In many ways why we fail to successfully oppose the republican illogic train is because we so utterly and completely fail to understand how it really works.
We counter their claims with logic and facts and are amazed when blank states are returned to us. We argue real world results, cause and effect, we bring up their claims from three or four years ago and show them how nothing they predicted came true, and they just stare, uncomprehending and blank. We speak with logic, and they hear nothing.
Blink.
Blink.
And the reason for this is that republicans speak a very different language than we do. They talk in codes sure, that's something that's been discussed elsewhere. But they also suffer from a common human desire best expressed in a monologue from the 1994 movie "Swingers."
They like the pain.
Why do they embrace failed policies so utterly and completely? Because failure/pain is better than the coldness of rational thought. Addicted to the emotional highs of being whipped into a frenzy, invading Iraq might be wrong, but it's certainly exciting. If it's painful, all the better. Because in the absense of pain, they feel nothing. So they go for pain.
In the movie "Swingers," Ron Livingston patiently explains to his lovesick friend, played by Jon Favreau, that when going through the heartache of losing someone you love you begin to like the pain. The pain becomes part of you. You get used to the pain, and in a strange way, that pain holds you together.
Republicans relate in much the same way to crisis/drama. Theirs is a mentality built on extreme emotion. Lurid intense passions that must constantly be stoked or they're left with that horrible and deflated feeling of everyday normalcy. Of cold rationality. Of realizing who they really are in life. Who they're really married to. Who they've really become. Not part of a "cause" but an individual life. And that is what terrifies them.
This is why republicans need to constantly scare themselves. To constantly whip themselves into a frenzy, a frothing hatred for whichever "enemy" is being presented to them that day (liberals, Gays, Arabs, Iranians, Mexicans). They define themselves exclusively by what they are against.
They define themselves by what they hate.
And so they hold onto that hate. They need turmoil. They need an economy constantly teetering between extremes. They need heightened emotions at all times as a form of drug high. They get high on the emotional pull of ferverency.
It's why we stood flabbergasted as the RNC practically exploded with frothing hatred at John Kerry for, of all things, serving in Vietnam. It is incomprehensible to us because we look at this logically (Kerry is a war vet) and not emotionally (Kerry is the "hate" of the moment). Their rabid "FLIPPP FLOPPP" chants at the 2004 RNC reminded of the ugliest moments of crowd-fever fascism, And for a good reason.
The republicans tap into the fascist aesthetic of frenzy. Of emotional extreme. Without it, they cease to exist.
So whereas we continue to apply the logical approach of policy decisions that are "beneficial" and "not beneficial" we might as well be talking Greek to them. They see none of this logic or real world cause and effect. Their binary is on a completely different axis.
The republicans see "emotionally upsetting" and "boring."
Anything that inspires that emotional swing, good OR bad, is worthy of embrace. Anything "boring", no matter how beneficial, results in the "blink blink" of blank stares that we keep running up against.
Here's the kicker:
The Iraq War itself has crossed over from "emotionally engaging" to "boring." Mainly because the real world negative impact has crested over the emotional high of the flag waving pseudo-patriotism of a really shiny yellow ribbon bumper sticker. And once it switches over from inspiring emotional narrative to real world cause-and-effect, it's like flipping a switch to the "off" position.
Blink.
Blink.
Until we understand that theirs is a political movement grounded not in "fact" but in the emotional highs of a form of political drug abuse(and like any drug addict, they need more and more to maintain their "high"), we can not argue with them.
We must argue from a place of emotional fervor, just as they have. This is what scares them most and why they constantly project their own illogical and emotionally out of whack rage on us with their "angry liberal" nonsense. As if any of us have approached the frothing rage from the neo-right the past six years.
But we need to start.
Only by getting angry. Only by engaging them on the emotional level of judgement, by making them aware that we don't just disagree with their positions we have contempt for their emotional failures, will we break through the "blink" of incomprehension and reach the core emotion that fuels their rage.
You can't use logic and facts and policy arguments on a mass movement swaying to gutteral rage and emotional triggers. You can only out-emotion them into submission.
To get back to the Swingers metaphor, until we introduce a blond as hot as Heather Graham for them to visually feast on, they will never move beyond the pain that they're clinging to no matter how much we verbally explain it to them.
We need visuals. We need emotional power. This will come forth through the impassioned charisma and emotional pleas of our leaders. Facts, real world results, are all secondary.
We need the power of emotion on display to wake up a cult of emotional drug takers who've led us down such a dark and illogical path.