Bush's ghastly supporters are psycho

Wait, I think I read that headline wrong. It actually is How Political Psychology Explains Bush's Ghastly Success. Honest mistake ...

Anyway, in this week's New Republic, John B. Judis explores the psychology of fear-mongering so skillfully deployed by Drunky McStagger and the Bush crime syndicate. He attributes the "irrational" support of Drunky to the fear of death engendered by 9/11, exacerbated (intentionally, of course) by the War on Terra, as studied by psychologists Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski.

The three scientists examined reactions of people to various rhetorical devices meant to foment xenophobia and jingoism and compared the results from people who received subliminal reminders of mortality with those who did not. Those who subconsciously were reminded of death were far more likely to respond favorably to the jingoistic statements than were those who were not.

Now, watch what happened after 9/11, as the scientists introduced Drunky's own rhetoric to the experiment:

In the Wake of 9/11, [a book the scientists published in] 2003, recounted more than a decade of experiments and speculated on how the public's reaction to the attack-- including heightened religiosity, patriotism, and support for both Bush and his evangelical swagger--could be explained as worldview defense.

The three scholars also began devising experiments to test this theory. The first of these explored whether reminders of September 11 functioned as mortality reminders. In the spring of 2002, the psychologists, along with five colleagues, conducted an experiment at the University of Missouri, where subjects had either "911," "WTC" (for the World Trade Center), or "573" (the area code for Columbia) flashed subliminally between word associations. Afterward, they completed word-fragment tests to see whether thoughts of death were stirring in their unconscious. The psychologists found the same pattern between "911" and "WTC," on the one hand, and "573," on the other, that they had earlier found between "death" and "field." They concluded that reminders of September 11 awakened unconscious mortality thoughts. Later experiments would further confirm this.

They then explored whether Bush's popularity in the years after September 11 stemmed in part from Americans' need for a charismatic figure who could help them overcome these thoughts. Bush's appeal, the psychologists speculated, lay "in his image as a protective shield against death, armed with high-tech weaponry, patriotic rhetoric, and the resolute invocation of doing God's will to rid the world of evil.' " In 2002, the psychologists, aided by two colleagues, conducted an experiment at Brooklyn College that showed that mortality reminders dramatically enhanced the appeal of a hypothetical candidate who told voters, "You are not just an ordinary citizen: You are part of a special state and a special nation."

Next, they began testing Bush's appeal directly. In October 2003, the three scholars, together with five colleagues, assembled 97 undergraduates at Rutgers to participate in what the students thought was a study of the relationship between personality and politics. One group was given the mortality exercises. The other wasn't. They then read an essay expressing a "highly favorable opinion of the measures taken by President Bush with regards to 9/11 and the Iraqi conflict." It read, in part:

Personally I endorse the actions of President Bush and the members of his administration who have taken bold action in Iraq. I appreciate our President's wisdom regarding the need to remove Saddam Hussein from power and his Homeland Security Policy is a source of great comfort to me. ... We need to stand behind our President and not be distracted by citizens who are less than patriotic. Ever since the attack on our country on September 11, 2001, Mr. Bush has been a source of strength and inspiration to us all.

This was not the kind of statement that would appeal to most Rutgers undergraduates, and indeed, on average, members of the control group rated it unfavorably. But those who did the mortality exercises on balance favored the statement. In February 2004, the psychologists repeated the experiment, but this time they used September 11 cues. They had one group of students write down the emotions that September 11 aroused in them and describe what happened on that day. They got the same results as before: On average, those in the September 11 group approved of the statement, while those who didn't do the exercises disapproved. Based on political questionnaires they had the students fill out, they also found that the September 11 and mortality exercises "increased both conservatives' and liberals' liking for Bush."

Then, in late September 2004, the psychologists, along with two colleagues from Rutgers, tested whether mortality exercises influenced whom voters would support in the upcoming presidential election. They conducted the study among 131 Rutgers undergraduates who said they were registered and planned to vote in November. The control group that completed a personality survey, but did not do the mortality exercises, predictably favored Kerry by four to one. But the students who did the mortality exercises favored Bush by more than two to one. This strongly suggested that Bush's popularity was sustained by mortality reminders. The psychologists concluded in a paper published after the election that the government terror warnings, the release of Osama bin Laden's video on October 29, and the Bush campaign's reiteration of the terrorist threat (Cheney on election eve: "If we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again") were integral to Bush's victory over Kerry. "From a terror management perspective," they wrote, "the United States' electorate was exposed to a wide-ranging multidimensional mortality salience induction."

We've referred to it as "fear-mongering" and "scare tactics," but indeed the strategy of the Bush crime syndicate has a provable psychological basis. Now, we have to see if anything will have changed by Election Day 2008, and we likely can anticipate more of the same fear-mongering statements. The Republicans can't run on the "charisma" of Drunky McStagger anymore, but they will be banking on the idea that only the Republican Party and whoever its nominee is can protect America from the Evil Mean Brown People Who Threaten Our Freedom and Way of Life.

The question this time, though, is whether or not the electorate will respond psychologically to the scare tactics as they did in 2000 and 2004, or if the constant barrage of illegal and unethical activity by the Bush crime syndicate will immunize Americans from such manipulation this time around. I think Reality is overdue for a victory against Psychology.