Authoritarian Personality

The mental condition where obedience to a strong group with an aggressive-sounding leader provides a feeling of security.

The leader is typically a demagogue - one who preaches things they know to be untrue to people they consider idiots.

Studies have shown that when followers with AP hear the rhetoric of their opposition (such as "universal healthcare will cost less than HMO fraud!"), they engage the rational and critical centers in their brains.

However, when followers hear the pronouncements of their demagogue, the more obviously logically fallacious these arguments are, the more dopamine their brains produce. The happy neurotransmitters cloud their judgment, and give them the feel-good vibes that they would get from watching their home team win.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/08/science/08tier.html (tl;dr - search for "dopamine")

This is why their leaders often work quietly, behind the scenes, to cause frightening news stories, confident they can then control their followers' stampede.

Fear is the mindkiller --Bene Gesserit koan

AKA a Suggestive Hypnosis technique. The USA right from the start, and I see no changes on the horizon anytime soon. Also, the root of Muslim Fundamentalist Terrorist, as well as any organized religion in the world. Where would that "high on Oxycontin" loud-mouthed idiot, Rush Limbaugh, be without this effect?!

Zee: SchoolsForCivilization. When I was a kid, we learned what "jingoism" and "yellow journalism" was. The kids don't learn civics these days, for some strange reason...

Only about 40% of the USA is like that. But the electoral college counting technique tends to favor such people, tilting our politics.

Not to approach GodwinsLaw here, but the strategy, from Mein Kampf, is to "appeal to the lower third" - the tool users and uneducatable grunts who don't need "intellectuals" ordering them around. Another strategy is "The Big Lie". During the US Health Care debate, even people who wanted reform were reciting the official lie "polls say Americans don't want reform". They do, but that didn't stop the lie from going completely viral.

Reform yes, but what reform is another story. Who wants reform that makes matters worse? "Americans Want Healthcare Reform", yes, but not just any old reform, it must make things better in a worthwhile way. This is USA, so the reform will in the end make matters much worse (unless you are a big money-thieving corporation), you can take that to the bank, because "we the people" did not design/choose that/what (was) reform(ed). Sucks!!!''
(The _other_ Big Lie of the #hcr debates was that reform wouldn't matter because the Progressives are just as in bed with the big corporations. You know - the pharma companies and hospital unions that would benefit from reform. Hence the empty rant I keep deleting) See also: RamboCoder

[There seems to be an ongoing EditWar between the above two points, with each point-maker deleting the other's point before adding his/her's. In the interest of ending the war, I've inserted the previously-deleted point above. They are in no particular order. The amount of heat this topic draws outside the US is a source of considerable bafflement to the rest of the world, especially in those countries that have working nationalised health care like Canada and the UK. As an ex-pat US citizen now permanently resident in the UK, I note that after being successfully treated for cancer in the UK and having not paid a cent, if I'd have been living the US I'd now be uninsurable and possibly bankrupt. Or dead.]

Tx. That edit war is between an old timer (one with a WebComic? and some amazing TDD chops), and someone who apparently just googled in looking for somewhere to rant about health care. I will now let the page cool off, then return to it in a quarter and make something useful of it. And, yes, so much of the USA is saturated with disinformation that... War is Peace, Ignorance is Strength, and Slavery is Freedom! DeleteWhenCooked]

"someone who apparently just googled in looking for somewhere to rant about health care" What the h*ll you talking about? I have been here on this Wiki for 11 years (nearly every day)! Talk about ignorance...

[And your correspondent would know you've been here for 11 years... How?]

IP address, same as anybody. I've been through it all here. AKA Seattle1