Tis true I've wandered offtopic, but I figure there's some extra built-in slack on Flame when one is in hot pursuit of artistic zinging...though that last post wasn't really zinging, and I think you can see the essential truth of my observations.

I sense that you're suspicious that my inquiry into conservative psychology is just a quest for ammo, but the truth is, I've simply gotten thoroughly sick of running a maze constructed by politicians. A maze seemingly deliberately designed to keep us running from tree-of-outrage to tree-of-outrage like incontinent Rottweilers, too distracted to see the shape of the forest for the irresistible scent of piss-drenched trees.

It's a truism that most human troubles arise from miscommunication. Maybe it's a Liberal thing, but I believe that understanding of other people is a powerful tool for improving the accuracy of communication. Nothing feelgood or airy-fairy about it: I proved the practical value of understanding during a ten-year career as a technical writer, by developing a mental model of the audience for each work, and running the simulation to evaluate what I was writing to see how the word-symbols expanded into meaning in the reader's mind. I learned to adjust my writing and choose my words so that the recipient of my communication received the message that I intended to send.

The quest for a synoptic understanding of conservative psychology matters, because on individual issues conservatives always adopt a pose of extreme rationalism and argue that their beliefs aren't really beliefs, but bedrock laws of the universe...but taken in total, conservatism is riddled with contradictions and paradoxes. Consider the dynamic tension between Libertarianism and authoritarianism, impulses which seem present in most conservatives. The paradox can't be resolved by logic alone, but requires looking at the bigger picture; and because conservatives are human despite their protestations to the contrary, looking for the emotional key that resolves the intellectual paradoxes.

Perhaps the unifying key to resolving the surface contradiction between Libertarianism and authoritarianism is fear of loss. Libertarianism is about hanging on to material property, and authoritarianism is, psychologically, about parental archetypes, where humans commonly experience fear of abandonment and fear of withdrawal of parental affection. The theory is supported in myriad ways by the expressions of conservatism; e.g., the belief that the world is going to hell in a handbasket is a fear of losing what one has or had in the recent past. Conservatives instinctively flock to the defense of authority when it's under fire, perhaps out of fear that if Authority is destroyed, the conservative will lose a fundamental anchor and source of security, perhaps even the sense of identity that comes from knowing one's place in relation to authority.

Still, why does even that matter? Seems to me that a huge problem bedeviling our democracy is the loss of the faculty for compromise. A democracy institutionalizes compromise, and so when compromise is impossible, the institution of democracy is dangerously hamstrung.

Compromise comes about from negotiation, and negotiation is communication. A negotiation is most likely to produce a satisfactory result for all (or an equally unsatisfactory outcome for all) when the parties have a maximum of knowledge about the desires and goals of the other parties. One reason for this is simply that transparency assures everyone that they got a fair deal and weren't tricked by a party concealing information, and makes them willing to come back for more.

In the usual ritual of negotiation, the parties converge on a solution halfway between their starting positions. Seller asks for $3, buyer counteroffers $1, and eventually they end up at $2. People pick their starting positions based both on their perception of the value of the item under negotiation, and their judgment of its value to the other party. Everybody tries to predict where the negotiation will end so as to pick an advantageous starting position.

In my toy example, the buyer's target was $2 based on the judgment that it cost the seller $1.50 to make the item, and that 50 cents is about the minimum profit the seller will accept. But what if it actually costs the seller 50 cents to make the item? Then the buyer's misjudgment cost him about $1, and the outcome wasn't an optimum for all parties.

In terms of game theory, this looks like the Prisoner's Dilemma (as so many primate scenarios do). In any one negotiation, certainly it's advantageous to withhold information. But over the long haul, it's not optimum to always burn your buyers (or take too much advantage of sellers). If they figure it out, they may refuse to do business with your, or if they do, they'll come back loaded for bear and determined to grind you into the dirt.

Sounds a lot like modern American politics, doesn't it? Only in the case of politics we're not talking about percentages of profit, in many cases we're talking about matters of life and death. We must pursue the optimum over the long haul, and not jeopardize the country by fixating on short-term victories. Democracy produces optimum results by producing compromise, QED saving American democracy requires resuscitating an ability to compromise; compromise requires negotiation, and negotiation requires good communication.

That's what I'm trying to do for America. What have you been up to lately?