Bookraft

Newsweek and Sharon Begley have done a masterful job of exposing the nature of Fear and how it effects people during decision making. But Sharon has a tighter purpose in writing this science piece, she is applying it to the Politics of Fear that has been war-crafted by George Bush and the Republican party for the past 8-10 years. Remember that George Bush had been successful in Texas politics based in no small part on his ability to work with the opposition Democrats. In 2000, one of his key themes was "I am a Uniter not a Divider". But swiftly abandoning that and then in the 2004 election Bush and the Republicans converted more fully over to the dark side of the Politics of Fear.

This may have its initial repudiation in the 2008 Iowa Caucuses where the Republicans were outpolled by a margin of 3 to 1 well above the historical 1.4 to 1 in recent election years. But make no mistake, the Fear genie is out of the bottle . The Democrats are gearing up for fierce Swift-boating attacks in the upcoming general election. And negative ads, despite their dulling effect on voter turnout, are on a lot of Congressional candidates, both Democratic and Republican, agendas as well.

So what Sharon Begley has done is to carefully summarize some of the recent findings in Cognitive Science and Psychopathology and reveals how our primitive brain dominates our rationality in many decision making situations - not the least of which is the political election choices. The story is chock full of great references to research in the field. For example I can highly recommend the work done by Drew Westen whose work is available here (be sure to download the free PDFs) and is summarized in the book, The Politcal Brain. However, there is much food for thought as to the nature of the odds as the Politics of Hope now takes on the Politics of Fear.