Soccer Dad

Emotional decisions

I encouraged Cheat Seeking Missiles to write about "This is your brain on politics" by Sharon Begley of Newsweek, promising to weigh in on the article too. And then ... I forgot! He came through, wonderfully and a second time too.

I get annoyed when I read things like this:

Westen’s thesis is simple. “A dispassionate mind that makes decisions by weighing the evidence and reasoning to the most valid conclusions bears no relation to how the mind and brain actually work.” That’s true when it comes to choosing a significant other, buying a car, and choosing a president. Madison Avenue has known this for decades. Democrats haven’t.

In response, Cheat Seeking Missiles writes:

... Westen will have to find a Dem who's up against a candidate who actually holds that belief, and he's going to have a hard time doing that. You have to know the issue before you can write effective talking points -- emotional or not -- and Westen fails because he hasn't bothered to find out what the pro-gun positions are. Ironically, he's accepted as true his emotional perceptions of what the positions are.

Now I'm not the world's most rational thinker, but I like to think that sometimes I apply critical thought to my choices. I also know when I can spot an illogical emotional appeal when I see one.

Colossus of Rhodey.Hube noticed the ironies of Thursday night's Democratic debate at Howard University including:

Clinton drew a huge cheer when she suggested there was a hint of racism in the way AIDS is addressed in this country. "Let me just put this in perspective: If HIV-AIDS were the leading cause of death of white women between the ages of 25 and 34 there would be an outraged, outcry in this country."

But as Outside the Beltway observed AIDS spending has increased tremendously since President Bush took office. Heck, even Bono, not exactly known as a Tory has praised President Bush's efforts. I believe that he's compared the current president's record against that of his predecessor and found that the husband of NY's junior senator comes up short. I haven't found a link to those comments though.

And then there's the matter of global warming that liberals regularly tells us with be the death of our world. (Latest the Roman ruins will decay faster because of global warming. We'll lose our future and our past!)

But then there are the inconvenient (emotional) truths of Al Gore such as

For example, Gore claims that Himalayan glaciers are shrinking and global warming is to blame. Yet the September 2006 issue of the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate reported, "Glaciers are growing in the Himalayan Mountains, confounding global warming alarmists who recently claimed the glaciers were shrinking and that global warming was to blame."

This leads QandO to ask:

Anyone out there holding their breath for a new Gore release entitled "An Inconvenient Truth: Revised?"

I'd point out that OceanGuy has also been weighing the evidence and concluding that global warming isn't the threat it's being made out to be, and questions if it's even science that was the driving force behind the debate.

And I just experienced a campaign where Michael J. Fox impugned Michael Steele for objecting to a cure for his Parkinson's. Until now, there has not been a single effective therapy derived from embryonic stem cells. There have been quite a few derived from adult stem cells. The Washington Post reported on the ad this way

The Fox commercial makes those ads seem shallow by comparison, said Paul S. Herrnson, a University of Maryland political science professor.

"I think it's aimed at cutting through all the platitudes that normally accompany campaigns and says, 'Here's an issue that affects people's real lives,' " Herrnson said. "You look at him, and you see the effects."

The expert they consult doesn't talk about the scientific merit of Fox's claims, but how it's an "...an issue that affects people's real lives." i.e. Cardin is campaigning on a serious issue.

The problem is that, as yet, no successful therapies have been derived from embryonic stem cells. Quite a few have been derived from adult stem cells - apparently because they are more stable. Charles Krauthammer whose paralysis could be cured by embryonic stem cells (if one believes the hype) wrote:

Second, if the cure for spinal cord injury comes, we have no idea where it will come from. There are many lines of inquiry. Stem cell research is just one of many possibilities, and a very speculative one at that. For 30 years I have heard promises of miracle cures for paralysis (including my own, suffered as a medical student). The last fad, fetal tissue transplants, was thought to be a sure thing. Nothing came of it.

In AIDS, global warming and stem cells we regularly see Democrats adopting the emotional approach to attack their opponents. It really doesn't matter if the science behind those attacks is definitive or not. Begley may claim that the Republicans have a monopoly on emotional, non-factual campaigning. But the evidence shows that there is no such monopoly. I would even argue that the Democrats have been much better at such campaigns than Republicans

Unfortunately the supposedly non-partisan referees in the MSM cheer on the Democratic politicians making it even more difficult to have a rational debate on the merits of many issues.