A Mind’s Eye View of Star Trek’s The Game

In Star Trek: The Next Generation’s The Game (Episode 106, first aired 10/28/91), the crew of the Enterprise becomes totally addicted to a virtual reality game brought aboard the ship from an alien world.

A slick pair of VR specs sends visual imagery to brain, energizing the brain’s serotonin and dopamine receptor sites. The more one plays, the more one is chemically rewarded, rendering the higher cortical (reasoning) areas of the brain moot. This puts the ship and, by extension, the entire Federation at grave risk.

I was reminded of The Game as I read today’s New York Times editorial titled There He Goes Again. It’s a rather mild take-down of John McSame’s ridiculous economic proposals, the core of which is keeping in place Bush’s tax cuts for the billionaires amongst us. Money quote:

Mr. McCain and his advisers must know that his numbers do not add up. But adding up is not their point. Their point is to perpetuate the fantasy that Americans can have ever bigger tax cuts and a balanced federal budget. They cannot. The unbalanced budgets of the Reagan years and two Bush presidencies are proof.

Perpetuating fantasies is the very function of the Rethuglican propaganda machine. Believing that Iraq is a success, that we aren’t already in a recession, that we can drill our way out of rapidly increasing gas and energy prices in time to ward off an even more severe economic downturn, that attacking Iran will enhance our national security, that tax cuts for the hyper-rich will trickle down their legs to benefit the rest of us are just a few of their most prominent delusions.

Neurocognitive evidence for addictive delusional behavior is provided in Dr. Drew Westen’s book The Political Brain: The Role of Emotions in Deciding the Fate of the Nation. Westen reports an experiment in which political partisans are presented cognitively dissonant information about their favorite politician. Functional MRIs reveal which parts of the brain are involved in processing that information, and the extent to which it will go to restore mental harmony. Even the most clearly bogus rationalizations are no match for the brain’s electrochemical reward circuitry, the same used by drug addicts when getting their fix. Not only does the subject again feel good about their candidate, but they end up feeling better. (Westen wryly notes that the term political junkie is thus more than just a metaphor.)

Message to McSame and their MSM enabled Rethuglican propaganda machine:

Take those rose colored VR glasses and shove ‘em where the sun don’t shine.

UPDATE: A McSame VP candidate, South Carolina’s Governor Mark Sanford, experienced a moment of cognitive flatulence Sunday morning when asked by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer to identify any economic policy differences between McSame and Bush.

Kinda hard to watch, but Huffpo has the vid.

He may as well be a brother from another planet:
“Greetings; Take me as I am— not as you think I should be.”

The “new politics” of Barack Obama are leaving many Americans lost in his dust. Traditionally they may have been categorized— and understood themselves to be— “liberals,” “conservatives,” “progressives,” “Republicans,” “Democrats,” and “Independents.” Not so surprisingly, a sizable majority of MSM pundits also have no idea what Obama means by a “new politics.”

But it is proving altogether unsettling for these various sub-groups of the electorate, having been so thoroughly and completely indoctrinated in the “Left-Right-Centrist” Meme of politics as usual that they can’t see themselves defined any other way, to suddenly find Barack Obama is not following their calcified notions of what they think he should be, and how he should behave. A few weeks ago Karl Rove was all by his lonesome calling Obama “arrogant” and “elitist” (read: “uppity”); now the fickle mouth breathers of teh illiterate electorate are having to change their intellectual underwear almost every week, and they don’t like it one bit.

Yo Yo: What ever your old political notion was of Barack Obama, he is not definable that way, anymore.

It has nothing to do with the dissection of political decision making by attributing it to left, right, or center, and it never did. These crude demarcations of political ideology never really yielded a true picture of the real values that form the basis of the decisions of a Barack Obama, or any other politician. Obama’s recent decisions have the various segments of his supporters, and his opponents, attempting to hammer them into the increasingly meaningless meme of the old politics, by whining “He’s tacking teh the center,” “He’s betraying the left,” “He can’t be trusted,”  “He won’t go to Bagdad,” He’s just another liar,” “He’s a fundamentalist Christian!” blah, blah, blah— Because the MSM, and even some of the progressive blogosphere, still insist on seeing the political world through the grossly cynical but fading paradigm of the old politics. Thank you, Dick Bush; your legacy is upon us.

