Study of Bush's psyche touches a nerve

[eablair3]

Study of Bush's psyche touches a nerve

Julian Borger in Washington
Wednesday August 13, 2003
The Guardian

A study funded by the US government has concluded that conservatism can be explained psychologically as a set of neuroses rooted in "fear and aggression, dogmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity".

As if that was not enough to get Republican blood boiling, the report's four authors linked Hitler, Mussolini, Ronald Reagan and the rightwing talkshow host, Rush Limbaugh, arguing they all suffered from the same affliction.

All of them "preached a return to an idealised past and condoned inequality".

Republicans are demanding to know why the psychologists behind the report, Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition, received $1.2m in public funds for their research from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

The authors also peer into the psyche of President George Bush, who turns out to be a textbook case. The telltale signs are his preference for moral certainty and frequently expressed dislike of nuance.

"This intolerance of ambiguity can lead people to cling to the familiar, to arrive at premature conclusions, and to impose simplistic cliches and stereotypes," the authors argue in the Psychological Bulletin.


snip

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1017546,00.html


thought some might find this interesting.

[Pallas180]

1. heh, heh, heh. truth hurts doesn't it?

:evilgrin:

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

2. I have a friend at Stanford...

Who just sent me that on an email attachment, a .pdf(Adobe) file. I will trim some texts in the next few days and compile them into a file, suitable for posting. Right now, I am neck-deep in this website I am doing.

It's looking pretty spiffy, too. And working. Working is good. Better than spiffy.

Hey mom! I are be a wembasturd!!! I got teh m4d sk1LLz0rZ!!! ;-)

[shanti]

5. lol

:-)

[9215]

3. I'm sure all of these authors planned on an

early retirement, before they spilled the beans.

I like how they got the money for the research and then turned it on the fuckers.

Like Gwbush.com being funded by Bush, heeeeeeeeee!

[shanti]

4. omg

this describes SO many conservatives that i deal with on another website on a daily basis...

[otohara]

6. Locking - Dupe

continue dicussion here;

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=64062&mesg_id=64062