This opening by Gitlin could (and should) be the opening to stop voting Democrat.
Louis Proyect wrote:
Dissent Magazine, Spring 2004 Ralph Nader and the Will to Marginality by Todd Gitlin
A classic book of social psychology analyzes a flying saucer cult of the 1950s. This small band of Americans believed that on a particular date soon to come, the world would be engulfed by a flood of biblical proportions-but also that, on the very same day, flying saucers would arrive and rescue the true believers. Researchers infiltrated the group and waited to see what would happen.
Came the designated day, the landscape remained dry, no saucers landed, and how did the believers respond? A number of them fell away. But as in similar cases of millenarian prophecy over previous centuries, there remained a core of fanatics who, having already turned their lives upside down to conform to the prophecy, took courage from the support they found in their group. They stuck to their guns, reinterpreted the data in such a way as to justify the commitments they had already undertaken, and intensified their proselytizing efforts. If reality was going to be in such poor form as to disconfirm their belief, they would find a way to make belief and reality match. If they could win converts in a second round of proselytizing, they would confirm the wisdom they had demonstrated in the first.
full: http://www.dissentmagazine.org/
-- Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
