As we have written, when one attempts to debate Liberals, one must maintain a wholly unemotional composure. This is vital, in ways a sane Conservative cannot imagine. If you show any emotional response or engagement, this will energize the Liberal, and make it that much more difficult to crush them in debate. In many ways, you are trying to use a technique similar to hypnosis.
Hypnosis is a powerful tool, revolving almost totally around amygdala manipulation. Psychiatrist Milton Erikson, the father of modern hypnosis had been wracked by Polio as a child, leading to horrible, debilitating physical pain later in life. However, he found that he could cause the pain to disappear, if he merely altered his brain’s focus, and led himself to concentrate intensely on something else. Suddenly his amygdala focused on something else, and didn’t register the pain signals that his body issued. Later in life, as the pain became unbearable, he would lean his Adam’s apple against the back of a chair, and push it into the chair, to help himself focus on that pain, and turn off his focus on his Polio-related pain. Merely by training his amygdala to flag something else as significant, physical pain which would have otherwise completely disabled him disappeared from his mind, and he moved about for the rest of the day, as if totally normal.
One of the keys to understanding how this operates in debate, is to understand the functioning of the Liberal’s amygdala – the central brain structure which scans all incoming data, and then flags that which is significant, focusing a brain’s cognitive powers upon it. The amygdalae of Liberals is measurably different from that of Conservatives on brain scans. As we detail in the book, this difference has been associated with all of the behavioral traits of Liberals, from diminished caring for the conditions young are raised under, to hyper-sexuality, to docility and inability to judge threat. If you have ever wondered why Liberals are fine with gay/single-parenting, sexual promiscuity, and why they feel a terrorist just needs a hug, it is because their amygdala is poorly developed.
It is our case that the Liberal is actually driven to Liberalism by the inability of their amygdala to function properly when confronted with competitive and/or negative stimuli. Quite simply, it is easily overloaded by such stresses, and this leads the Liberal to be desirous of an overbearing authority which will outlaw and eliminate all such stimuli, thereby shielding their amygdala by force. Political correctness is actually desired by the Liberal because it shields their amygdala from any hint of the confrontational, aggressive, competitive environment.
This amygdala difference can easily be used to manipulate Liberals, but to do that, you need to look closer at how their amygdala is flagging data for further analysis by the rest of the brain. To do that in this post, we will look at one narrow facet of hypnosis.
Actor and US Marine R. Lee Ermey
Suppose the Marine Drill Instructor portrayed by US Marine, movie star, NRA Board member, and Glock spokesperson R. Lee Ermey tried to perform hypnosis. It would probably sound something like this, as he screamed at the top of his lungs, holding his face mere inches from yours:
SIT THE FUCK BACK YOU DUMB SHIT, AND CLOSE YOUR EYES!
I WANT YOU TO RELAX EVERY MUSCLE IN YOUR BODY, AND GOD HELP ME, IF I SEE EVEN A SINGLE FUCKING MUSCLE TWITCH, I’M GOING TO PULL YOUR ASSHOLE UP AROUND THE TOP OF YOUR HEAD, AND SEW IT THERE – LIKE A BIG HAIRY HAT YOU WON’T BE ABLE TO TAKE OFF!
NOW SEE IF YOU CAN FOCUS THAT LITTLE PEA BRAIN OF YOURS, AND THINK ABOUT A RELAXING SCENE BY THE SIDE OF A STREAM! DON’T THINK ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE! I WANT YOU TO FEEL EVERY OUNCE OF STRESS IN YOUR PUNY FUCKING BODY GONE – DO YOU HEAR ME? GONE, YOU WORTHLESS FUCKING PISSANT!
This would be poor hypnosis. Most all of the stimuli you are exposed to is constantly being scanned by your amygdala. The amygdala is examining everything, running it by other areas of your brain and trying to figure out what to focus your attention on.
Here, R. Lee Ermey is giving your amygdala a whole host of stimuli indicating violence is imminent. Since such stimuli take precedence in the amygdala, such an emotion-rich environment will leave your amygdala fully engaged sorting the emotional stimuli, and trying to analyze what is going on in your hypnotist’s head, rather, than focusing on the thoughts he is saying. The change in cognition will be completely unconsciously mediated, but very profound.
