Peter Watts Explains Sarah Palin

One of my favorite science fiction authors, Peter Watts, blogged an amazing article referencing a whole raft of scientific studies to explain why the behavior of the sort exhibited by Sarah Palin is popular with anyone, ever. An excerpt:

1. People perceive nonexistent patterns, meanings, and connections in random data when they are stressed, scared, and generally feel a loss of control in their own lives.
2. Right-wing people are more easily scared/stressed than left-wing people. They are also more likely to cleave to authority figures and protectionist policies. There may be a genetic component to this.
3. The dumber you are, the less likely you'll be able to recognize your own stupidity, and the lower will be your opinion of people who are smarter than you (even while those people keep treating you as though you are just as smart as they are)

There isn't really a soundbite for this essay. Nearly every paragraph is rife with quotability. The bottom line: It costs a lot to adhere to fundamentalist lunacies. Paying that cost in order to agree, offers proof to the rest of the national or religious group that you are committed to them. Social cohesion results. That's why fundamentalist churches spread and progressive churches die out. That's why calm secular societies don't achieve as much invention, battle victory, and imperialistic expansion as insane ones-- they're less motivated and don't love each other with maddened red-eyed passion. I was raised in the lunatic fringe, and I recognize what he's saying from my own observations.