Those articles aren't written to convert the unfaithful. They're written to keep the faithful faithful... and it's a lot easier to write a propaganda piece to keep someone from changing his mind than to make him change his mind.

Yeah, but when there's so many good reasons for the faithful to stay faithful, why serve up bogus ones?

If you do that, some of the faithful, probably the more intelligent and thus the ones you really want and need to keep, will leave the faith.

Daily there's great reasons why the faithful should keep up their opposition to the USG's policies*, bogus one's aren't needed.

*Of course, if one supports those policies - or just wish "faster, please, more," then dailythere are good reasons for that set of faithful to remain faithful.

Note that "faith" is a very very good analogy here, as some have said we're not really seeing secular politics so much as the continuation of a very old religious dispute (low Church Dissenter types vs what's left of their enemies). But that's really, really too long of an argument to make here, even for me. It's an argument requiring a lot of evidence, and may be only partly convincing (though noting Progressivism originally arose from Christian Progress, which itself had roots in Emersonian Unitarianism, which itself had roots in....). I could provide links to the crackpot who made the argument, which was partly convincing though with some weaknesses and flaws (he fails to give much weight to influence of German Public Policy on things, though he does employ the term Beamtenstaat to describe what we have from time to time).

Anyhow it's a part of the puzzle, and I alluded to it in previous screeds, especially the one noting how those who spent the last eight years condemning people for "forcing their religious values on others" now saying their policies are guided by "The Word" (thank you, Nancy) &tc.

But I digress. Anyhow, it is part of the puzzle, and no, I haven't found the key to the universe yet myself (though I keep reading those who claim to have). I especially haven't found a truly satisfying sollution.

Here's a quote from the aforementioned crackpot, worth reproducing here:

"In fact we have almost no evidence of any historical validity that describes the early life of Barack Obama. Take the famous "birth certificate" controversy: I believe that Barack Obama was almost certainly born in Hawaii, but only because the converse seems labored and unlikely. The ordinary English meaning of birth certificate is an original physical document, produced at the actual date of birth, ie 1961. It is not a printout of a database record, which is what we have.

"Again, I am confident that this document exists for Barack Obama. The refusal to disclose it is just as contemptuous and contemptible as everything else in the process that produced him. Stonewalling on all life records of this man - from birth certificates to college transcripts - is a classic Alinskyian maneuver, pure vicious hardball. It serves the exact purpose it achieves: to generate as many conspiracy theories as possible, most of which are false. Any actual dirt will disappear in this cloud of vain speculation. This is the regard for truth, decency and honor which Americans can expect from their rulers today. Were it actually discovered that Barack Obama was born in Papua New Guinea, I would find it far less damning."

(If you want to know where it came from, run any sentance from it through a search engine, or just "Evidence in Current History" - most readers unfamiliar with the author of the site will find more than enough crankism, but there's invaluable wheat in there, too. That post is prolly not the best starting point, but it is what it is).

(addendum from me, lest anyone get the wrong impression: We also have the birth anouncement from two separate newspapers published at the date of birth. So, yeah, BHO was born in Hawaii. But what we don't have is an authentic birth certificate of the sort normally required. We're also still waiting for John Kerry to release his military records, as he promised to do. We wait for the same reasons. But I digress slightly).

Anyhow, the point of the quote is the crackpot conspiracy theories are false, bogus diversions; the reality is worse anyhow.

I'm not defending it. In fact, I applaud your taking your own side to task.

But to hazard a serious guess at why, I'd say because it's easier to appeal to emotion than to the intellect. Indeed, once you've successfully appealed to the emotions, the emotions will very often commandeer the intellect to their defense.

(One of the creepiest personal discoveries I've ever made was just how good my intellect is at filtering information and feeding my emotions what they want to hear. If I can't trust my own damn brain, who can I trust?! If I could figure out a reliable way to provoke that realization, I dedicate my life to instituting it as a right of passage from childhood to adulthood.)

