Pseuds BTFO

>assesses each issue on its merits
>conveniently always ends up in the exact compromise between two sides

Zizek was right all along

>implying you're assessing anything out of your preexisting ideological worldframe

In 2004, clinical psychologist Drew Westen and his colleagues used the bitter US election milieu to undertake an examination of the seductive power of the lies that we all tell ourselves. They took fifteen intelligent, educated Democrat voters and fifteen equally able Republicans and slid each into a brain scanner while presenting them with six pieces of ‘information’ (some made up by the psychologists) about John Kerry and George Bush. Each slide of information showed clear inconsistencies between the politician’s words and deeds. They saw one, for example, that quoted John Kerry telling an anti-war constituent, ‘I share your concerns. I voted in favour of a resolution that would have insisted that economic sanctions be given more time to work.’ The next slide had Kerry writing to another voter, a week later: ‘Thank you for expressing your support for the Iraqi invasion. From the outset, I have strongly and unequivocally supported President Bush’s response to the crisis.’ Each of the statements was written in such a way that any dispassionate observer would rate both politicians as duplicitous. Westen wanted to find out exactly how the brains of these ordinary voters dealt with this dissonant information.

After they had read the slides, the participants were asked to rate each politician’s level of inconsistency on a scale of one to four. As Westen writes in The Political Brain, ‘They didn’t disappoint us. They had no trouble seeing the contradictions for the opposition candidate, rating his inconsistencies close to a four. For their own candidate, however, ratings averaged closer to two, indicating minimal contradiction.’

Whoa look out guys we got a badass centrist over here who has transcended politics. It's so cool and badass that you hold no beliefs holy shit why didn't all these nerds think of that lmao

woops meant for

Oh shit forget the previous post then lol

But that was just the beginning. Westen also had his scans to consult. He wanted to know exactly what happened on the neurological level when new data arrived that conflicted with internal models; when their minds were blasted into a state of cognitive dissonance. As he expected, the unpleasant emotion was soothed away quickly. ‘But the political brain also did something we didn’t predict,’ he writes. ‘Once participants had found a way to reason to false conclusions, not only did neural circuits involved in negative emotions turn off, but circuits involved in positive emotions turned on. The partisan brain didn’t seem just satisfied in feeling better. It worked overtime to feel good, activating reward circuits that give partisans a jolt of positive reinforcement for their biased reasoning.

>Source: The Unpersuadables by Will Storr

not an argument

...

What happens if you are right on some issues and left on others? Thats right, you end up in the political center.

>The highest level is CENTRISM.

Nope, the highest level is Renunciation and transcendence over all worldly matters.

>debating politics on Veeky Forums

Politics is the junk food of intellectualism. Caring about politics is the quickest way to out yourself as a pseud.

The problem is politics is legit important, and does effect you. Not caring is worse than having a dumb ill-thought out opinion. Also you should trim your fedora so you don't cut anyone on that edge.

>A centrist in America is far to the right of a centrist in Denmark, for example

And far to the left of a centrist in America 20 years ago.

>Corncob theory:
>Everyone who's not a commie should be sent to a gulag

How about fuck off

This board literally defends the philosophy in sokal's intellectual imposters. This is how bad the leftypol invasion is

But who will enable our enablers?

>The problem is politics is legit important, and does effect you

Its not though. Yeah its important of course, you can't actually do anything about it because politics isn't about anything other than how to retain power. Its not academia. No-one I've ever says "I discovered something new in the field of politics!" do they? Oh of course all the plebs should care about it, politics is a circus put on *for* them, but anyone who's done some reading knows politics has nothing to do with citizens and all about wider issues and who keeps you in power. People who are truly intelligent understand its not much more than a game for powerful people and choose become powerful themselves, to do whatever they want they anyway or insurrect.

>The problem is politics is legit important, and does effect you
Not really. This obsession with politics that everyone seems to be developing doesn't really change anything in their lives other than making them worry about whoever is in charge. And the individual can do nothing to change that so worrying about who is in power is pointless.

What if half of your positions are far right and half are far left? Are you still a moderate?

I did not say you need to go out and be an activist. I agree completely with both these posts. My first post still stands. It does effect you, and you should care. You would be a fool to accept everything you are told. Sure you can log into your Facebook account and let Zuckerberg do your thinking for you, but a good understanding of politics will help you see what is marketing and propaganda and what is real. Just 1 example. How do you know if you have freedom if your definition is not the same as the people in charge? Because they said so.
Have a Nigerian picnic basket. Made it myself.

>t. someone who does not understand "the political"

No, you're Diego Fusaro.

Classifying yourself as anything is always going to give you a low-resolution image of who you really are.
What matters are specific ideas of specific situations in specific contexts. I tend to avoid generalized terms.

I keep up with current events but I don't take an activist or spiritualist (because that's what ideological politics is) view of it. I know the score.