"9/11 was great because it made liberals conservative — they wanted to attack Iraq. And I was one of them. It was my dang amygdala."
— Chris Mooney, author of "The Republican Brain"
Hi again! I want to talk about where our opinions and attitudes come from, and that is, our identity.
Takeaway: Our attitudes come from our identity.
As you read this, our country is still losing 2,000 people a week to Covid-19, a plague that spread out of control for reasons that are not medical but psychological. We have a chasm between people who say, "I wear a mask because I care about my family, your family, and everyone around us," and people who say, "The last time I checked, it was a free country. Don't tell me what to do!"
Look at these two statements. They are not an intellectual exchange between people who happen to disagree. They are the raw expression of a difference in our core psychology, between nurturers and egotists. Whichever point of view you would agree with, it is rooted in the deepest part that makes you you.
This is how we do a lot of our thinking — with ourselves at the center. "Build the wall" is about who we are deep inside. Black Lives Matter is about who we are deep inside. How we feel about guns, abortion, health care, education, crime, terrorism and protecting our children are all about who we are deep inside.
• Identity starts here
So what is "identity"? Who are we deep inside?
Here's a starting point. You could think of a human being as a two-level creature. At the base level is our animal selves — selfish, angry, scared, impulsive. At a whole other level, we are intelligent and can think about the consequences of our actions and avoid doing stupid or harmful things (sometimes). You have both of these creatures in you.
And here's what we know now thanks to neuroscience — these really are two different creatures inside the same brain! To way oversimplify, we have a basic animal entity in the center of our brain called the "amygdala," and that's where we get mad, sad, happy, hungry, jealous, amorous. That's where "fight or flight" lives. Sometimes people call our basic survival functions the "lizard brain," because they have all of our early-evolution animalistic instincts in them. Elephants have one, wolves have one, cats and mice have one, and voters have one.
And then we have the prefrontal cortex or PFC, which actually grew on top of the amygdala over hundreds of millennia, and that makes us intelligent and reasoning. (The brain is full of different structures that do different things, but let's just say it's the PFC.) The PFC does what we call "executive function," which means it takes our wants and needs and decides if those are really what we want and need. If you're good at sticking to a diet, you have strong executive function.
Event: Somebody bumps into you.
Amygdala: Hey asshole!
PFC: Violence doesn't solve anything. We could probably start a dialogue and get a better result.
• What is politics, really?
- In the real world, we are all communicating animal brain to animal brain. That means politics is something different from what you thought it was. -
Yesterday, we said politics is emotion. Today, we know where that emotion starts and is at its strongest — the amygdala, the most animal part of our brains. Then it passes through our "executive function," where it may (or may not) slow down a little.
In a perfectly rational world, the way they may have taught you in political science class, we would all be communicating PFC to PFC. In the real world, we are all communicating animal brain to animal brain. That means politics is something different from what you thought it was.
Takeaway: You are speaking to the voter's animal brain.
• Okay, so how does this help me?
Hey, remember Mike Dukakis? If we all had really strong prefrontal cortices, you'd be calling him President Dukakis.
In a debate, moderator Bernard Shaw of CNN asked Dukakis whether he would want the death penalty if his own wife were raped and murdered. And he answered:
"No, I don't, Bernard, and I think you know that I've opposed the death penalty during all of my life. I don't see any evidence that it's a deterrent and I think there are better and more effective ways to deal with violent crime."
It was a huge failure. What everybody except the candidate himself realized was that Dukakis used his rational brain when he was being asked for the reaction from his animal brain and people were waiting to see it.
Dukakis's perfect answer would have been: "I served in the US Army so I am literally trained to kill, and I'm sure that's what I'd want to do to the guy. But that's why we have laws, Bernard. That's why we have laws."
If you’re a candidate or you’re managing a candidate, you could prepare for this in two ways.
1. Know that at some time you’ll be emotionally provoked by a question or an attack that’s designed to test your anger. You need to show you have an emotional core. You should know in advance how you’re going to respond. Often, people direct this reaction back at the questioner: "You can say whatever you want about me, but don't you dare bring my family into this." (Nikki Haley just did this against Vivek Ramaswami.) If I were being asked a rude question by a journalist, I would probably say, “I’m sad for you that you have to do this for your job.”
2. Think ahead about some of the things that make you mad, and have that in your repertoire of things you talk about. You don’t have to be belligerent in general to be angry about something in our society. People losing their homes. Contaminated rivers. Medical debt. School lunch debt. Parents being taken away from their children and deported. I mean, if you aren’t running for some of these reasons, what are you running for?
We'll talk in subtler ways about these subjects in the future. But in general, make sure people know you have some fight in you. Be ready to show that in your answers, even if you then have something more reasoned to say.
Joshua Tanzer
jmtanzer@gmail.com
Hoboken, New Jersey
Takeaway Toteboard
- KEY #1: Republicans are from Mars, Democrats are from Swarthmore (Feb. 23):
• Democrats run an intellectual campaign to voters who are emotional creatures.
• Instead of running an intellectual campaign, we need to use our intellect to create an emotional campaign.
- KEY #2: What does the Democrats’ hat say? (Feb. 26)
• We all know exactly what the Republican hat says. Democrats don’t have one.
- KEY #3: Love isn’t rational. (Feb 28):
• Politics is emotion.
• If you find yourself trying to argue intellectually, stop! Find the emotional argument.
- KEY #4: You’re an animal! (March 1):
• Our attitudes come from our identity.
• You are speaking to the voter's animal brain.
That is exactly what Dukakis should have said.
I love the alternative-universe Dukakis response!