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Something very cool seems to be happening in politics.  It seems like the old politics of fear aren’t working as well as they used to in the current presidential election campaigns.  Maybe people have finally been so pummeled with lies in such a short period of time that they’re less inclined to swallow a mouthful of scare tactics.

Last week there was a lot of talk of how the McCain campaign was focused on making voters afraid of Barack Obama, even to the point of inciting crowds to shout racial epithets.  The thing is, this didn’t help his poll numbers and probably didn’t attract new voters.  It just made the rallies sound like elementary school bullies and their pals taunting and booing on cue.  This leads to the question of why today’s politics seem so antiquated and cartoon-like.

Lets be honest, if a little explosion happened that could be traced back to a terrorist, foreign or domestic, politicians may be able to work the shock doctrine to their advantage as they’ve done for decades.  We just saw the shock doctrine work with the mortgage crisis and stock market crisis allowing the government to use a problem-reaction-solution strategy to partially nationalize and acquire banks and insurance companies.  But even then, Americans may not be so quick to roll over. With the current economic crisis people seem to be more angry than afraid for a change.

It’s interesting how a company laying people off is a crisis for workers but a “restructuring” for management.  Is this an economic restructuring or a crisis?  Who is benefiting from the restructuring?

So why do scare tactics work better than issues in a crisis and in a political campaign?   Have you noticed that the more a person is married to a belief system (Democrats tax and spend or Republicans are the party for business)  the more zealously and easily he reacts to politicians and talk show hosts pointing fingers?  Interestingly, many times these belief systems run contrary to facts.

Seriously, why to adults act like mindless silly children at political rallies and conventions? Psychologically what is happening is that people are reverting back to being children who naively thought their parents were superhuman.  We see this is fundamentalist religious beliefs also, but that is too big a topic to include here.  The relationship is either like adults acting like young children treating the government like a parental god who can fix everything or adults acting like teenagers treating the government like an idiot parent who can do nothing right.

The main answer to the question of why people are so easily manipulated in politics is actually a biological one.  Under normal circumstances humans do the majority of their thinking in the frontal lobes of the brain where critical thinking is king.  But when we’re under stress we think from the rear areas of the brain where the limbic system rules.

The amygdala and other portions of the brain that have been our primary areas of thinking for much longer than the frontal lobe are ruled by emotion and the drive for short term gain.  Because of this, when we most need our critical thinking we don’t use it.

This type of thinking was great in primitive times when stress was related to food, shelter and sex.  In today’s world where our stress is over money, health and relationships, which have long term impacts, we’re predisposed to make bad decisions most of the time.  The fact that most people jump out of the stock market as it goes down even when historically we know that it goes back up and the golden rule is to buy low and sell high is the best example of this.  For more information on how and why our brains deceive us most often read the book Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind.

In respect to politics we may be in a time of ‘fear fatigue’ from constant warnings of real and imagined threats the last eight years.  In reality, we are hurt and killed most often by unperceived threats like car accidents than from perceived threats like terrorists. Finally, the politics of fear may be losing and the public may be gaining from this circumstance.

The next time a politician goes for your vote with scare tactics, race baiting, or fear mongering remember to stop, take a deep breath, relax and do a little frontal lobe critical thinking.  Remember how many times this record has been played before and how the leaders promising security did not deliver it or even raised your anxiety levels after they were elected.  Both you and your country will be better for it.