Out of the most recent ABC-Wash Post poll, Amy Walter extracts a reminder of the never-ending-loop that connects what we see with what we hope and expect to see.
Among Democrats, 60 percent describe themselves as “optimistic” about the economy/jobs situation will improve over the year ahead. Among Repubs, 69 percent are “pessimistic.”
Hmmm. What about those of us who are not members of either political party? While I lean left on many issues, I lean right on others, and am not a registered member of either party.
I’m inclined to be pessimistic largely because I think the country is currently under Republican control – hysterical right wing rhetoric aside – and current Republican policies are already driving us over the economic cliff.
Meanwhile, I’m enjoying the philosophical implications of the headline.
Self fulfilling prophecies on both sides?
More like hope and change v.s. reality. Another heavy dose of teleprompter tomorrow night will sell the other 40% of D’s.
It fascinates me that, even as close as we are to the recent decades of marvelous prosperity in the United States and here in Minnesota, some of us seem incapable of examining what was in place in our government and our economy that enabled that prosperity and re-adopting the things that created that prosperity (things that have been proven to actually work).
It seems clear that such an inability is born out of the sad experience shared by so many of our nation’s “conservatives” wherein pieces of their personalities have been locked into internal exile as the result of inadequate and unfortunate or worse, purposefully maleducated and maladapated child rearing within their families, communities and churches.
After being locked up, those internally-exiled personality pieces come out in “shadow” form as tricksters who strive to “get even” for their internal imprisonment, creating unconscious-but-warped perspectives and subconscious urges within their hosts which convince those people to ONLY accept,…
attitudes about themselves and the world around themselves,…
and approaches to the problems they face which are DOOMED to failure.
When our “conservative” friends fail to create lives which offer them what they need, which is always the case because they are incapable of experiencing satisfaction (and often incapable of experiencing a sense of safety or mutual trust, either), the only response they find acceptable is to double down on the same attitudes and approaches that have ALREADY failed.
Because of these factors, our “conservative” friends and neighbors are locked into a horrible pattern wherein, if they succeed in taking control, everything they do blows up in their faces or crumbles to dust,,,
(as we saw with Bushco policies which led, not to massive prosperity, but to impoverishment of the middle class and the requirement of a massive bailout of our nation’s richest citizens and companies by that same impoverished middle class),…
and if they lose control of power, the world in which they live, no matter how wonderful it becomes for everyone else, remains painfully unacceptable for them because it isn’t working the way their tricksters are constantly telling them are the only ways things CAN and MUST work.
Living under this reality, we shouldn’t be surprised that conservatives are deeply angry, deeply pessimistic and feel they are under attack, NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS.
Their pain comes from within, and the attacks by which they feel so victimized are phantoms of their own dysfunctions which arise from their own tortured psyches.
Given the chance, of course, such “conservatives” will destroy our state and nation, and STILL not understand how it happened, nor admit that they brought it about.
Perhaps it would be wiser if the rest of us, stopped mistaking their anger for strength, their insistence that they’re correct for actual intelligence and understanding, and started limiting their opportunities to follow the urges of their tricksters on a scale any wider than their own houses and properties.