It is inevitable that a presidential candidate who actually has a living relationship with Christ will eventually make his way to the White House. The tacit and superficial toleration of the inconsequential religious lives of recent presidential candidates and presidents (save perhaps Jimmy Carter) is symptomatic of an even bigger problem, and it has left the electorate unprepared — even the secular and religiously educated intelligentsia— for what they might expect from an Obama presidency.

Many who were initially inspired by Obama’s leadership abilities and personal charisma haven’t really grokked what he’s been saying about his religious convictions, in his books or in his speeches. Those who have been paying attention, if they are agnostic secularists or even religious secularists, are flabbergasted and confused by his commitment to following the truth— as he sees it, not them or more specifically, their political creed— wherever it may take him. Why is anyone shocked they barely hesitate to turn and rend him, his pearls be damned.

There are numerous comments at places like Alternet and HufPo where one can read the whining superficial loyalty to Obama, now that he’s beginning to “refine” his opinions in ways that don’t nuzzle up to the secular left’s butt cheeks. A couple examples.

Liz Sidoti:

Obama also may be undercutting his claim to be a straight-shooting, new-politics candidate as he repeatedly breaks with his liberal base on various issues to aggressively move to appeal to the center of the electorate.

Liz can’t help but fall into the “center of the electorate” pit; it’s just too easy to assume Obama’s principles are as jello-like as any other politician’s; he can’t really believe his own decisions are based on real principles, can he??

I selected this comment from Susan of Texas at HufPo because she riffs on a “true believers” stereotype and father substitution, while throwing in a little personal peccadillo she harbors on authoritarianism:

He says everthing [sic] that is right, but what he actually does conforms with his authoritarian leanings. He is extremely competitive and ambitious; he wouldn’t be the nominee if he weren’t. He gew [sic] up without a father and substitutes his “heavenly father” to make up for the loss; he is a true believer. And we all know how dangerous they are.

Setting aside for the moment the lack of personal religious experience at the heart of so many of Obama’s critics both inside the democratic party and out, let’s focus on her notion that Obama says everything that’s “right, but. . .” Ask yourself why he says everything that’s right, if he really means none of it? The deeply ingrained cynicism of such a view is of course, lamentable, but ultimately it’s the insinuation that Obama is a shallow, lying deceiver just like Bush, Cheney, or Rove, that he has no real values at all, that smells up the place. Such a lack of discernment results from a completely debilitated ability to trust, and is the ultimate cost of cynicism.

“And we all know how dangerous they are.” Let the term “True believers” be defined here as anyone on the planet with a genuine spiritual awareness through their own personal religious experience. To every appearance, Obama is such a person. But “dangerous”? True believers in Jesus actually believe “Love your enemies” is a superior philosophy to “kill your enemies.” Hence, Obama’s commitment to withdraw from Iraq, and not launch American wars of choice.
And his recent decisions, which have caused a chorus of caterwauling among some of his supporters, probably the same ones who recoiled at the spiritual fervor Obama engendered in many of his other early supporters, are all positions that place the highest values of a truth-driven political prodigy right out there for all to marvel at, or complain about. Discuss.

“He g[r]ew up without a father and substitutes his “heavenly father” to make up for the loss; he is a true believer“

Non-religious minds can plop out such a thoughtless notion because it seems so logical. But anyone who truly knows God as a Father does so, not to fill the physical void of an absent or inadequate earthly father, but because they have already learned the value of such a divine Father through their experiences with an earthly father figure. Every child is wholly dependent on his parents and the home life for all his early concepts of everything intellectual, social, moral, and even spiritual; all that he can first know of either human or divine relationships comes from the family. Obama’s book, Dreams From My Father, makes it reasonably clear that most of that guidance came from a loving Grandfather, Grandmother, Father, however briefly, Step-father, and Mother all of whom, to my mind, must have done a superb job, based on what little we can observe of Obama’s spiritual relationship with God as a Father.