A good hypnotist will make every effort to not flag your amygdala at all with emotional stimuli, and even turn off it’s flagging function, so when the hypnotist speaks, all you will focus on are the thoughts and images they present. It is this concentration on the thoughts they present which give their hypnosis the power to change how your brain works. They evoke such concentration in a number of ways.
Foremost, they will remove anything which might draw your amygdala’s attention away from the thoughts and suggestions they present. Unlike Mr. Ermey’s imaginary example, they will not yell, or offer any sort of attention grabbing (and especially threatening) body language. Any such attention grabbing stimulus will draw your amygdala’s attention away from the suggestion they are trying to focus you on. They will speak softly and calmly, only placing a soft emphasis on anchor words they want you to focus on. The stress **melts** away. Your whole body is very **relaxed**. Your eyes are **heavy**, you are falling **deeper** and **deeper** into a state of full **relaxation**.
If R. Lee Ermey is screaming inches from your face, your amygdala will focus on that, and you will never enter a trance-like state, or focus on anything else.
Now hypnotists do other things, (such as focusing you on an easily ignorable stimulus such as your breathing, before suddenly refocusing you on their suggestions), but their calm presentation is the most important facet of their technique for this blog post’s purposes.
As we have emphasized, Liberals have defective amygdalae in their brains. Their defective amygdalae are not good at flagging the relevant and ignoring the irrelevant. As we noted in the book, in studies, those with deficient amygdala function can’t even notice threatening facial expressions, and as a result, they can’t accurately judge threats from other people.
You see this defective sorting function in real life when Mitt Romney describes the sons he raised as having been his “boys” while debating Obama. Liberals immediately take to the internet to claim he did this as a racist dogwhistle. They immediately see a signal that Obama’s amygdala would flag as an objectionable reference to Obama as a black American, and the racist diminutive “boy.”
We know that is silly, but the Liberal’s brain is naturally scanning every incoming stimulus for any sort of social diminutive, or any assault on their social position or stature. As a result, they accuse Conservatives of saying things which nobody will notice, but which are intended to demean them. They even have a name for such a term – a “dogwhistle.” The Liberal hears it, but nobody else can – a very telling choice of words.
Why would I insult a Liberal with an insult nobody else would notice? They haven’t thought that far ahead. All they know is that they heard a derogatory phrase, it was extraordinarily unpleasant to them, nobody else noticed it, and that was all a purposeful attack by us, designed to not be noticed. Even that it wasn’t noticed by everyone else was part of our secret evil plan.
Now as we have written, when you are debating a Liberal, the key is to present several stimuli to them, which will be flagged by their amygdala, and produce the uncomfortable aversive stimulus they are so terrified of. Lock eye contact to load up their amygdala, out-group them with the crowd, diminish their status in the eyes of observers, present to them an image of inevitable defeat, highlight how much better and easier someone else has it, highlight how frustrated they must be at some failure, show how logic boxes them in and makes them look stupid, etc. As you are doing this, you want to be the exact opposite of R. Lee Ermey. You do not want to draw their amygdala’s attention away from these stimuli with big showy displays of emotion, anger, or elaborate physical gestures. You want their full concentration on what you present to them.
You want to be the hypnotist, calmly giving their amygdala nothing to focus upon, except their amygdala hijack, as you present hijack after hijack. They will instinctually counter this by trying to make you grow emotional. They will yell, and rage. They will say insanely insulting things. They will try to demean you. They will grow ever more agitated. They want you to engage them and get emotional. This may even be a conditioned behavior they developed through experience. Begin the yelling, to precipitate an emotional outburst in their opponent and that will shift their own amygdala’s focus, offering them some relief. I can’t say for certain, I just know they all will do it, and if you get emotional in response, they will immediately look physically relieved.
If you take the bait, and yell like a Marine DI, their amygdala will be distracted from the hijacking stimuli, and they will gain a respite from the aversive stimulus you are trying to create. Don’t take the bait. Remain calm, uncaring, passively amused, and never seem emotionally invested in anything the Liberal says. Their opinions are worthless to you, and you know the truth. You may be surprised at the effect that merely focusing a defective brain on negativity can have.
