"Studies" that show this or that group is somehow mentally deficient... What is the agenda here?

[Zalatix]

The agenda behind posting studies that show "Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice" is clear: we hate Conservatives, for a damned good reason, and they deserve to be vilified.

But what is the point of posting "studies" that link born-again Christians to brain atrophy or other demographic groups having other sorts of mental weaknesses? Do we post this stuff for no reason, for the hell of it? Hardly. Only a truly intellectually dishonest person would nod their head to that.

The reason we come up with these studies to post on here is to vilify a group of people. Any other explanation is out and out horseshit. Just like when some idiot publishes a book called "The Bell Curve" or some idiot at Harvard disparages women's abilities in mathematics.

The point is to vilify and dehumanize, to portray that group of people as inferior. There is no other point to posting these studies. It's done by people who want to put another group of people down.

I don't mind doing that to Republicans; they do it to everyone who's not White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Republican and I am a card-carrying member of the "you get what you give" club. However when we start going out and vilifying all the OTHER groups that we characterize as being affiliated with Republicans, we're shooting ourselves in the foot.

Men declined in droves to drink the War on Women kool-aid when Lamebrain made his call to arms against Sandra Fluke and lots of liberal Christians, Born Again or not, are always swimming upstream against their own pastors or fellow flock to keep the message of Jesus's activism for the poor in the limelight. Alienating them with "studies" that just happen to coincidentally show they're more flawed than you or me, isn't the way to build the kind of coalition we need to destroy the power of the demographic that we truly hate: the Republicans.

Yeah I know I'll get flamed for this but I'm warning all liberals, if you keep doing this you will keep paying the price on election day, and even if you win, you'll keep being mystified as to why you're not utterly destroying the Conservative movement at the ballot box. I'm telling you right now why you keep failing to exterminate these Republican vermin: you keep vilifying groups that are not genetically hard-wired to vote Republican.

[Posteritatis]

1. I've always felt extremely uncomfortable throwing psych armchairdiagnoses at entire populations.

There's far, far more hate and misconception and general sketchy behaviour regarding mental health as is without the thirties and sixties coming back to turn it into a political weapon.

DU's ... not too bad about it right now, but whenever a random clearly-mentally-ill person makes the news for one reason or another it backslides in not-cool-at-all ways. It's easy and satisfying to say "oh, $PERSON is obviously $AILMENT," but I've seen people go the other way around and define mental illness as intrinsically conservative (or worse) a few too many times as well.

So yeah. As I said - I'm never anywhere near comfortable with those discussions. They always go to bad places.

[cthulu2016]

2. This shoud be in Help & Meta

It's a call-out of DUers for how they post or argue on DU which is fine, but GD is not the forum for it.

[rfranklin]

3. don't get your undies in a bundle, DU is not going to decide the election...

The number of people who read these posts are an infinitesimal portion of the population. Why would these posts have any effect on the election?

[xfundy]

5. Speak for yourself, please.

I "hate" no one I personally know, and a large part of my family is composed of cancervatives. To a person, they've been convinced, by appealing to their prejudices, fears (expressed as hatreds) of "others," that all "libruls" are (fill in the blank with the worst thing imaginable, and therefore bad, evil, etc., and they are so scared of the boogieman through constant conditioning they will do anything to hurt that boogieman.

The news reports regarding the recent studies I've seen posted here are treated as news reports, because that is how they were announced to the world, hence the words, "news reports."

"The Bell Curve" is a good example of cancervatives propping up garbage as "science," just as "science" was/is used to "prove" all sorts of bullshit that conformed to any particular group or individual's biases and financial or other interests.

I've seen equal time given here to "news reports" from fundamentalist groups promoting "gay cures," rapture prophesies, books and "studies" claiming liberals are lower life forms, etc. Any study that claims ALL individuals who adhere to a religious or political belief are ALL identical is fundamentally false on its face, because we are all people, with our own life experiences, etc. Any group study which assumes any "group" has a borg mentality is suspect.

Personally, I suspect you just had a bad day and wanted to kick something.

Better luck tomorrow.

[Zalatix]

7. You're purposefully avoiding my question. What is the agenda behind posting that stuff?

There's a reason for posting these "studies".

What is the reason besides to disparage that group?

Personally, I suspect you have something to hide which is why you seem to not even address the issue of why someone would post these "studies".

[randome]

6. Republicans pretty much don't believe in science anyways.

So...where's the harm of talking to ourselves about the research?

[mmonk]

8. Because some things are self evident.

[HiPointDem]

9. +1. It's the mirror image of what the Republicans do, and directed at people's prejudices.

[surrealAmerican]

10. There are two obvious reasons I can think of:

First, It makes us feel superior. I'll grant that that isn't really fair, but it's a very human impulse.

The second reason, and the one that keeps me reading those posts, is a genuine impulse to understand why people hold opinions that defy rationality, and continue to hold them in spite of all evidence to the contrary.