{"id":5584,"date":"2011-08-11T01:12:17","date_gmt":"2011-08-11T08:12:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=5584"},"modified":"2011-08-11T01:12:17","modified_gmt":"2011-08-11T08:12:17","slug":"republicans-reflect-their-owners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/08\/11\/republicans-reflect-their-owners\/","title":{"rendered":"Republicans Reflect their Owners"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have often wondered why Republican politicians and pundits display so little empathy for the people their policies harm, or worse.  When a people were dying, because Big Insurance was cancelling their health coverage after that had made payments for years, Republicans ignored these corporate death panels, supported the corporate criminals and accused Obama of death panels that did not exist.  As people are losing their homes, because corporate loan sharks misrepresented the terms of their loans, Republicans ignore these corporate criminals, while fighting tooth and nail to prevent legislation, that requires Banksters to represent their loans honestly and clearly, from taking effect.  The reason may well be that these Republicans lack empathy because the people who own the Republican Party also do.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"11luxury\"Psychologist and social scientist Dacher Keltner says the rich really are different, and not in a good way: Their life experience makes them less empathetic, less altruistic, and generally more selfish<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

In fact, he says, the philosophical battle over economics, taxes, debt ceilings and defaults that are now roiling the stock market is partly rooted in an upper class "ideology of self-interest<\/strong>."<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have now done 12 separate studies measuring empathy in every way imaginable, social behavior in every way, and some work on compassion and it\u2019s the same story,\u201d he said. \u201cLower class people just show more empathy, more prosocial behavior, more compassion, no matter how you look at it<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an academic version of a Depression-era Frank Capra movie, Keltner and co-authors of an article called \u201cSocial Class as Culture: The Convergence of Resources and Rank in the Social Realm,\u201d published this week in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science, argue that \u201cupper-class rank perceptions trigger a focus away from the context toward the self\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, rich people are more likely to think about themselves. \u201cThey think that economic success and political outcomes, and personal outcomes, have to do with individual behavior, a good work ethic,\u201d said Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.<\/p>\n

Because the rich gloss over the ways family connections, money and education helped, they come to denigrate the role of government and vigorously oppose taxes to fund it<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will quote from the Tea Party hero Ayn Rand: \u201c\u2018It is the morality of altruism that men have to reject,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Whether or not Keltner is right, there certainly is a \u201clet them cake\u201d vibe in the air. Last week The New York Times reported on booming sales of luxury goods<\/strong>, with stores keeping waiting lists for $9,000 coats and the former chairman of Saks saying, \u201cIf a designer shoe goes up from $800 to $860, who notices?\u201d\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Common Dreams<\/a>><\/p>\n

Avoiding the temptation to tar all with the same brush, there are millionaires and billionaires with sufficient empathy to have a well developed sense of social responsibility, and they reject and oppose the class warfare Republicans are waging against America.  But, if it seems that the Republican Party doesn\u2019t give a damn about 98% of Americans, it\u2019s because it\u2019s true.  They reflect their owners.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have often wondered why Republican politicians and pundits display so little empathy for the people their policies harm, or worse.  When a people were dying, because Big Insurance was cancelling their health coverage after that had made payments for years, Republicans ignored these corporate death panels, supported the corporate criminals and accused Obama of […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5584\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}