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A Crow's Eye View of the Authoritarian Personality

By Al Schumann on Thursday July 1, 2010 10:45 PM

The post, with excellent comments.

Every relatively healthy adult experiences cognitive dissonance as a severely distressing condition. In the face of overwhelming refutation, supplied by people and world around them, they sooner or later back away from the insupportable belief. It's not easy, sometimes, and it can take ages to make headway. But it does happen. The defensive constructs of wilder and wilder dissonance pall and finally gall so much that it's a relief to give up on them. What comes after, of course, varies.

The Crow's Eye post (and comments) takes a hard look at the serial imputation of idealized qualities to public figures who invariably fail to live up to them. The qualities, if they existed, would be sufficient to impart vast integrity in the face of totalizing systemic obstacles to their exercise. As the systemic obstacles are indeed totalizing, effectively so at that, the vast integrity remains forever out of reach. But there's no shortage of new faces to which it can be assigned. And that's a lot easier than taking a step into what looks like chaos. The dissonance, then, is a comfort. Not distressing except in the moments between new faces.

Comments (19)

op:

not all dissonance is incipient
transitional vacuity
with a nite job in chaos

some is plain strawberry idiocy

"boot strap egos "
reconstructing their Id
from the bottom of the top on up

--hyper cubic ??---

give me some ah dat ole
tone row music

Al Schumann:

True. Some of it is social. People who have been effectively deracinated through "labor mobility" go along to get along for the sake of having some company. They'd go mad without human contact, and their options are circumscribed. Some is closer to an authoritarian reflex within a personality that is otherwise quite nicely individuated and appealing. There's cynical dissonance too, of the kind cranked out by ambitious think tank perception management and NGO surplus value vampires.

op:

yup
"the vast integrity "
we no get

instead we get

the eternal gemeinschlep

op:

"go along to get along for the sake of having some company"
accidental community as sub set
maps poorly into class wide sets
the nasty partitioniings tend to produce antagonisms where solidarity oughta be
and the "growth" or better coagulation
of seemingly "natural" affinity groups
that are in fact
--looked at world historically --
decidedly un progressive

examples abound however
where careful use of these accidental
or at least orthogonal affinity groups
are put to "good" progressive
class advancing use by
embedded class aware catalytic organizations

What comes after varies? Depends on which segment of society you're talking about. Your average Teabagger -- with a grudging tip of the hat to 'em -- will blow off the dissonance and continue to soldier on believing whatever cockamamie bullshit they've chosen to believe (case in point: "Where's the birth certificate?"). In the case of your average Wiberal or Pwogwessive, on the other hand, it's pretty simple: their heads explode.

I think I've done more going along to get along in the past twenty years than I care to think about, especially in social gatherings with my wife's friends in the Folklore Society and her old EPA colleagues. Every time I come home from a party with the likes of them, I feel like I need to take a shower. Sometimes, honestly, I feel more comfortable hanging out with Libertarians and Teabaggers, because at least they're right up front about what they believe, and when you confront them with overwhelming evidence to the contrary, they just laugh it off and keep on truckin'. My wife's friends, on the other hand, when confronted with equally overwhelming evidence about the Dems and Obama, practically crap their drawers in indignation and get all defensive and shit, start wailing about how at least it's better than having the GOP in power, treat me as if I'm some kind of weirdo, and grumble a bunch of shit about Ralph Nader.

Al Schumann:

Yes, indeed. I was thinking of the Red State/Blue State thing, but not quite in the front of my head, and not really through to the final antagonisms.

They ridicule the "Creative Class" and the Access Cultists over at Corrente, rightly, and those are the mustered morons who form the shock troops for the nasty partitions.

They're not above using peanutbutterzombies as Totempwogs, either:

http://www.deathbycar.info/2010/07/solar-gesture/

Much obliged, Al. Following your inspiration, I develop the thought further, and along a different tract.

Geoff:

>>>>Sometimes, honestly, I feel more comfortable hanging out with Libertarians and Teabaggers, because at least they're right up front about what they believe, and when you confront them with overwhelming evidence to the contrary,

This formulation long ago reached the level of cliche.

op:

geof strap :

did that help ??

on day's and with entries
like these
this site could sour a crab apple

op:

"mustered morons "

is that us too
Electric Al ??

Al Schumann:

Owen, I sure hope it does NOT mean us too. But I have nightmares about that, you know. I wake up trembling and start pacing the streets. The neighborhood dogs howl at me and I realize I'm wearing a rubber boot on my head.

op:

"The neighborhood dogs howl at me and I realize I'm wearing a rubber boot on my head"

a byronesque detail
and then the hyper link dada

you're quite the spell binder
these days
Electric Al

Boink:

With respect, is it a case of "L'apprenti sorcier"?

Al Schumann:

Boink, only the qliphothim know for sure.

Boink:

A Saturday present to Herr OP from wikipædia:

German culture

Der Zauberlehrling is well-known in the German-speaking world. The lines in which the apprentice implores the returning sorcerer to help him with the mess he has created have turned into a cliché, especially the line Die Geister, die ich rief ("The spirits that I called"), a garbled version of one of Goethe's lines, which is often used to describe a situation where somebody summons help or uses allies that he cannot control, especially in politics.

Boink:

Sweet Porridge from the Grimm's, apropos the gulf event.

Wiki:
There was a poor but good little girl who lived alone with her mother, and they no longer had anything to eat. So the child went into the forest, and there an aged woman met her who was aware of her sorrow, and presented her with a little pot, which when she said, "Cook, little pot, cook," would cook good, sweet porridge, and when she said, "Stop, little pot," it ceased to cook. The girl took the pot home to her mother, and now they were freed from their poverty and hunger, and ate sweet porridge as often as they chose. Once on a time when the girl had gone out, her mother said, "Cook, little pot, cook." And it did cook and she ate until she was satisfied, and then she wanted the pot to stop cooking, but did not know the word. So it went on cooking and the porridge rose over the edge, and still it cooked on until the kitchen and whole house were full, and then the next house, and then the whole street, just as if it wanted to satisfy the hunger of the whole world, and there was the greatest distress, but no one knew how to stop it. At last when only one single house remained, the child came home and just said, "Stop, little pot," and it stopped and gave up cooking, and whosoever wished to return to the town had to eat their way back.


Could we have more of those giant rabbit pix, please, while the master is away?

Al Schumann:
Could we have more of those giant rabbit pix, please, while the master is away?

The bunny has landed.

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