Can We Add Right Wing Nuts to the DSM?

Watching the Convoy Of No Confidence roll into Canberra this week - very quickly, considering the tiny size of the protest - one thinks that these people are nuts. They're not sure what they want, there's no coherent narrative, other than demands for an election which should apparently be a referendum of the grab bag of issues they're screeching about. To call these protesters nuts seems a throwaway line, but I've been observing the state of the hysterical right in this country lately, and wondering...is there some form of collective mental illness going on here? All contact with rational thought seems to have been lost. Consider these symptoms:

Delusions - the right are determined to believe things that are demonstrably untrue; like that the country is being run by Labor in close alliance with the Greens. How I wish this were the case. And how far it is from being true. Does the Malaysian solution sound like something Bob Brown thought up? How about 5% emissions reductions targets, maintaining troops in Afghanistan, the ban on same-sex marriage...nope, not Greens policies. If the Greens are running the country, they're doing so in an odd roundabout kind of way that completely contradicts everything they stand for.

Black and White Thinking - you'll never hear a right-winger say "you may have a point there, but I still hold my original belief based on...". No, that would be logical and fair. The right never concede anything. They refuse to admit any Labor or Greens initiative is ever worthwhile, or that the Liberal party ever makes mistakes. There are no nuances. One side is all good and the other side is all bad. But completely good or bad isn't the behaviour of people, but silent movie stereotypes. I'll admit John Howard performed well on the gun control issue. Tony Abbott encourages volunteerism through his own examples. You'd never see such concessions from the right. It's all heroes and villains.

Lack of Empathy - live animal exports? Mistreatment at Indonesian abattoirs? Not important. Animals are for meat, they say; the service of humans. Better that thousands of cattle suffer than a few cattle ranchers have to find alternative livelihoods. Even if you enjoy steak and sleep well at night, their lack of compassion can still shock. The plight of desperate people who have fled war zones and risked their lives to come here on rickety overcrowded boats seeking asylum is dismissed; those people are illegals, queue jumpers, and if they are locked up for years, transferred to countries with terrible human rights records, or drown on the way, well they should have thought of that before they came here.

Catastrophising - This is the worst government we've ever had. Australia has lost its way. We're in terrible shape. The cost of living has spiralled out of control, we've never been so badly off, no wonder crime is out of control and we're all poor and terrified. It doesn't matter that we came through the GFC largely unscathed, that CPI is not spiralling anywhere and all types of violent crime are down - Australia is rooned and Joolyar rooned it. If by any chance things aren't so bad, well that's thanks to John Howard setting us up so well.

Faulty Logic - once it would have been a pretty serious thing to make death threats against members of parliament. Not anymore. One of the country's most prominent shock jocks declares that the Prime Minister and the leader of the Greens should be drowned in sacks. Joe Hockey listens to an attendee at a town hall meeting declare that he wants to shoot the federal cabinet, and responds not that he understands but violence isn't acceptable, but just that he understands. He understands, you see, because people are angry. When the right are angry, it's apparently okay to threaten to carry on like violent psychopaths.

Taken together, I'm not sure if it's enough to be classified as a mental illness. But it's not a pretty picture. The first step in getting help is admitting you've got a problem, but as we've seen that's beyond the capabilities of those on the shrieking far right. They'll never admit they're wrong. We could ignore them, but they are having a ridiculously disproportionate influence on the political narrative - ordinary people are coming to share their distorted beliefs. What can we do? I fear we may be in real trouble here.

Comments

  1. [QUOTE]like that the country is being run by Labor in close alliance with the Greens. How I wish this were the case. And how far it is from being true.[/QUOTE]

    it's very true there is an alliance and Labor has had to compromise and implement some Green policies. (One that has driven the convoy of no confidence - Carbon Tax).
    As a greenie I know you would be for the tax, but you will not be able to explain how it will affect the global CO2 emissions or why 10% of the tax is going to the UN.
    Recent NASA data shows the UN models are wrong:
    http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-data-blow-gaping-hold-global-warming-alarmism-192334971.html
    Australia produces a miniscule amount of global emissions, reducing these by any amount will have no impact (especially when some of Chinas emissions are counted as ours due to the weird Per Capita calculation the Alarmists come up with).

    [QUOTE]Black and White Thinking - you may have a point there, but I still hold my original belief based on..."[/QUOTE]
    anything suffixed with a "but" can be ignored as the person has just brushed off the previous quote.
    I think you'll find no parties ever concede another parties policies.
    You as an individual may agree with some of the policies other parties have, in fact i'd say the majority of the electorate do this same thing.

    [QUOTE]Lack of Empathy - live animal exports? Mistreatment at Indonesian abattoirs? Not important.[/QUOTE]
    so it's far better for people to lose their farms and livelihoods by blanket banning all live exports? NO. Live exports should be monitored and abattoirs should be randomly checked for such mis-treatment.

    [QUOTE]The plight of desperate people who have fled war zones and risked their lives to come here on rickety overcrowded boats seeking asylum is dismissed; those people are illegals, queue jumpers[/QUOTE]
    I agree these people should not be dismissed, why do they think Australia is the best place to come to? Legitimate asylum seekers should be allowed to integrate into society with "Temporary protection visas" granted. If they are able to get a working visa then they should be able to move on to that.

    [QUOTE]Catastrophising - This is the worst government we've ever had.[/QUOTE]
    it's pretty bad due to the fact many many deals have to be made to appease every part of the hodge-podge group of MPs which make up the government.
    They have failed a lot of policies they have tried so far.
    Myschool is a joke (as with any of the government run "watch" websites)
    The malaysion solution is terrible
    Workchoices wasn't scrapped it was just re-branded by Labour and gives the unions more power.
    NBN is costing a small fortune and has had a very poor uptake with the current roll-out.

    Julia has got sign-off for her health reform (which is a re-badged version of Rudd's)
    They have introduced a flood levy tax on everyone, even those who donated to help a poorly prepared Queensland government.
    They are adament about the Carbon tax and Mining Super taxes.
    So this government will be known as the government of new Taxes.

    [QUOTE]Faulty Logic - once it would have been a pretty serious thing to make death threats against members of parliament.[/QUOTE]
    big difference between an individual making the statement and the party or general party faithful. As above - you as an individual can agree with other parties and individuals can make stupid comments, don't paint all conservatives with the same brush and suggest they all agree with these statements.

    [QUOTE]ordinary people are coming to share their distorted beliefs.[/QUOTE]
    possibly because they actually make sense and people are able to see the logic behind these "distorted beliefs" and are sick of seeing lies and propaganda from the Left.

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  2. Thanks for proving much of what I had to say.

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  3. interesting.. what exactly did I prove? that people have "distorted beliefs"? How very rich, maybe you should actually try to understand what was written and you might one day realise you are in the minority with your distorted beliefs.

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  4. I understand it. I wrote it. This isn't EB.

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  5. "Thanks for proving much of what I had to say."

    Hehe :D

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