The calm, emotionless presentation offers another advantage as well, as we will discuss shortly, in our next post.
This is almost instinctive.
I’ve failed in several attempts at remaining calm, but experience has backed up what you are saying. How long will crushing them last? Will it condition them to shut their mouth in the future, or just earn you an enemy for life?
If several people got together and made a point of working on one of these guys, would that train them to avoid situations that could cause this response? Maybe this would succeed in getting some of the cool aid drinkers out of politics all together.
Would this work on small groups, like the agenda21 recruiters?
>I’ve failed in several attempts at remaining calm, but experience has backed up what you are saying.
I had the same problem with Narcissists, before I saw what staying calm could do. Before, my amygdala would flag the stupidity and irritating qualities of what they were saying, the frustration of dealing with such pointless evil without being able to just kill it, and the general repugnance of that psychology. All I would see was that. After that first experience seeing the Narc literally stroke out, Chris-Brown-style, right in front of me, my amygdala began ignoring all of the old stuff, and focusing itself (and me) on reading what the Narcissist was experiencing, and understanding how best to do it to them again. It can become an obsession, especially if you feel frustrated before learning it.
The key is realizing just how damaged they are, which will make what they say less important (would you care, or get emotional, over what recordings a damaged, mis-programmed robot played on a speaker to you?). It also helps to realize just how awesome it is to press their buttons using little more than words, and get such an outsized response. You will become further focused on getting the response, further deprioritizing your focus on what they say, and you will find yourself becoming much more calm, and more observant.
The funny thing is, once you do it, you will realize that this is what they were doing to you, all along. I now recognize my little anti-competitive Narc was saying those irritating things all along, just to see me get irritated. He probably didn’t even believe much of what he said himself – he just wanted me irritated and emotional during our interactions. The ridiculous comments, the stupid assertions, even the stuff he screwed up in the lives of the people around him – they were all designed to get the people around him emotionally bothered, so he would feel like the calm, cool, collected, and in-control one. That realization further deprioritizes what they say, and calms you even more.
When I say at the end of this post that they will lash out to make you emotional, that is what I am talking about. They want to emotionally off balance you. There is nothing to short circuit the emotions they try to call up like seeing the game, knowing the rules, and then turning around and knowing you can do better to them than they can do it to you.
>How long will crushing them last?
It depends on how well it is done, how hard it hits them, the threat of it happening again, and the degree of Liberalness in the target. The more Liberal they are, the more they seek to avoid amygdala agony – to the point of even denying reality and ensconcing themselves in fantasy. If you can inflict reality at will, your training of them can last a long time. Conservatives and Libertarians can look at unpleasant reality and face it, so they are less able to be affected by this.
I think of the amygdala hijack like a shock from a cattle prod. Mike Wallace, in that video in Touching the Raw Amygdala would probably never have broached helping an enemy with Colonel Connell, ever again, after his utter destruction. He did it once, got the shock of his life, and from that point forward, he would keep his mouth shut.
Amygdala pathways associated with Aversion Stimulus (panic) burn deep, and do not ever disappear from the structure (unlike things like memories or mental abilities, which structurally fade with time and disuse).
Now the amygdala can be trained to not respond to something it has previously responded to. If a stimulus which precipitated aversion is encountered repeatedly, with no adverse consequence, so as to decondition the aversive stimulus (panic) in response to it, the brain creates an additional weak suppressive pathway to facilitate the deconditioning. However in studies it has been shown that the suppressive pathway is easily shut off by one experience reconditioning the aversive stimulus.
So if you get attacked by a lion, and develop a consequent phobia of lions (an amygdala pathway associating lions and terror), that can be overcome with a lot of positive exposure to friendly, purring lions over a long period of time. However, in the future, all it will take is one lion roar to destroy all of the carefully, arduously built up suppression, reignite the phobia full bore, and make you just as terrified of them as if you had never been deconditioned, and maybe more.
