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I’m not a neurologist, ethnologist, anthropologist or sociologist and I don’t play any of them in the coffeehouse, but it seems like there needs to be some scientific research into these frequent bigot eruptions by conservatives and mouth-breathers. I don’t quite understand how their brains operate, other than to speculate there is some kind of sludge up in their craniums that is inhibiting healthy synapse firing.
Take today’s latest misfire, by SC Republican officials Bamberg County GOP Chairman Edwin Merwin, and Orangeburg County GOP Chairman James Ulmer. In their defense of Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), who is accused of not bringing home the bacon for the Palmetto State, the hive mind of Merwin and Ulmer came up with this, run as a guest editorial in The Times and Democrat.
“There is a saying that the Jews who are wealthy got that way not by watching dollars, but instead by taking care of the pennies and the dollars taking care of themselves.”
That’s right, friends. DeMint is like a “Jew watching our nation’s pennies.” Think about this. Not one, but both Merwin and Ulmer had the synapses firing and as the thought traveled from the brain to the hand to the keyboard, to the later review of the editorial, neither of them thought that statement was a problem.
This is why the GOP bigot brain needs scientific analysis. Most normal individuals don’t have the old saw “penny pinching Jews” rattling around upstairs, and if they do, the phrase never makes it out of the cob-webbed recesses of their brains down to the tongue to form the words and to the larynx to assist in uttering the asshattery out of the piehole.
And in the communication method of choice for these GOP officials, the common sense/taste filter upstairs is damaged so that the thought doesn’t find its way to the eyes and fingers to tap out the filth, to print it out, read it or hit a send button to send it to a newspaper editor.
What is going on upstairs in these individuals? This isn’t about being PC, it’s about internalizing bigotry up in the brain where it is catalogued in the “ready to burst forth in creative, witty splendor” section rather than the “not for consumption – under lock and key” area.
Take another South Carolinian GOP official who has the same synapse disorder — former chairman of the state elections commission Rusty DePass. His epic eruption occurred in June when he referred to the First Lady in this manner on his Facebook page:
The exchange occurred after Trey Walker, an advisor to S.C. Attorney General Henry McMaster, posted an innocuous Facebook update about this morning’s escape of a Western Lowlands Gorilla from Columbia’s Riverbanks Zoo. Walker’s harmless update, however was followed by a highly-questionable comment from longtime SCGOP activist and former State Senate candidate, Rusty DePass.
“I’m sure it’s just one of Michelle’s ancestors – probably harmless,” DePass wrote.
Here at the Blend we’ve covered dozens of racist, sexist and homo/transphobic statements like this that just blow the mind. I just wonder when some serious study will be launched to look deeply into whether there is some clinical issue with the GOP bigot brain. What do you think? Who would you nominate to have their brain explored?
12 Comments
WowFirst — We need to explore whether or not they have a brain, let alone a heart!
Second — We have to explore the fact the neocons have summarily ousted virtually everyone in the GOP leadership who has ability to think for themselves and not in goosestep with the religious reicht, who’ve taken “conservative” politics and elevated it into a religion.
Third — You can never argue with a True Believer! They are under the delusion that their way and only their way is the only way to think, see, do, and vote.
I’d nominate Iowa’s very own Steve King…who represents the US Fifth Congressional District. This past summer he was the only person who voted against the US House resolution (a vote of 399-1) which recognized that the US Capitol was built with slave labor. The resolution called for a marker be placed in the Capitol Visitor Center to acknowledge this terrible history. King’s reasoning for voting against it: “Last night I opposed yet another bill to erect another monument to slavery because it was used as a bargaining chip to allow for the actual depiction of ‘In God We Trust’ in the CVC.”
link
Its just the latest in crazy positions taken by King, and his logic often defies explanation. Ready for a brain scan? Oh, yes.
BTW, here is the link to the Merwin and Ulmer letter:
http://thetandd.com/articles/2009/10/18/opinion/doc4ad90f14cb86e810566587.txt
There’s actually a name for all thisIt’s called Right Wing Authoritarianism, and it is a specific psychological profile. University of Manitoba researcher Bob Altemeyer specialized in it.
