Here is a possible explanation explaining why millions of Americans willingly vote against their own wellbeing.
Key Results
The study found a small, positive correlation between amygdala volume and conservative beliefs, but the effect was much weaker than in previous studies. They did not find a significant relationship between ACC volume and liberal beliefs. Some correlations were found between ideology and the fusiform gyrus, but these results were not consistent across all analyses.
ATHENS, GREECE — A groundbreaking new study has reignited the debate over whether political ideology is linked to brain structure. While previous research suggested that conservatives have larger amygdalas – the brain’s fear center – and liberals have larger anterior cingulate cortices (ACC) – involved in conflict detection, this latest investigation paints a more nuanced picture.
The study, published in iScience, examined brain scans from nearly 1,000 Dutch adults, making it the largest analysis to date on the neurological underpinnings of political beliefs. Led by researchers Diamantis Petropoulos Petalas, Gijs Schumacher, and Steven Scholte, the team sought to replicate and expand upon a controversial 2011 study that first proposed structural brain differences between liberals and conservatives.
Using advanced brain imaging techniques, the researchers analyzed gray matter […]
Jake Johnson , Staff Writer - truthout | Common Dreams
Stephan:
I have been telling you for at least two decades (see SR archive) that you and I, if you are a reader in the United States, have the most expensive and the worse healthcare in the developed world, and Americans have shorter lives than people living in other developed nations. Here is yet another story confirming what I keep telling you. The only thing that is going to change this is when you and I and everyone we know and that they know demand the Democrats create a universal birthright single-payer healthcare system like the one in the rest of the developed world. The MAGAT Republicans are corporate servants of the healthcare industries whether they know it or not, and don’t even want Medicare.
A report out Thursday shows that the United States’ for-profit healthcare system still ranks dead last among peer nations on key metrics, including access to care and health outcomes such as life expectancy at birth.
The new analysis from the Commonwealth Fund is the latest indictment of a corporate-dominated system that leaves tens of millions of people uninsured or underinsured and unable to afford life-saving medications without rationing doses or going into debt.
“Despite spending a lot on healthcare, the United States is not meeting one of the principal obligations of a nation: to protect the health and welfare of its residents,” the report states. “Most of the countries we compared are providing this protection, even though each can learn a good deal from its peers. The U.S., in failing this ultimate test of a successful nation, remains an outlier.”
People in the U.S., which spends roughly twice as much per capita on healthcare as other rich nations, “live the shortest lives and have the most avoidable deaths,” Commonwealth noted, pointing to frequent “denials of services by insurance companies” and other systematic defects of the American system, […]
BRENDAN FISCHER, VICTORIA CADOSTIN, Deputy Executive Director | Researcher - Documented.net
Stephan:
When I tell you about the corruption of the MAGAt Republicans and their servitude to the U.S. illness profit system, this report describes one of the many examples confirming this reality.
Credit: Adobe Stock
Washington’s top pharmaceutical lobby oversaw the adoption of model legislation that would restrict voting access at the most recent meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
ALEC is an influential organization that brings together state legislators, private-sector corporations, and right-wing advocacy organizations to develop priorities and adopt model legislation for introduction in statehouses around the country. Its policy recommendations often become law in the states.
In this case, the model legislation capitalizes on MAGA-driven conspiracies around noncitizen voting and would make it easier for election officials to purge voters. The “Only Citizens Vote” model legislation directs state election officials to remove suspected noncitizens from voter rolls, offering vague direction that risks seriously restricting voting access for eligible voters.
The Election Integrity Network, led by Cleta Mitchell, helped draft and promote the model legislation. Mitchell — the former Donald Trump attorney who joined the infamous call in which the then-president demanded that Georgia’s top election official “find 11,780 votes” — also moderated a panel at the ALEC meeting.
A frequent critic of campus voting, Mitchell argued […]
Laura Mannweiler, Reporter - US News & World Report
Stephan:
I see this as excellent good news. I continue to be appalled at the polls saying the election is essentially a tie. The only explanation I can see for that is that people who don’t like to be asked to respond do so with the intention of screwing up the poll, or who aren’t planning to vote do so for the same reason. Even so, it is hard for me to fathom how, for instance, any woman can even think of voting for traitor Trump and the MAGAt Republicans, although I know that being a handmaiden is attractive to some. Why reports such as this one are so important is that it is clear to me that our democracy hangs by an unraveling thread.
In 1937, the American public was asked for the first time by Gallup if they would consider voting for a woman president if she were qualified “in every other respect.” Only 33% said yes at the time.
That sentiment has certainly changed.
More than 80% of young voters in key battleground states say that a woman could be an effective president and strong leader, according to an exclusive U.S. News poll conducted among more than 2,000 young people ages 18 to 34. But opinions slightly differ based on gender, political affiliation and religion, and 6% disagree that a woman candidate would meet that criteria.
As part of the poll, conducted for U.S. News by Generation Lab, young people were asked if they thought a woman could be an effective president and strong leader. Among respondents:
57% said they strongly agree
25% said they agree
12% said they neither agree nor disagree
3% said they disagree
3% said they strongly disagree
When considering gender, a slightly larger share of men disagreed about a woman’s ability to be an effective and strong leader, with 7% of the men polled answering either […]
Sohrab Ahmari, Editor of Compact - The New Statesman
Stephan:
I think Sohrab Ahmari is correct, there is a mental illness in MAGAt world. But I think although he is correct he misses one important aspect, the precognition I have described in my podcast, the consumning fear about the radical change in AMerican society climate change is going to cause. I am not surprised though. Very few in media know anything of nonlocal consciousness, or the Matrix of Consciousness.
Credit: Shannon Stapleton / Reuters
“Shut up, Jew.” “Your Jew lies don’t work anymore.” “Yeah, Jew, the truth can be a bitch, huh?” “Jews lie, steal, and murder – it’s their religious duty.” “Less kikes is always good.”
In recent days I’ve been inundated with these and hundreds of similar messages on the X app. The onslaught followed a recent column in which I took issue with Tucker Carlson’s granting of an uncritical platform to a crank historian. Darryl Cooper, an amateur-history podcaster using the pseudonym “Martyr Made”, claims that Winston Churchill was “the chief villain of the Second World War”. There is no point equivocating: the Carlson interview, and the way it has energised swarms of online bigots, are symptomatic of a profound sickness afflicting the American right – particularly the young, online right. The aetiology of the disease is complex, but it would be a mistake to try to locate the causes outside the right, as many of my conservative confrères will […]
