Obama, the Brain and McCain.
This is a rare political year in which we are witnessing a more extreme diversion between the two cadidates than we've seen in decades. Not so much in terms of policy necessarily, although that is significant, but moreso in terms of tone. McCain and Obama are talking two different languages to two very different areas of our brains and our reactions couldn't be more different.
Relatively speaking, in the great span of geologic time, humans have been around for about a nano-moment. Not so long ago we were spending all of our time hunting and staying on the lookout for enemies in the form of nasty critters and other humans. Yet this preoccupation with basic survival is a characteristic that we share with all life. And the brain we have for addressing threats to our survival is related to and has been evolving from those earliest forms of life.
We could describe that brain as having three levels of function--sort of like a three tiered seating plan of a baseball park. When a threat arises in the environment like a screaming foul ball, the part of the brain sitting in the field-level seats, the reptilian brain, instantly takes drastic measures to protect the organism, dumping hormones in the blood, ducking out of the way and getting the muscles prepared for further action or protection.
Meanwhile, the brain in the middle tier, also being close to the action, takes serious note of that screaming foul ball, evaluates the risk, the immediate danger and almost instantaneously recalls that the probability of being struck is relatively low because it's sitting farther away and is therefore unlikely to have to move. This brain is also recalling previous visits to the ball park, having sat in different sections, seeing many foul balls come off the bats and seen where they usually go. Calm down. No big deal.
The third level of the brain, the pre-frontal cortex, is sitting up in the cheap seats with binoculars thinking "Damn, that's risky down there. Maybe there should be some screens up to protect the fans. I'm gonna call the front office about that tomorrow." Hey, beer here!
In this political season, or more accurately, since 9/11, it's become very clear which parts of our brains are being addressed by the political parties. The Republicans can hardly help themselves from screaming "Danger!" at every opportunity, constantly activating the reptilian brain to a perceived threat and being prepared for a fight.
The Democrats would like to appeal to our upper deck brain if the Republicans would just stop trying to drag them down to the field level seats. Republicans, with their frontier mentality every-man-for-himself, us-against-the-world confrontational American exceptionalism have been trying to pry those Democratic cold dead hands from their silly idealism for more than a century now. And they've had some success. They'd rather we spent our time hoarding the stuff we have or raiding our neighbors for more stuff. Republican currency is scarcity and threat, whether external (muslims) or internal(brown people).
Given our current predicament in the middle east and the size and cost of the military-industrial-intelligence network, they've done a helluva job appealing to the defensive threat conscious field-level brain with continuous screaming foul balls. And they wouldn't have been so successful if it hadn't been for the mainstream media going along for the ride, either. So be sure to bring your glove when you watch the news!
Attributing media compliance to the simple fact of right wing ownership is, however, an incomplete answer to the question of why media compliance with right-wing talking points is so pervasive. Like all commercial advertising, the news that works for them is the kind that gets our brains juiced with hormones that activate and arouse us into states of alarm. Effective commercial advertising always has a hook to our pleasure centers or appeals to our survival instincts in some way. News that talks to us from the upper deck doesn't accomplish any of that.
Hillary Clinton tried to give lip service to the upper deck but frequently tried to straddle the box seats below and it ultimately did not work for her. The appeal of Obama's message is that he is talking pre-frontal language; the soaring rhetoric, the big ideas from the upper deck view, an inspirational appeal to our natural inclinations toward community and generosity. He's also resonating with everyone who is sick and tired of the authoritarian conflict-oriented zero-sum approach the high priests of the GOP have using to get alot of people killed while ruining our reputation and the economy for the past 5 years.
But therein lies the rub. The brain is biased toward perceiving the world from the lower level seats in our metaphorical ball park, responding more rapidly and powerfully than the more conceptual and abstract reasoning centers in the frontal lobes. Between McCain and Obama, it ain't a fair fight. This campaign promises to be a blowout of desperate right wing curling line drives headed straight toward your head on the war, taxes, energy, global warming, race, jobs, health care, defense and homeland security.
So what kind of response will Obama need to counteract this onslaught from the GOP's reptilian message machine? Reason alone will not suffice. Appealing to our higher nature alone will not suffice. Even the exercise of intellect draws the charge of elitism. He will need a sophisticated cadre of message planners to undermine, tamp down the adrenaline and deliver sharp and pointed retorts on individual points to the scare tactics, distortion, distraction and outright lies that are already coming. He has to stake out his own turf on an issue that anchors all the rest, one that allows him to hammer away without restraint, an issue on which McCain has limited command and even less credibility. It's the economy, stupid.