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The Political Psychology of American Politics

Submitted by Jon Henke on Mon, 09/07/2009 - 13:45
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Megan McArdle has previously postulated Jane's Law.

Jane's Law: The devotees of the party in power are smug and arrogant. The devotees of the party out of power are insane.

I think it's a good generalization about very broad political dynamics.  Thinking about that this weekend, I came up with the following psychological spectrum.  People tend towards the left side of the spectrum when it comes to allies; towards the right side of the spectrum when it comes to opponents.

Cognitive biases are a natural human tendency and none of us (including me) are immune to them.  It is useful to be aware of the problem.

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Well, I definitely agree with the Janes Law part

Submitted by JMR on Mon, 09/07/2009 - 15:57.

Hell, I've seen it happen in person on a number of fora. Anyway, sorry to remain fixated on Hal, but a subsidy for him is a good example here of why I might be heading to the right on the paranoid scale part of your comment. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to think at this point. When people act crazy, I must now start thinking "is this a government agent, or just a crazy person?"

If you had told me, between 2001 and 2007, that the FBI would be giving a taxpayer subsidy to a racist to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars, apparently only stopping 'cuz some hackers busted Hal's Fed connection, I'd have tried to fit you for a tinfoil hat. But that was and is reality, whether or not the media or the blogosphere is doing a particularly-good job of dealing with it. Sigh. Time to kill brain cells with cheap beer.

Paranoid

Submitted by rbottoms on Mon, 09/07/2009 - 19:10.

I'd say the Florida GOP Chair falls somewhere past the end of the paranoid indicator. If not for his timely intervention Obama's speech to school children Tuesday would have them acting like the kids in the latest Torchwood mini-series Children of Earth or Smile Time on Angel.

Florida GOP chairman Jim Greer appeared on CNN today, and accused the White House of changing the content of President Obama's stay-in-school speech in the wake of conservative outrage at political indoctrination -- outrage that he was instrumental in mobilizing, by the way -- and that the original would have been much more politically-oriented.

"Clearly last week there was a plan with the Department of Education," said Greer. "When you ask students to write a letter to the President on, how we can help you with your new ideas, Mr. President, that is leading the students in an effort to push the President's agenda. Now that the White House got their hand in the cookie jar caught, they changed everything, they redid the lesson plans, they released the text, and tomorrow he's gonna give a speech that every president should have an opportunity to give."

He saved us all thank God.

 

Makes a lot of sense

Submitted by Earmarks on Mon, 09/14/2009 - 17:42.

Jane's Law seems to be just about right on.  I think just about anyone would recall that during the Bush Administration, Democrats were rife with righteous indignation (seemingly especially John Kerry, but he was doomed from the start - just like McGovern, you can't run an entire Presidential campaign based entirely on a platform of "The Incumbent Stinks!" though in both cases they were...well...right) and now they are very smug these days, aren't they?  (They're almost always smug, but it just seems worse these days, but their recent rise to power is a direct result that the public was dissatisfied, and still are.)

And on the other side, the Republicans are kind of drifting the same way.  Nearly every single piece of legislation Obama has talked about has resulted in massive cries about socialism, though it happens everytime we have a Democrat President or Congress, and vice versa we hear shouts about fascism when we have a Republican President.  (I'm waiting for a Libertarian President - but that's something else entirely.)  Especially since that little outburst from Joe Wilson. Even though I'm really not a huge fan of either Obama or his programs - I happen to think that we should be looking to more reforms of the private sector by examining WHY health care costs have risen and figuring out how to reduce that cost, part of which may be the Fed and the lack of a gold standard, but again that's another thing entirely - look at how little we have to pay for a piece of electronic equipment like an iPhone; the consumer only paying $300 for one of those things when it costs more than that to make them and ship them all over the place, and the amount of things that they are able to do - you can't tell me that the private sector isn't good at reducing costs on it's own.

That little tangent aside, I don't think there's ever going to be a change in the way that "Jane's Law" as it were, will manifest itself.  It's the nature of the beast.  I do happen to agree with the flow chart - it is very accurate, and people certainly seem to work in that order, don't they?  It's almost like the 5 stages of Any Project.