>Will it condition them to shut their mouth in the future, or just earn you an enemy for life?
Yes, and kind of.
I view Libs like Narcs – less than human. You can’t think in terms of friend or enemy. The Narc is always your enemy. A Narcissist may feign friendship, because you do something for him, but he isn’t a friend in the sense you think of friends. Maybe you’re a supermodel and you fuel his ego by being with him. Maybe you have power at work, and he wants to gain your favor. Maybe you’re all screwed up, and looking at your hurt makes him feel good about his life. He’ll smile at the right time, talk abut loyalty,and do what he has to, to keep you around, but it isn’t because of like or love – it is utility. And he will demand to remain in full control, and to be happier than you at all times. If that requires diminishing your happiness, that is what he will do, because he doesn’t understand true friendship or loyalty. Just like Liberals trying to rip off the successful by increasing taxes and government, and then trying to keep their loyalty on the grounds they are Americans. They don’t know what loyalty means, or consideration of others, or the desire to see friends succeed, that is integral to it. They are about themselves, and their feelings, first and foremost.
So Libs are much the same as Narcs, if not to the same degree all the time. If you supplicate, tell them how great they are, help fortify their false reality, and accept a position below them, where you don’t have more stuff/success than them, they will want you around, and act like a friend. But it isn’t the same as a brother in arms, who wants you to succeed, and derives pleasure from your success. All of Liberalism revolves around a competitive strategy rooted in envy, cowardice, and avoidance of consequence by hiding attacks. The more Liberal the individual, the more you are dealing with a robot programmed with those urges. Succeed, and they will feign friendship, while trying to send the taxman to take your success, and bring you back to their level or lower. They want control and status, not loyalty among brothers, or success for one being success for all, based on loyalty.
On the conditioning, if you successfully hijack a Lib, they will walk on eggshells around you. If it happens regularly, and the shocks are harsh enough, they will try to not be around you. That response can also include them actively trying to target you behind your back, to get you out of their sphere, so they can re-enter their little fantasy bubble, and go back to feeling important. It can also include attempts to manipulate the group to turn on you, so you can’t hijack them. If they have power, and the ability to act, getting rid of you is just as good as winning the argument, since both will allow a return to their amygdala-shielding false reality, where all competition can be outlawed, and everyone can be forced to be a good little drone.
So I wouldn’t hijack a Liberal boss in this economy, unless I had another job all lined up. You should always pick your fights, and recognize that the Liberal will, above all else, seek to create an environment around them which facilitates their amygdala-shielding false reality. If your job is to make them confront that reality, your existence is incompatible with their programming.
>If several people got together and made a point of working on one of these guys,
>would that train them to avoid situations that could cause this response? Maybe
>this would succeed in getting some of the cool aid drinkers out of politics all
>together.
Yes. The amygdala is constantly scanning everything, looking first and foremost for anything it sees which presaged a panic response in the past. If they advocate for Liberalism, get amygdala hijacked, and endure the agony, the next time they are about to step up for Liberalism, they will pause, because their amygdala will feel what it did before, and call up the same panic they felt last time, at the mere thought of supporting Liberalism. It will shut them up, just as Colonel Connell shut up Mike Wallace.
Although a group would be ideal, all it really takes is a perception of a group. Ronald Reagan did this single handedly, by constantly ridiculing Liberalism when he was in office. Liberals felt as if the nation was laughing at them, and whenever they contemplated being Liberal, their amygdala kicked in, and made them keep their mouths shut. By the time Dukakis ran, all you had to do was whisper, “he’s a Liberal,” and Liberals would panic and run for the hills. Reagan even joked about it, saying at one point that it was time to break out the “L-word” to describe Dukakis. The word Liberal had become like an epithet.
Liberals tried to create a bandaid for their amygdala by relabeling their movement progressive and telling everyone they weren’t Liberal, but the damage was done.
I think this is all like an intellectual modification of what would happen in nature, and how we are designed to deal with it. In nature, reality only becomes unavoidable when K-selection returns, and someone is going to die because there isn’t enough to go around. At that point, r-strategists will begin getting amygdala shocks from reality banging up against their fantasy, with them having brushes with death and defeat that they can’t wish away. I think those shocks, and the training they provide to the brain, mesh up with how we are designed, and trip a program in the brain which will precipitate a more K-strategy in everyone, so we will each adapt to the new K-circumstances.