America’s political ship has steamed out of the sheltered bays of established old-politics tradition, and has begun its perilous cruise upon the high seas of evolutionary destiny. The only real question is, does America want Obama— a genuine religionist— the “real deal” at the helm, or McCain— a genuine fraud. As never before in our history, the soul of America had better carefully scrutinize the charts of our highest shared values, and therein find the trust the new captain will need from us if he is to steer us true.

Unity— Not Uniformity!!

Representative government presupposes an intelligent, efficient, and universal electorate. The character of such a government will ever be determined by the character and caliber of those who compose it. -The Urantia Book

Boy, are we in trouble.

Five plus years into the Iraq War, only one in seven Americans can find Iraq on a map. Only two out of five know and can name the three branches of the US government. Only one in five know that the US has 100 Senators.

So writes George Mason University historian and author of Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American Voter, Rick Shenkman:

Why were Americans so susceptible to myth? Foreign policy specialists don’t usually spend a lot of time reflecting on this question. They should. It’s the key to what often goes wrong when foreign policy issues become the subject of public debate.

The answer is, I’m afraid, simple. Myths count more than facts in these debates because Americans don’t know many facts and don’t care to take the time to learn them. Unlike subjects with which they have first-hand experience–think gas prices–matters related to foreign countries are both exotic and incomprehensible to most Americans. This leaves them sitting ducks for wily pols who want to take advantage of their ignorance by playing on fear and patriotism.

The extent of Americans’ ignorance is underestimated.

Read more of Shenkman at Juan Cole’s blog.

With the Progressive blogsofear up in arms over the House’s passage of Bush’s FISA bill, and even more incensed at Obama’s essential support for same, I am reminded of how the Dem leadership caved on the Protect America Act, with rumors that from behind the scenes the Administration was warning of an imminent 9/11 scale attack. And how if that if happened, the Dems would be blamed.

Newsweek’s new poll has McCain behind by 15. Yes, polls at this stage are unreliable. But who doesn’t think that the Rethugs will do ANYTHING to keep control of the Executive Branch, and most especially the Attorney General’s office to head off any post-Bush indictments.

Not ignoring all the arguments made against this atrocious bill thus far, just surveying the political battlefield before the biggest battle begins.

“Neither. I am, I am a, ah, illiterate that has to rely on my wife for all the assistance I can get.”

However, that conflicts with another statement of his the other day, about how his search for a vice president was going:

“You know, basically it’s a Google. What you can find out now on the Internet — it’s remarkable.”

You ain’t seen nuttin’ yet, John…

UPDATE: DHinMI over at Dailykos provides us with a preview of the technological arsenal of the man who has identified the 20th century as his century.

In my post, The Obama Zeitgeist, I wrote:

Barack’s message of Hope and Change found greater resonance in the Democratic electorate than Hillary’s message of Experience and Leadership.

I suggested that this turn to hope and idealism found resonance in the teachings The Urantia Book re its depiction of The Seraphic Planetary Government, and in its distinction between ideas and ideals.

Now that the Dem primary is over, it is fair to ask whether this hypothesis has relevance to the general election between Obama and McCain. I submit that today’s joint poll conducted by the Wall Street Journal and NBC News answers that question in the affirmative. The Journal reports :

Asked to respond to two statements, 59% of voters said they believed “This is a time to have a president who will focus on progress and help move America forward,” while 37% of voters favored the statement, “This is a time to have a president who will focus on protecting what has made America great.” Just 4% said they weren’t sure.

What’s more, 54% said the statement that “This is a time when it is important to look for a person who will bring greater changes to the current policies even if he is less experienced and tested,” identified more with their personal view, while 42% said the statement that “This is a time when it is important to look for a more experienced and tested person even if he brings fewer changes to the current policies,” was more in line with their view of the race.

That’s a 12% differential between the past and the future.

The Zeitgeist rules!

Anybody surprised that Fixed News is saying Obama is already over the top, before the polls close, while CNN and MSNBC are saying, in effect- not so fast?

Anything to counter the obvious Dem strategy to have their Hollywood moment, declaring that either Nebraska or South Dakota have put Obama over the top rather than the INSIDERS at the DNC, which is sure to be the Fixed News narrative going forward.

Obama says that McCain is running for Bush’s third term.

Sounds like a good campaign theme to me.