurosis. The Republicans are psychotic because they have lost contact with reality, and orient their behavior not toward realities but toward fantasies. The Democrats are neurotic because they are aim-inhibited, as an old-fashioned shrink might say: their anxieties, hang-ups, and insecurities mean that they can’t attain satisfaction, since in a basic way they won’t even allow themselves to know what they want.
posted by j03
on Sep 12, 2012 -
65 comments
"Isarithmic maps are essentially topographic or contour maps, wherein a third variable is represented in two dimensions by color, or by contour lines, indicating gradations. I had never seen such a map depicting political data — certainly not election returns, and
thus sought to create them".
posted by nomadicink
on Nov 22, 2010 -
20 comments
Jack Conway, a
candidate for United States Senate, is catching flak from Democrats and Tea-Partiers alike, for airing an
attack ad against his opponent,
Rand Paul that brings up some
bizarre dirt published in GQ a few months back. At a debate between the two candidates Sunday, Paul refused to shake Conway's hand at the end. Today, the National Republican Senatorial Committee released a
response to the
Aqua Buddha ad.
[more inside]
posted by krysalist
on Oct 20, 2010 -
68 comments
Tom Davis Gives Up (SLNYT).
“Tell them about the important work we’re doing while Rome burns,” he said. A candid accounting of American politics from a member of the GOP disillusioned with both sides of the aisle and an overview of how he became that way.
posted by schroedinger
on Oct 4, 2008 -
39 comments
My Right Wing Dad is a new-ish and rather informal blog that aims to provide "a chance for folks to examine the unrestrained rhetoric that is quietly passed from in-box to in-box in America," by hosting a collection of the emails that form an often untraceable and unacknowledged part of public discourse in the U.S., especially on the Right. Tagged by category (for example:
God,
college,
flag,
liberal, and
World War II), the amateur archive presents a range of colorful opinion, not all of it strikingly accurate, and some of it offensive. In efforts to understand
liberal and conservative habits of communication, it may be worth considering the role of forwarded email in the electoral process, and the
reasons that the forwarding of email is popular among some people, and whether this behavior tends to correlate with particular political opinions. The emails hosted on MyRightWingDad may in any case be enlightening, unless you're already on the forward list of someone in the know.
posted by washburn
on Aug 15, 2007 -
105 comments
The Purple Party Why can’t we have a serious, innovative, truth-telling, pragmatic party without any of the baggage of the Democrats and Republicans?
Where to draw the line is mostly a matter of common sense. Public reminders to honor one’s parents and love one’s neighbor, and not to lie, steal, or commit adultery or murder? Fine. Genesis taught as science in public schools, and government cosmologists forced by their PR handlers to give a shout-out to creationism? No way. Kids who want to wear crucifixes or yarmulkes or head scarves to those same schools? Sure, why not? And so on.
posted by frogan
on Apr 19, 2006 -
36 comments
Do liberals and conservatives have mutually exclusive career aspirations for their children? (reg req'd). Some, including the White House, think so. "Our party, in the way it is constituted, we think of medicine, we think of law, we think of business. We don't think, gee, I hope my son grows up to be a great playwright or painter or poet." -- White House deputy director of public liason Tim Goeglein. Are conservative parents pushing their ideological bias against the liberal-dominated arts world onto their kids, or are they simply being realistic? "Of course, you would have to be insane to hope your child grows up to be a playwright or poet. Given the odds, you would have to be quite cavalier about your children's future." -- author and conservative parent
Mark Helprin.
posted by schoolgirl report
on Aug 12, 2005 -
93 comments
America the Polarized NYT's Paul Krugman says that Congress is polarized because Republicans have moved to the right, while Democrats have remained fairly constant. He (and a political scientist) attribute the change to economic polarization, the sharply widening inequality of income and wealth.
posted by pmurray63
on Jan 6, 2002 -
24 comments
how to buy the new republican party "The tax cuts will make the economy grow. As people do better, they start voting like Republicans--unless they have too much education and vote Democratic"
[this is the recently launched newyorker online]
posted by palegirl
on Feb 14, 2001 -
25 comments