What I am proposing is we can simulate that K-selection environment, without anyone actually needing to die, or violence needing to happen. Furthermore, if we do it with amygdala hijacks every time someone espouses Liberalism, it will create a shift in the population’s psychology that will shunt everyone on the bell curve of psychologies towards K, and toward a more Conservative world view. I think our populations were designed to shift rapidly once these little stimuli begin presenting themselves, so I don’t think it takes a lot to do it. One President who ridicules Liberals regularly may actually be more than enough.
Obviously, our current situation, where Conservatives avoid even the hint of acrimony does not help this.
>Would this work on small groups, like the agenda21 recruiters?
Again, the biggest precipitator of panic in the Liberal is the group turning against them. If you are alone in a group of Liberals, it is very hard to hijack them, because you have to introduce an argument for Conservatism which if countered (with countering, in a practical sense, offering amygdala relief), would diminish the attacker in the eyes of their fellow Liberals. It’s not impossible – if a refutation of your argument required such an ignorance of logic or blindness to reality that the individual looked mentally defective to their friends, you will win. If they look defective enough, they almost appear to be hurting their cause by associating themselves with it. Libs could care less about reality, but looking like a retard in front of their group, or making their group look retarded and helpless, would be unacceptable. In such a situation, they would all sit uncomfortably, and if even one tried to grab status by looking “open minded” by acknowledging your argument, you are done with them.
It can also often be a good time to roll out the bad two-fer hijack. When a Lib is on the verge of a hijack, their logic abilities erode, and the bad two-fer seems to lock them up in a cycle of negativity, as their amygdala shifts back and forth between the two bad amygdala-flagging options, making them less able to shut off the amygdala. Vox highlighted a good bad two-fer recently here. The only way I’d change it is to point out either the Lib is immoral in supporting a liar, or they are too stupid to see they are being lied to. It is good now, but it only targets Obama – spread that targeting out to Libs in general.
If I knew a debate was coming up with a Narc or a Lib, I’d look at the issues beforehand, and come up with similar bad two-fers to roll out on command. Either you are unacceptable to the group this way, or you are unacceptable this way. It’s one or the other! In Vox’s case, either you’re a liar, or wholly ignorant and stupid. Either way, only an idiot would let you in their competitive group. I used to do this to my Narc, with carefully prepped two-fers, and it really screwed him up. He would sit there, simultaneously locked up mentally, and panicked. It looked weird, since anyone normal could argue out of it in a minute, but knowing about the defective amygdala made it all make sense. It hyperflags the insult, and won’t let them move to something else.
In the case of Agenda 21, I might try pointing out (in front of other landowners) that all they are doing is blatantly attempting to screw landowners out of their earned property rights and freedom (asserted as fact to lay a foundation). Then add either they are doing it out of jealousy of the landowners and an active desire to screw them over, or they are not intelligent and moral enough to see how outsiders dictating behavior to responsible landowners is wrong. Either way, they shouldn’t be anywhere near any decision about the usage of the land of others. It should be said matter of fact-ly, and even slightly bemusedly at their stupidity. You can get away with a lot of hostility with a bemused grin and feigned amusement. Then move on to other arguments quickly, without letting them respond.
You can easily come up with a better one than that, turning it over in your mind overnight, but you get the idea. It would lock them up, and make them think of two bad, amygdala-stimulating thoughts. Either they are jealous pricks acting cravenly, or they are immoral and stupid. (I would also use the term “landowner,” as I think it would precipitate a slightly greater jealousy reflex, since one who owns land has something more beautiful than someone who owns mere property – especially to a Greenie. That is subtle, but when pushing an amygdala to overload, every little bit helps – take it all. If they are non-landowners, or better yet, outsiders in some regard, I’d even point that out openly, to pile on simultaneous jealousy and out-groupings.)
