Yale Makes People Smug, Imagine You Are Invulnerable!

At Yale, we conducted an experiment to turn conservatives into liberals. The results say a lot about our political divisions. - The Washington Post:

I often feel like a stranger in a strange land. How rare can it really be to look at a half full / half empty glass and think that there must be at least a few other ways to view it ... the engineering view "twice as big as it needs to be"; the scientific answer: "the glass is full as always, filled partially with gas and partially with a liquid, it appears to be filled with approximately equal parts of both. With testing, the exact quantities and makeup of both can be further determined"; the process engineer: "if filling, half full, if empying, half empty" ... one could go on.

The article author belives they have "proven" that when people feel "safe and secure" (ie. "smug"), they are more liberal. When they realize that they are never completely safe and secure and that they and their loved ones are constantly exposed to threats (eg. disease, accident, smug liberals spending their nation into bankruptcy, etc) they tend to be more conservative. The difference (as it always has been) is reality based or fantasy based!

In both instances, we had manipulated a deeper underlying reason for political attitudes, the strength of the basic motivation of safety and survival. The boiling water of our social and political attitudes, it seems, can be turned up or down by changing how physically safe we feel.

Certainly the wealthy students of Yale feel quite smug, so this seems completely reasonable to them, but SERIOUSLY? Can they not for just the merest second picture themselves up in a loud nasty bar in say New Hampshire, when a big bearded guy in a MAGA Hat and a 32oz mug of beer saunters up to them in their Pussy Hat and says, "hey, is that actually one of those Pussy Hat things? Why the hell would one wear one of those?" ... no doubt their amygdala would put on a major growth spurt like the Grinches heart, and they might even be hoping a conservative cop was close by!

Obviously, the super smug don't account for all the liberals, only for the elite. The rest of the liberals pretty much just want free things -- and will vote for whomever promises them the most free stuff to keep them "secure". They either lack the ability or the interest to think about what happens when the bill inevitably comes due on all that free stuff, because that requires facing tough questions and the real world, which is ALWAYS something that makes mortals feel much less smug once they consider it!

"The fear of God is the BEGINNING of wisdom!".

Oh, and being smug is NEVER wise! The level of smugness required to write and publish an article such as this makes me realize why we ended up living in BOistan.

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