"We have become the mecca for racism and bigotry."
- Sheriff Clarence Dupnick, Tucson, Arizona
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I've only been to Arizona a couple of times, the last time with my son on the way to Arcosanti, Paolo Soleri's intentional architecturally based community north of Phoenix. I remember feeling that Arcosanti was an island of enlightened thinking in a state dominated by ostentatious and somewhat bizarre expressions of cultural xenophobia. There were all the flags and the gun shows in parking lots commandeered by militia groups, the endless sprawl of cities without a discernible sense of place or purpose, the parade of middle-agers and retirees in lumbering house trailers. Definitely a Republican wilderness.
So, it surprises me not at all that a state that advertises its racial, political and religious prejudices with such a sense of pride would manifest the inevitable consequences of a degeneration of political debate led by Fox news and the heated mindless rhetoric that dominates the Internet. We now have at least 6 fatal casualties of the current political debate between right and left, urban and rural, rich and poor, north and south that's reducing America to an ungovernable madhouse incapable of dealing rationally with any given situation in which we find ourselves. Lacking that ability we prefer by and large to be led by those who can craft the most inflammatory media slogans - Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Sarah Palin and their respective 'Savage Nation' fan clubs.
Of course we are going to be seeing and hearing endless analysis positing that this is just the expression of an isolated madman, and attempts by the likes of Palin and Fox News to disavow themselves of any responsibility for his actions. I would like only to point out that the most successful acts of terrorism perpetrated by Americans on other Americans have been almost universally the actions of white anti-government extremists, from the civil rights assassinations of the sixties to the bombing of abortion clinics and the killing of doctors to the Oklahoma City bombings and now the killing of 6 people in Arizona. The link between increasingly hate filled language that infects the media, the Internet and increasingly the halls of a Republican congress is, in my opinion, unescapable.
Until Americans, drunk on the paranoia and other-directed anxiety whipped up by highly paid media personalities, curb themselves of the steady supply of profit generating bigotry and drama that dominates the mainstream media, we are surely in for a continuing escalation of the violence that replaces civil discourse. This will lead not to less, but more government control of the modes of free speech.
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The 'X-Men' Factor
When I see and hear the positions that so-called 'conservatives' take on virtually every issue I sometimes feel like we belong to an entirely different species or evolutionary group. I understand that our political viewpoints are shaped largely by environmental, educational and economic factors, but when educated and responsible citizens look at a situation and see it in such starkly different terms one has to wonder how deep into biology our differences penetrate.
A recent study indicates that there may be neurological differences in the ways that liberals and conservatives perceive the world.
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Political Leanings Revealed by the Eyes
It may be time to take the phrase "political viewpoint" literally. A new study suggests that liberals are more likely than conservatives to follow other people's eye movements.
People normally respond to "gaze cues," or the direction that another person is looking, by glancing to see what caught that person's attention. The new study, to be published in a forthcoming issue of the journal Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, finds that liberals respond much more strongly to such cues than conservatives. The finding is the latest in a series of clues that liberals and conservatives may be subtly different on a biological level, said study researcher Michael Dodd, a psychologist at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.
"Across a variety of tasks, we are beginning to find a consistent pattern where conservatives are more responsive to threat/disgust, more responsive to angry faces, and less sensitive to gaze cues than liberals," Dodd wrote in an e-mail to LiveScience. "Liberals, on the other hand, are proving to be more responsive to positive/appetitive stimuli, more responsive to happy faces, and more sensitive to gazes."
Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience
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You Can't Stop The Signal
Myriad
Blinddream
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M.Stan Yow
Ben Sen
Salon.com
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