Blowing Smoke - Michael Wolraich [42]
In addition, most right-wing conspiracy theories, such as the great secular humanism plot, are such obvious piles of political flimflam that people who believe in them have to really want to believe in them. Contrary to appearance, paranoid conservatives do not lack critical faculties. They apply their critical skills with great zeal whenever President Obama opens his mouth. But when Glenn Beck promotes a juicy conspiracy theory about bloodsucking progressives, those same critical skills go into cold storage.
The selective criticism is an example of another psychological phenomenon called confirmation bias, according to which people tend to sympathetically interpret evidence that supports their beliefs and find fault with contrary evidence. In one famous study, participants were shown fictional studies about the deterrent effect of the death penalty. Those who supported the death penalty were far more skeptical of studies that challenged the deterrent effect. Those who opposed it were far more skeptical of studies that supported the deterrent effect. The investigators concluded:
When provided with a more detailed description of the procedures and data, together with relevant critiques and authors’ rebuttals, subjects seemed to ignore the stated results of the study . . . Both proponents and opponents interpreted the additional information, relative to the results alone, as supporting their own initial attitudes.23
Paranoid conservatives make a religion of confirmation bias. They swallow the most ludicrous conspiracy theories like buttered popcorn while subjecting alternative ideas to withering criticism. Thus, they not only open themselves up to manipulation by right-wing leaders, they plunge headfirst into it, frolicking almost joyfully among the conspiratorial ideas that their leaders manufacture. Such behavior suggests that the disciples of persecution politics receive some positive psychological value from the feeling of paranoia. On some level, they must want to be paranoid.
But why would anyone want to be paranoid?
6
OBAMA’S AMERICA
How Old-fashioned Southern Racism
Became Civil Rights for White People
The white people of the South are the greatest minority in this nation.
They deserve consideration and understanding instead of the perse-
cution of twisted propaganda.
—Strom Thurmond
WHITE STUDENT BEATEN ON SCHOOL BUS; CROWD CHEERS
—Drudge Report, September 15, 2009
THE MAGIC WORD in this Drudge headline, the one that earned it a gargantuan font, is “white.” The conservative editors of the Drudge Report are not particularly interested in school bus beatings. They’re not even particularly interested in racially motivated school bus beatings. But if the victim is white, the assailants are black, and a busload of black students calls out, “Beat his ass!” and “Boom, boom, boom!” then Drudge throws a fat-font fit.
And not just Drudge. Fox News aired footage from the school bus surveillance camera. The anchorman grimly warned viewers that the video was “disturbing,” perhaps because it had been edited with a slow-motion replay of flailing punches as a voiceover intoned, “The two suspects are fourteen and fifteen. They are African American. The victim is white.”1 On the Fox News show Kelly’s Court, host Megyn Kelly indignantly demanded punishment for the assailants, for the cheering children, for the parents of the cheering children, and for the hapless bus driver. She declared, “The scars this kid is going to suffer for the rest of his life thanks to those hooligans on that bus can’t be . . . can’t be