Politically conservative-minded people are more yielding than those who are more liberal-minded, a Gallup poll finds. The study released by Gallup was placed in the frame of Republican and Democratic views of assisted suicide. It found that a simple alteration of verbiage could easily alter a Republican’s opinion on an issue.
This finding ultimately proves that Republicans piggyback their ideology on one another, perpetually stagnating any progressive thought and advancement in societal policy.
When assisted suicide was presented as “ending a patient’s life by some painless means” versus “suicide,” Republicans saw a greater deviation against Democrats in support as 68 percent dropped down to 41 percent. Democrats only dropped from 71 percent to 60 percent. The finding is indicative of the sheepish nature of Republican conservatives, and this idea is even more startling when applied to news consumption.
The International Journal of Press/Politics released a paper in 2011 that studied people who watched Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC and analyzed the relationship of their political affiliations with viewership. The paper indicated that “views of Republicans seem to reflect the cable news outlet they watch, . . . Democrats, on the other hand do not vary significantly in their . . . beliefs as a function of cable news use.”
Another study focusing on political affiliation and cognition took 35 men and 47 women and measured their brain activity. The study concluded that those with more right-leaning political beliefs had “more activity than in Democrats in the right amygdala when making a risky decision. This brain region is important for processing fear, risk, and reward.” In the case of fear, “the amygdala, and its many efferent projections, may represent a central fear system involved in both the expression and acquisition of conditional fear,” notes a study from the Yale University School of Medicine.
Fear-mongering and the GOP have long been associated with each other. A recent example is the fear campaign that the GOP has been launching against Islam for years now. And who can forget about Michele Bachmann causing a stir about HPV vaccines causing “mental retardation”?
The GOP and the Teatards have been pumping insane propaganda, trying to infect the American public using paranoia tactics, and it all seemed to begin with President Richard Nixon, the crowned-duke of delusion. On the surface, the ridiculousness of the Republican Party does seem to come from nowhere.
It’s supposedly all boiled down to nature and science, though. It’s ironic, though, that Republican-conservative nuttiness is attributed to a larger right amygdala.
Joshua de Leon is a writer and researcher with Ring of Fire.