It’s not necessarily that they have a low IQ. They just literally cannot conduct cognitive reasoning. They’ve so compartmentalized their thinking that they can hold a dozen contradictory ideads in their heads simultaneously, and actually believe it makes sense, so long as it validates their psychology!
Altemeyer never went so far as to call this a mental disorder, but is a direct derivative of an authoritarian personality.
A great outline of how RWA leads to fascism can be found here.
Sad but that kind of slurs are still commonBoth my father (and my co-workers) would throw around a certain slur when they negotiated a good deal on a car or whatever.
At least in my case that crap stopped with my dad. I would never infected myself or the younger members of our family.
Not sure what went down concerning my co-workers and their kids. Most likely inherited the family tradition of prejudice.
Sorry, incorrect linkI meant to link to Umberto Eco’s paper on Eternal Fascism.
Another piece of the puzzle ……falls into place. Thank you for sharing.
So sad but trueA lot of people don’t even view it as a slur or see anything wrong with it.
I can’t count the number of timesI heard “n****r” growing up. I hated it. My mom was too cowed from her previous marriage to call my stepdad on his shit. He’d say it to african-americans IN OUR HOME! I was mortified. My mom DID stand up to him when we moved to Houston. She told him that if he did take his friend up on his offer to join the KKK, she was gone, along with us kids. He didn’t want to lose access to me so he turned the invite down. Didn’t stop his blatantly racist comments.
But to have these things said by people with some sort of authority is just infinitely worse. I’m not excusing what my stepdad said (I’d never excuse ANYTHING the bastard did). It is just these people in power have a bully pulpit from which to speak this hatred to many where my stepdad only had us kids and his very small circle of friends.
Been there done thatWhen I was a kid, the N word was used quite freely in our town. I don’t think we had any Klan members, probably because there was no local Klan chapter. We didn’t need one. We had quite enough bigots to suffice on the hate front. There was also liberal use of the P word for Polish people, and the J word for Jewish people. Later on, a large number of Asians moved into the area.
I was quite happy to leave that benighted little Chicago suburb at age 18. My father, who had been born, raised and lived his life there (all within 100 yards of the same place), would just shrug and say that that was all he knew. He never tried to move beyond that and never saw any reason to. So he died a bigot and never saw anything wrong with it.
But I can’t help but think of all the opportunities he missed to get to know people of different backgrounds and learn their culture and their views. So sad.
South Carolina…seems to be taking the forefront here as well. It’s almost like a spotlight has been cast on that state, or they’re just not bothering to be polite enough to keep their bigotry to themselves as much.
Oh no Jew di’nt!There’s a hilarious/serious dissection of this idiocy at HuffPost:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…
I’m not really surprised that these bigots are saying what they really think. Eight years of Bush made them feel they were masters of the universe even more than they did already, and the cognitive dissonance of having a biracial President has rattled their brains and loosened their tongues.
Thanks, Keori, for posting that research–I was just about to hunt it down myself before I saw you had.
The GOP attracts people like these, encourages them, strokes them, tells them they’re right and the world is wrong no matter what sort of slumgullion they come up with.
This kind of behavior is based in a person believing that they are better than other people, because of (whatever). They need to belittle others in order to make themselves feel better. It’s egomaniacal. Any time you hear this stuff out of the mouths of supposedly grown up people, you know they have an ego problem (either its too small or way too big). This is the same group of men, who when researchers asked them if they had any homosexual feelings, denied them, then when hooked up to a measurement device and showed gay porn, got erections. When questioned afterward by the researchers, they denied ever having any gay feelings. Same group of people who proclaim their Christianity very loudly, then turn around and dehumanize other people. These are sick people who should not have a say in legislating, educating, or any other societal influence, however, the MSM let’s this stuff slide because they are hypocrites as well and would have to buy integrity to own it.