Tornado Alley (PROG)

[StephanieVanbryce]

How to treat conservative delusion?

This is a serious question that I'm dealing with.

Current conservative ideology seems to be mostly composed of ideas that deny reality. The problem isn't that conservatism's opinions and policies are disagreeable - it's that those opinions are FAR out of touch with known facts. Evolution, global warming, economic theory (tax cuts DON'T fix much of anything), Gay marriage (how exactly can it hurt straight marriage again?), contraception vs. abstinence, the Founding Fathers as Deists not Fundamentalist Christians, Saddam didn't work with Al Qaeda, etc. etc. and on and on, ad nauseum.

Not only do I have family and friends who are committed to a world view that is in conflict with reality - but my country is being held back because millions of voters are similarly deluded.

And when I discuss the facts with conservatives in the hopes of having them realize their facts are wrong, the discussion nearly always follows the same pattern:

conservative: (anti-factual statement)
me: (factual refutation, with citations)
conservative: (change of subject, with new anti-factual statement)
me: (new factual refutation, with citations)
....
conservative: (THE SAME ORIGINAL anti-factual statement, without citations)

I'm being serious when I say: this is a pattern of thinking that borders on mental illness. Perhaps the only difference is that this way of thinking is mostly chosen, whereas full insanity appears to be more involuntary.

Along with this pattern, is a basic disliking and avoidance of comparing different sets of information equally. Minorities are not the same as "us". Union people are not the same as "us", even if they're white and live in the same towns and make the same money. People on the East Coast are not the same as "us", even if they pay the same taxes and their sons die in the same wars. And when I've tried to connect these different sets with arguments by metaphor, they literally don't get the metaphor. It's not like they even understand it and reject it - they really don't get the notion of the metaphor itself. It's like a subconscious resistance to connecting the sets of information.

And they don't like to remember history. It's deeply compartmentalized. They're able and comfortable with not connecting entire realms of facts. Reagan was a great President even though he raised taxes, got Marines killed in Beirut for a photo op and then ran, and violated the Constitution with Iran-Contra.

So that appears to be the psychic landscape. Looking over it, it all seems to most basically be different strategies with the same purpose: denial.

With that working against us - and them - how can we show them their facts and the theories that rely on them are simply, provably wrong?

Facts don't seem to work. At most, at an individual level, some of the worst nonsense can be brushed back. But that's it. And a few months later the same nonsense will come out again.

Arguing of course goes nowhere.

So....? Anybody have any thoughts, for how this can be accomplished?

So how can this be treated?

How do you change people's minds when they don't want to be changed?
This seems to be the textbook definition of a disorder. It is more than just opinions about what should be. It is refusal to address facts because they are different.

How can this possibly be dealt with?

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/02/951913/-How-to-treat-conservative-delusion