Social Question

DWW25921's avatar

Are Republicans and Democrats just naive or do they suffer from some sort of disorder?

Asked by DWW25921 (6498points) October 7th, 2013
28 responses
“Great Question” (1points)

I mean seriously…

Lets say someone is in an abusive relationship. Instead of being psychically beaten, they’re constantly lied to. The aggressor clearly does not care about the needs of the person being abused. Every day there’s more mistrust and lies and the aggressor clearly wants loyalty but isn’t interested in any opinions or input. Yet the victim relentlessly defends their abuser because they’re just too stubborn to realize they’re being taken advantage of.

Or we could look at this another way;

Lets say mom and dad have 2 cars. For years those cars were reliable. They took mom and dad where they wanted to go on a regular basis. Now it seems, the cars are old, rusty and they don’t run right. When they do run they take mom and dad to far off crazy places that they didn’t want to be. Instead of getting a new car mom and dad argue over which derelict is best.

Look, when your car dies, you replace it if it can’t be fixed. When you’re in an abusive relationship, you move out. Why are people so loyal to absolute uselessness? I honestly don’t understand this mentality. Please explain it to me in a logical way so that I may better understand what the problem is.

In a previous question, I realized that Republicans and Democrats are not stupid. So, how can intelligent people keep putting up with this garbage? I think it must be because of some sort of mental delusion maybe? I mean, seriously… What’s the deal?

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Answers

Tropical_Willie's avatar

Hoping things changed ! !

DWW25921's avatar

@glacial Similar, but this one is geared more towards psychological problems rather than accusing them of stupidity, which I know now wasn’t entirely accurate. Apparently, it is possible for Republicans and Democrats to be intelligent.

glacial's avatar

Right. They’re not stupid, they’re just crazy. I’m sure you’ll do much better with this question.

DWW25921's avatar

@glacial Yes. That’s what I’m thinking. I just want to figure out what the psychosis is so that I can help them find a better path. It’s all about helping others.

livelaughlove21's avatar

Seriously? Give it up, man.

KNOWITALL's avatar

I think lots of us take the path of least resistance in work, marriage & politics. Mental illness is not a joke.

RealEyesRealizeRealLies's avatar

Delusions of grandeur.

WestRiverrat's avatar

Stupid no, crazy no, power hungry yes. Which causes leadership in both parties to do stupid and crazy things to retain their hold on power.

Coloma's avatar

Believing in lies, illusions and delusions would be cause to seek treatment, yes.

marinelife's avatar

They are the force of the land that is able to elect governments. There is still much to choose between them.

Hawaii_Jake's avatar

@DWW25921 As a person who lives with a mental illness, this question is insulting.

I am disgusted by the derisive use of mental illness in popular media and culture.

drhat77's avatar

@DWW25921 you could also substitute religion or any other view point you don’t agree with. Not understanding someone doesn’t make them irrational.

BhacSsylan's avatar

Seriously, dude, get a life.

And I’m amazed that you can think that going from ‘stupid’ to ‘mental illness’ somehow improves your argument

Rarebear's avatar

No.

Rarebear's avatar

And just to expand on my prior post, I think that anybody who sets up false dichotomies is the one who suffers from the disorder.

Blondesjon's avatar

They still have their jobs, extensive retirement benefits, excellent health benefits and are quite wealthy while the rest of us argue over which side the “good” side is.

Yep, sounds like they’re pretty naive to me.

DWW25921's avatar

@Hawaii_Jake I didn’t mean for it to be insulting however maybe than you could shed some light on the question if you took it more seriously. It seems reasonable and even logical to me…

@drhat77 “Not understanding someone doesn’t make them irrational…” ok. Which side are you on than? How many times have you accused the other side of being irrational? Why is this question any different at all from the way that the Republicans and Democrats regularly treat each other?

@Rarebear Why is it false? Why does it seem that these horrid retches can acquire so much loyalty from their sheeple?