It is worth noting though, that hijacking within a pure group of Libs can be difficult to do with hardcore coolaid Libs, because at the very outer margins, stupidity and reality-blindness is almost a badge of honor for the really extreme cult member. If all you have around you are full on cult members, I wouldn’t even bother engaging, since out-grouping would be so tough. It is better to not fight, while laughing and pretending you don’t care what they think. Never give them a single iota of any sense of victory in any debate, or let them think that you offer any authority to their group, by caring if they agree with you. Your goal should be to make every interaction a defeat, so as to best train them to shut up when debates arise.
In the end, one aspect of the successful amygdala hijack is picking your fights, and defining the group yourself – sort of like Sun Tsu telling Generals to pick their battlefields for their own best advantage. You want every interaction to lay down an aversive stimulus pathway, and no interaction to give them any relief. If we can do that, we can train the Liberal to stop being such an ass.
I do think that using a group of all libs to practice on is an excellent way to hone this ability. I could walk into a room, debate 100 PhDs simultaneously in front of 5000 screaming faithful and walk out hours later looking like I just spent a diverting afternoon playing with the kids. Imagine the havoc I wreak in a mixed setting.
I have noticed a disturbing tendency of supposed conservative opinion leaders to display decidedly liberal amygdala traits.
You sound like fun company!
I agree that groups of Libs can be good to hone an uncaring frame, but many here are starting out, and what I want somebody who looks at this to experience, is that open-mouthed, Mike Wallace expression of sheer anguish, and the rapid deterioration of the mind which occurs following that, if you press on after seeing it. For a newbie, I think that first window into this is best found in mixed company.
I know a lot of people may blow this off. I had seen the petty mind games my Narc played, and actually viewed them as a waste of energy. I thought to myself, what kind of pussy is relegated to bringing up a subject designed to make somebody else bothered emotionally? To me, it was petty, weak, ineffectual, and the last ditch province of the weak and impotent. I mean who wastes time hurting someone else’s feelings? Especially when I looked at my own reaction to it, and saw it have no effect.
Then one day I did it to my Narc, almost as a lark, and saw him literally need to go to the emergency room for an overnighter, after only about five-ten minutes of talking. At first I didn’t even think I had done it – it couldn’t have been. Suddenly I understood why he did it. In his eyes, it wasn’t a waste of time. It wasn’t weak and ineffectual. He did it because it was something which traumatized him viscerally, and he figured it would traumatize everyone else as well. It was as potent a weapon as a baseball bat, if wielded properly, and best of all, there were no consequences to using it. Now I see Libs freak out over dogwhistles nobody else hears, and I know why. Their amygdala is designed to flag anything like that fiercely, and focus them on it, to a ridiculous degree. I see Chris Brown literally have to call an ambulance because of a stroke, I see him say it was because he was thinking about negativity, and I understand. That is how Liberal brains are designed. They have that Achilles heel, built right in.
I think almost every hardcore Lib is like that, and it is why we get those stupid “for the children arguments,” designed to outgroup us over not caring for children, and all of that bullshit. It really hurts them, in ways we can’t understand, and they assume it does the same to us. All I want is to teach a few here how to do that to them, and get them to teach others, and alter how Conservatives debate. But to do that, newbies have to see it first for themselves, and for that I recommend steering clear of all-Lib gatherings to start, until you see it for the first time on a single Lib like Mike Wallace, and you realize your power over them.
But if you’ve cracked the code, then I can see how screwing with bunches of Libs can be a great way to build the ability.
On the K-leaders, I agree, and am also disturbed. Hopefully when the collapse comes, K’s will begin to be less tolerant of the crybabies and the wimps, and demand real men as leaders.
We shall see…
Brilliant
Would you say this is a good example of an amygdala hi-jack?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZYaYEyNpuI
I finally understand Ann Coulter.
Yep. I’ve searched for the video of Ann taking on Patricia Ireland of NOW, on This Week, right after the Lewinsky scandal broke, but I can’t find it. That was a classic amygdala hijack of Ireland, though Ann was a little too amped up and eager. Had Ann been more calmly dismissive and unemotional while maintaining eye contact, Ireland would have melted down.