I found this
article very interesting. You
will remember in the past how I spoke of how Bush’s and in a smaller
way Kerry’s
campaigns have revolved around fear. If you are unwilling to take this
article
seriously just give it a pass.
Appealing
To Our Lizard Brains: Why Bush Is Still Standing
By
Arianna Huffington
October
13, 2004
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Since
the president's meltdown in the first debate —
followed in quick succession by Paul Bremer's confession, the CIA's
no-al-Qaida/Saddam link report, the Duelfer no-WMD-since-'91 report,
and the
woeful September job numbers — I have been racking my brain trying to
figure
out why George W. Bush is still standing.
The
answer arrived via my friend Ed Solomon, the brilliant writer and
filmmaker,
who explained that the conundrum could be solved by looking at the very
organ
I'd been racking.
Ed
introduced me to the work of Dr. Daniel Siegel, a Harvard-trained
psychiatrist
and author of the forthcoming book "Mindsight," which explores the
physiological workings of the brain.
Turns
out, when it comes to Campaign 2004, it's the neuroscience, stupid!
Or,
as Dr. Siegel told me: "Voters are shrouded in a 'fog of fear' that is
impacting the way our brains respond to the two candidates."
Thanks
to the Bush campaign's unremitting fear-mongering, millions of voters
are
reacting not with their linear and logical left brain but with their
lizard
brain and their more emotional right brain.
What's
more, people in a fog of fear are more likely to respond to someone
whose
primary means of communication is in the nonverbal realm, neither
logical nor
language-based. (Sound like any presidential candidate you know?)
And
that's why Bush is still standing. It's not about left wing vs. right
wing;
it's about left brain vs. right brain.
Deep
in the brain lies the amygdala, an almond-sized region that generates
fear.
When this fear state is activated, the amygdala springs into action.
Before you
are even consciously aware that you are afraid, your lizard brain
responds by
clicking into survival mode. No time to assess the situation, no time
to look
at the facts, just: fight, flight or freeze.
And,
boy, have the Bushies been giving our collective amygdala a workout.
Especially
Dick Cheney, who has proven himself an unmatched master of the dark art
of
fear-mongering. For an object lesson in how to get those lizard brains
leaping,
look no further than the vice-presidential debate.
"The
biggest threat we face today," said Cheney in his very first answer
"is the possibility of terrorists smuggling a nuclear weapon or a
biological agent into one of our own cities and threatening the lives
of
hundreds of thousands of Americans."
Just
in
case we didn't get the point, he repeated the ominous assertion,
practically
word for word, two more times — throwing in the fact that he was
"absolutely convinced" that the threat "is very real." It
was "be afraid, be very afraid" to the third power.
And
when we are afraid, we are biologically programmed to pay less
attention to
left-brain signals — indeed, our logical mind actually shuts itself
down. Fear
paralyzes our reasoning and literally makes it impossible to think
straight.
Instead, we search for emotional, nonverbal cues from others that will
make us
feel safe and secure.
When
our right brain is at Threat Level Red, we don't want to hear about a
four-point plan to win the peace, or a list of damning statistics, or
even a
compelling, well-reasoned argument that the policies of Bush and Cheney
are
actually making us less safe. We want to get the feeling that
everything is
going to be all right.
In
this state, our brains care more about tone of voice than what the
voice is
saying. This is why Bush can verbally stumble and sputter and make
little or no
sense and still leave voters feeling that he is the candidate best able
to
protect them. Our brains are primed to receive the kinds of
communication he
has to offer and discard the kinds John Kerry has to offer, even if
Kerry makes
more "logical sense." Which, of course, he does.
The
strutting, winking, pointing and near-shouting that marked Bush's town
hall
debate performance all sent the same subconscious message to our
fear-fogged
brains: "I'm your daddy . . . I've got your back. So just go to sleep
and
stop thinking. About anything."
"At
the deepest level," Dr. Siegel told me, "we react to fear as adults
in much the same way we did as infants. It's primal. Human babies have
the most
dependent infancy of any species. Our survival depends on the
caregiver. We
instinctively look to authority figures to comfort us and keep us
safe."
As
needy infants, this natural drive to be soothed and reassured is what
we looked
for in our parents; as anxious adults in these exceptionally unsettling
times,
it's what we are looking for in our leaders.
Over
the remaining three weeks of the campaign, as the anxiety level reaches
a
fevered pitch — and you can be certain the Bush campaign will do
everything in
its power to make sure that happens — the test facing voters is no
longer,
"Which candidate would you rather have a beer with?" It's "Which
candidate would you rather give you your blankie and a bottle and keep
the
boogeyman away?"
I
know it sounds ludicrous that the most important election of our
lifetime is
coming down to who can best pacify the electorate's inner baby, but I
can think
of no better explanation as to why Bush is not currently hovering at
around 5
percent in the polls — a voting block made up of those hardcore
fanatics who
are as utterly blind to reality as he is.
As
long as we're operating from our lizard brains — and reason takes a
back seat
to more primal needs — George Bush will continue to survive the
logic-based
attacks on his ever-escalating failures.
The
only question that remains is: Can Bush, Cheney and Rove keep us
shrouded in
the fog of fear long enough to brain John Kerry and win in November?