DWW25921's avatar

@BhacSsylan I enjoy my life. Believe me, I have one. I try to battle ignorance and encourage people to actually think for themselves. Is America worth it? I think so.

@drhat77 That’s true. That’s why I’m on a quest for understanding. I’ve gotten no straight answers. Not 1. People take no other side seriously, that’s the point. It’s also the problem.

@WestRiverrat But how do they convince so many people to follow them? Are folks living in the past, focusing on what was? That has no bearing on the realities of today.

DWW25921's avatar

@Blondesjon Your wisdom in these matters is appreciated.

Rarebear's avatar

@DWW25921 It’s false because your question and many of your subsequent posts are full of logical fallacies.

KNOWITALL's avatar

@DWW How is anyone to take that seriously? It sounds as if you think you’re the smartest person here. condescend much?

BhacSsylan's avatar

@KNOWITALL He absolutely thinks that. See also: Dunning-Kruger effect.

@DWW25921 The person spreading stereotypes thinks they’re encouraging people to think? Pull the other one, it’s got bells on.

ETpro's avatar

@DWW25921 The fundamental problem with this question and the previous one about Democrats and Republicans being stupid is the underlying premise of equivalence. It’s a false equivalence fallacy to claim that both parties are equally to blame for the current gridlock in Congress. You’re just assuming that is so, then building your logical structure atop that assumption. But logic is no better than the premise that supports it. You need to prove your assumption of equal guilt first. But in this case, I think doing that would be as difficult as proving a 3-year-old child and an adult pedophile are equally at fault when the adult brutally raped the youngster.

The US press has been complicit in leading the public to this constant assumption of false equivalence. There was a push beginning in the 1980s to provide “Objective coverage” of politics, scientific questions, and such. The media soon caught on that it often appeased whichever side in a debate was using pure propaganda, and it was certainly a hell of a lot easier than fact checking. Just contact the spinmeisters for both sides of an issue, and regurgitate whatever they say. It’s called “false balance“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_balance and for a time, the public ate it up. But increasingly, the remaining skeptics in America began to say, Hey wait a minute. Scientists are not really split 50/50 on whether there is global warming and if it’s man made.

Proof the public is waking up is demonstrated by the proliferation of fact checking websites designed to keep both the press and partisans honest. Sites like FactCheck.org and PolitiFact.com rate among that top 100,000 websites in the world in traffic. Use some of them to find out the facts.

Are Republicans and Democrats really equally at fault for the shutdown, the crumbling of our infrastructure, the rapid decline of our middle class coupled with a massive growth in poverty and super wealth? I think you will find, if you honestly examine your equivalence premise, that it does not hold water.

Rarebear's avatar

@ETpro Yup, exactly. That’s one of the several fallacies he’s using in this thread.

drhat77's avatar

There is no correct answer as to how to administer this country. We extrapolate from the past as best we can, but then the problem becomes which factors to include in that extrapolation? How much weight should each one be given? Different people come to different conclusions on what the right answer is, and the problem is that afterwards it’s still very difficult to say who was right and who was wrong because we don’t know what exactly would have happened had we gone the other way.
All the factors involved, plus how fuzzy the end points are, make it exceptionally difficult for our brains to recognize the pattern in the noise of politics. Many people fall into the well worn heuristics of Democratic and Republican basically because “if other people are doing it at least it can’t be catastrophically wrong”. I realize that this is getting perilously close to your question about whether or not independents are smarter, but not really because we don’t know if the platform advocated by independents is any more likely to succeed than that of the two major parties. And being defiant just for the sake of appearing defiant is waving about a trapping of brilliance.

mattbrowne's avatar

The Democrats look very sane to me. And the decent Republicans are cowards, but still sane.

DWW25921's avatar

@mattbrowne Clearly the Republicans are wimps… At the same time the only thing the Democrats stand for is themselves and their propaganda. I won’t vote for either.

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