And honestly, for all brands of politics, is it really true that you want a solid core of rigorous, intellectual free-thinkers? I think the answer is, sadly, "No."

If your brand of politics is interested in good government and finding answers, then you do want those people. If your brand of politics is more interested in maintaining your group in power, you really don't want those people, because you can't as easily manipulate and control them; that brand will easily take ten or a hundred enthusiastic idiots over a single smart person. Smart people are more effort and they still only provide one vote.

I realize, by the way, that I'm treading the line of disaffected teenagers and high school students everywhere: That everyone is an idiot, except me, and maybe whoever I'm talking to. I try not to be that guy, if for no other reason than that I left my teen years behind a long time ago. But that kernel of truth remains, and it's why I keep telling people that Mr. Pundit is not their friend. Mr. Pundit is not trying to educate you. Mr. Pundit is trying to seduce you-- to be crude, he's trying to fuck you.

It's tough. You want to believe that there are leaders out there who will tackle and beat the system. And we all want that person to largely believe what we believe. It sounds very genuine to hear words argued as you think them. Or to hear counter-arguments that fit a emotionally invested narrative.

The problem is that these words have been carefully crafted to have just that effect. (on the pro and the con). When something resonates that deeply, it's very easy to simply say "well of course..." and drop the investigative part of that thought.

To jump out of politics for a second.... the cell-phone popcorn youtube video is clearly fake. The technophobes that I know are immediately convinced. The technophiles immediately suspect fault. In this case, the technophiles are right (largely because they have greater access to the medium), but this split on emotionally invested lines is what you hear in politics every day.

alchemist: Yeah, the cell-phone thing, among others, is a good analogy.

MV: It does take real effort, most people want to believe their own side and want to disbelieve their opponents, and emotional intensity is often a good gauge. (That's why, to use a FP analogy, you can tell that various activists supposedly interested in international law and human rights, well, the emotional intensity always showws where they truly stand - and it's not on the side of human rights and international law as such).

"And honestly, for all brands of politics, is it really true that you want a solid core of rigorous, intellectual free-thinkers? I think the answer is, sadly, "No." . .

Smart people are more effort and they still only provide one vote."

In a democratic republic, that's true, to a point. But voting and the opinions of the governed are a lot less important than we feel (see "More Polls"). Even while intellectually understanding this, our emotional attachment to the form can blind us to the reality.

IMO intelligence is over-rated in a lot of ways, wisdom is preferable: Sound judgement. But be that as it may, no movement will go far with just spear-carriers. And if all the intelligent people become cynical opportunists because they come to believe that when it comes to "magna est veritas et prevalebit" both "sides" are simply flip-sides of the same coin, well. . .well, you get our Modern structure with the intellectual governing class/opinion-leaders/academicians that we have. If one is on the Right, as the AmThinkers are, you might conclude that this strategy, while obviously effective for the other side, has not and will not succeed for them.

That last statement really needs a lot more supporting argumentation than I can provide in one comment, but I think it's intuitively obvious that the Conservative strategy has failed on its own terms, while the Progressives are mainly vexed over the (apparent) slowness of their ratchet-effect progress, and the compromises made along the way for temporary expedience (which is, yes, politics). Again, a longer explaination is needed for why I think a fair outside observer would reach this conclusion, but this is already a long and wide digression from the original point.

Note that my original point wasn't (and isn't) that the Blogchair Psychoanalysis Tactic (or the others I've condemned here lately) would be fine if I thought they'd be successful: they're intrinsically bad and ALSO fail.

Here in the comments I've focused primarily on their weaknesses from the point of view of effectiveness, but thats because I think we all pretty much agree that they're odious in and of themselves, regardless of who does it and whether it "works" under whatever definition of "works" one has. Yeah, they'll prolly keep happening, but blogging is almost always about deploring things that will probably keep happening anyhow, at least in the near term. :p

As in life, so in politics: Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself.