Tag Archives: political psychology

Radicalization, Incitement, and Lone Wolf Violence

09 Saturday Jul 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Psychology, Politics, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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C-DR-press

What’s in a picture?

First, the source of the screen capture:

McLaughlin, Eliott C.  “Woman streams aftermath of officer-involved shooting.” CNN, July 8, 2016.

A simple caption might do: Diamond Reynolds meets the press on the police-involved killing of her boyfriend Philando Castile in the Falcon Heights community outside of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

As Reynolds breaks into tears and is comforted by a pastor, another man comes forward wearing a “Day of Dignity” t-shirt that has come from an event sponsored by Islamic Relief USA (there are many Day of Dignity events annually).

BackChannels to this point has been “crayony” and superficial about “Moscow-Tehran” and “Syndicate Red Brown Green”, which one may infer from pictures at the intersection between the black nationalist movements and Palestinian Solidarity — raised fists and green flags — and it’s there in the latest attractive trope, “Ferguson-Gaza” — by way of examples online:

In Salon, August 22, 2014 (by Stanford University professor David Palumbo-Liu): “Ferguson and Gaza: The definitive study of how they are and are not similar”.

In the Middle East Eye: “Gaza and Ferguson: Can two struggles unite?”  August 19, 2015.

“Ferguson-Gaza” — look it up 🙂 — loads up on the anti-Semitic New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left, of course, and the same is met (same search) by Jewish and other commentary questioning the comparison.  Be that as it may, take this post as being about the motivation for hitching emotions to the readymade and head-nodding programs of the Far Left and potential Islamist Front, not that there’s anything in the least controversial about missionary sympathy from any religious quarter toward those to whom injustice has either been done or who perceive the same as being so.

Again, this post is about the motivation: the policeman looked white; the angel looked black.

That’s the way it looks and will probably be remembered as the way it looked.

If you have a Facebook account, I highly recommend Melissa Colorado’s footage of Diamond Reynolds’ say on the matter of the shooting of her boyfriend Philando Castile.

On the basis of surface events and visceral perception, those in politics and ambitious about picking up their legions know exactly how to exploit such misery to pick up their own numbers.

At its Facebook address, the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, an old stalwart, has lost no time producing language and action certain to motivate “the masses”:

“Black Lives Matter Chicago, the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression and Trinity United Church of Christ calls upon all the various strands of the peoples movement to come out and join us in protest of the cold blooded, brutal murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. We will rally Monday, July 11, 2016 in Federal Plaza (Dearborn and Adams) at 4:30pm and march in the streets.”

In relation to Dallas, never mind the political incitement present, so might be inferred, in the head of sniper Micah Johnson.  How did such an idea as shooting police from a parking garage in Dallas get in there in the first place?

Take another glance up this page.

The processes of law in the United States will diminish some of the passion involved in the coming understanding of the shooting of Philando Castile by (Latino) policeman Jeronimo Yanez.

Regarding “Syndicate Red Brown Green”, a term of art on this blog, this piece may be essential for understanding how Far Left movements do, in fact, collide:

Isaacs, Anna.  “How the Black Lives Matter and Palestinian Movements Converged.”  Moment, March-April 2016.

Related: Black Solidarity with Palestine

The point should be clear and for now remain: the proper framework for Far Left politics in the United States (and perhaps elsewhere) remains the Soviet, the Cold War, and the aftermath — the political phantoms — that have flowed down with both over time.  If one wants to drive back even further in cultural-political history, one may through the lens of greater Asian and Russian history and the barbarism and feudal conquests associated with both.  What for interest appeals to BackChannels is the extreme narcissism in play in history and in present politics where powerful personalities have placed themselves beyond criticism and law and immune to the suffering of others, especially when they themselves capriciously impose that suffering on others with impunity.

National Review writer David French has also weighed in on Black Lives Matter.  Here are two pieces, one dating back to December 2015 and another posted yesterday.

French, David.  “America is Driving toward the Abyss, and It’s Time We Hit the Brakes.”  National Review, July 8, 2016.

French, David.  “The Numbers are In: Black Lives Matter is Wrong About Police.” National Review,  December 29, 2015.

Related in the News

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/dallas-police-ambush/dallas-shooter-micah-xavier-johnson-was-army-veteran-n606101 – 7/9/2016

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dallas-police-chief-david-brown-has-lost-his-son-former-partner-and-brother-to-violence/2016/07/08/01419ea8-451c-11e6-8856-f26de2537a9d_story.html – 7/8/2016

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2016/07/09/lawyer-minnesota-cop-reacted-gun-not-race/86894752/ – 7/9/2016

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FTAC – On ‘Different Talks — Same Walk’

13 Monday Jun 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology, Politics, Religion, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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https://conflict-backchannels.com/syndicate-red-brown-green/

When it comes to autocracy and insanity, more or less, think “Different Talks — Same Walk.”

The combines of bipolar and malignantly narcissistic psychology cross cultural, ideological, and religious divides to produce the kind of person that becomes a dictator or the kind of person that becomes a terrorist.

Scaled in terms familiar in social psychology, some percentage of population drifts toward and into the available extremes at the margins of their chosen channels.

While the “Kool-Aid” varies, there are a lot of language- and information-related processes ferrying the right kind of personality into their kind of combat or political action.

With Islam — as opposed to, say, post-Soviet neo-feudal Russian nationalism — I / we, perhaps, have been on a journey from knowing very little to knowing enough to at least get the big picture about right, and with that we’re getting to see how the “jihadists” differ from Muslims who really have no wish to force on others or otherwise vigorously purvey “Political Islam”.

Greater than Islam may be our general transition and transformation from the medieval worldviews represented by “Red Brown Green” to the modern one of greater cooperation, integration, integrity, and inclusion plus, not a small thing, the want of being helpful to others.

Although one cannot overlook the medieval character of medieval religions and related behaviors; however, one may choose to set aside aspects of the content of one screed or another to more closely focus on the political and social psychology at work  — to be found on this blog: “social grammar”, “malignant narcissism”, “medieval vs modern”, etc.

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Posted to YouTube 4/6/2016

Related: Quinn, Liam.  “‘Let’s get rid of them’: British-born Islamic preacher who has called for gays to be ‘executed’ was giving lectures in Orlando weeks before nightclub massacre.”  Daily Mail, June 13, 2016.

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Putin, While Messing With the West, Grows a New Russian Economy

09 Thursday Jun 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eurasia, International Development, Political Psychology, Politics, Russia

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Two points of reference:

Medetsky, Anatoly, Matthew Campbell, Yuliya Fedorinova.  “Putin is Growing Organic Power One T-34 Tank-Tomato at a Time.”  Bloomberg, June, 7, 2016.

Shinkman, Paul D.  “Beware Appeasement With Russia.”  U.S. News & World Report, June 9, 2016.

Keep in mind the extreme duality presented by the Concert in Palmyra, for example, and the savaging of Syria by a tyrant accompanied by the incubation and encouragement of ISIS as a useful foil and poker chip for playing over the course of perhaps the World’s Grandest and Most Romantic Political Theater.

While burdening the west (and NATO) with the fallout in refugees and terrorists from the Syrian Tragedy and pestering the same through its activities in Ukraine, an assortment of “frozen conflicts”, and its investment in “information warfare” online, Russia has been also (as Obama long ago suggested) growing its economy, the first fruits of which have been given pretty good play in Bloomberg.

About to this point, the image of a Moscow hard hit by dramatically reduced oil revenues and sanctions and by years of capital flight driven by corruption has held steady, but now we see The Bear has been planting all along.

Neither Russian artistic and intellectual high culture nor developing business success (finally!) can or will ethically or morally offset what Putin’s regime has done to degrade the lifestyles of Russians en masse (so far) nor erase the barbaric and contemptible way it has measured the worth of the lives and freedoms of others in Crimea, Syria, and elsewhere.

For whatever may have happened to Putin early in life, one may glimpse a Putin’s revenge taken against the enemies of the Soviet, perhaps old imperial Russia as well, and what he might brand as traitors to Russia in Eastern Europe — those who have joined with NATO — for while he has delivered refugees and terrorists and the confusions of RT and other state-controlled media operations to their lands and airwaves (and computers), he has placed the productive capacity of the state in the state-controlled private hands, and as the same wish to make a lot money, the tomatoes are going to be pretty good for eating (or throwing).

Note too that in the encouragement of Far Right and Far Left political organizations worldwide, Putin & Co. have blended with the tomatoes a heady mix of hippie values — what could be more pure than tomatoes irrigated by mountain waters? — and fascist nationalist dreams rooted in ethnolinguistic pride.

While NATO may prepare for and block greater Russian imperialist adventure, its more immediate and perhaps more real headache may involve meeting the challenge posed by Moscow’s autocratic, barbarous, and criminal “allowances” within Russia and far beyond its borders.

Posted to YouTube 2/3/2016.

Reference

AFP.  “Millions more Russians living in poverty as economic crisis bites.”  March 21, 2016.

Orttung, Robert and Christopher Walker.  “Putin’s Frozen Conflicts: Each of Russia’s reform-minded neighbors is plagued by separatism.  It’s no coincidence.”  Foreign Policy, February 13, 2015.

Pomerantsev, Peter.  “Russia and the Menace of Unreality.”  The Atlantic, September 9, 2014.

Ragozin, Leonid.  “Putin’s Core Support Begins to Waver.”  Bloomberg Businessweek, June 9, 2016.  (Added 6/10/2016).

Tolokonnikova, Nadya. “Criminal Godfathers and Dirty Birds.”  Huffington Post, February 3, 2016.

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FTAC – A Response to Advocacy for Putin’s Russia

27 Friday May 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology, Russia, Syndicate Red Brown Green, Ukraine

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Re. democracies and monarchies: a dozen European states remain monarchies but tempered by their democratic complements in power (parliamentary systems).

Re. bigotry in the west — the point is the people fight it in concert with their governments. The real tension is between ethnolinguistic cultural majorities and their interest in preserving themselves and evolving as they themselves determine. As much has given rise to what I call the “New Nationalism” and, like Viktor Orban in Hungary, “New Nationalists”. Those on the Far Right in relation to those movements are often anti-Semitic, which goes with the defensiveness and, probably, patronage. Even in Hungary, however, such as Jobbik may become prominent but make the final climb into political leadership.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/…/a-note-on-hungarys…/

With Jobbik in Hungary, the revision is just weird, but explained some by the persistence of Soviet politics in the post-Soviet Era.

Regarding Ukraine, Alexander J. Motyl has been arguing for the ceding of Donbas, but it’s not about being Russian in any case. The truth is ordinary people resent state-enabled criminality and related criminal aggrandizement. Yanukovych worked to get himself shoved out of office, and some of Russian heritage with whom I’ve spoken — and some I have read about in Grigas’s book, resent being used by Moscow as “compatriots”. The claim of protection is seen as a pretext for aggression that either expands or strengthens Russia’s area of control and influence or that results in a “frozen conflict” lending itself to criminal enterprise (where there is no effective and functioning sovereign, there’s a lot of space available for mischief).

Even while posting about Nadiya Savchenko’s liberation, I have wondered about both inherent and legacy politics plus what the effect of fame and public interest may have on her political vision as she necessarily updates herself.

In the British sphere, I’ve unconditionally accepted Naz Shaw’s “turnaround” or present stance and, with either, her repudiation of the anti-Semitic facet of the Labour Party.

Finally, regarding criminality, we have all got some vanity, and our personal mixes of “reparative” and “malignant” narcissism generally fill out a moderate life. With the criminal class, immoderation becomes either desirable or habitual, partly because of what we think of as criminal has lost its brakes in conscience, busted through normative boundaries, and, here invoking the Islamic concept, “exceeded limits.” When these people are small and surrounded by a lawful society, the wind up in jail; when they’re large, they may go a long time in business before hitting any walls; and in politics, they can ruin states — and they do that in profound ways.

The want of the power to impose suffering on innocent others with impunity becomes, I believe, a facet of that political criminality we call “dictatorship”. It’s not just the firm hand that one may dislike to the point of loathing: it’s the dispensing of sadism that comes through those that the good find aberrant and abhorrent.

Welcome to Virtually New World.

Now that we’re all here and furiously chatyping, what are we (and leaders old and new) going to do with it?

We may try to recognize some things we don’t like about our Newest Age.

Also deeply related on this blog: “Why the Jews?”, a piece that is at bedrock about one human response to “absolute power” — within which concept BackChannels would include the power to make others suffer with impunity — that has worked its way around the world.

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FTAC -Longitude – The Hebrews, Judaism, and Law

16 Monday May 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology, Politics, Religion

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While Judaism, Jewishness, and Zionism combine in the interest of Hebrew ethnolinguistic cultural and spiritual survival, the religion probably should not be confused with the practical motivation for related ethnic survival. For anti-Semites only, it’s all the same — Jews, Jewish faith, Israel, Zionism — but attacking Zionism in the age of tolerance becomes the more sustainable ploy.

In contemporary animus and conflicts targeting Jewish life, there are four themes:

1. Absolute Power — political power consolidated in one ruler;
2. Capricious Law — because the ruler is the law;
3. Idolatry – the ruler lays claim to divine right or historic inevitability for his legitimacy in power, and progressively conflates his image with God or the State, and expects followers to respond appropriately — or else!
4. Sadism — with confusion as to what is God and what is human, the permit to exercise a singular will to make others suffer with impunity comes into play.

However any may care to think about any number of political and religious figures in history, I feel the above describe the character of tyrants, small or large, or men or women on the way to becoming tyrants.

The Jewish program embedded in Christianity and Islam — attractive in Rome and useful in consolidating the Arab world — unfailingly promotes (from the git-go in Genesis) human consciousness, self-consciousness or self-awareness, and, most important of all, the possession of a human conscience. Moses later becomes the lawgiver who would oppose Pharaoh in the exercise of his contention that he himself was as if a god.

Game over.

The defense and transfer of concept over thousands of years has been apparently painful. The Jews, we Jews, are a mixed lot, including the atheist portion, but common to all has been mutual good regard, from Adam to Netanyahu, and the development of a conversation through time about divinity, ethics, and morality. We know discipline and order too, but Torah-derived or induced argument (regarding Isaac, should Abraham have talked back to God?) has led to a compendium of law sufficient for living, working, and trading in peace worldwide.

As an ethnolinguistic cohort, the Hebrews could grow only so much in numbers as Hebrews, but the uptake in Christianity and Islam fills in the story.

The “Abrahamic Faiths” should get off the bloody medieval and tribal merry-go-rounds and revisit their “operating instructions” line by line and in the context set by time — BCE, CE, feudal, medieval, mercantile, possibly “post-modern” — and eject the absurdity of global competition based on being born with a few labels in place.

As time is spacious and timeless, what other work than that of fostering ethnolinguistic cultural survival and co-evolution by producing a global political atmosphere in which mutual good regard matters.

Reference Off to the Side

Oppenheim, Lassa.  “International Law: A Treatise.”  London, New York: Longmans, Green, and Co, 1905.

While “The West” draws its shape also from Greek and Roman civilizations, the “Judeo-Christian” contributions in thought and in woefully bloody history serve to have produced so far deeply desired and survivable codes of conduct and of law.  Whether we’ll be able to enlarge the familiar term to “Judeo-Christian-Muslim” contributions remains to be seen, for as implied by way of the awesome conversation, what Baghdadi has put on demonstration smacks of absolute power, capricious law, idolatry, and sadism, all of which greater portions of Islam seem to be rejecting as I type.

American Islamic Forum for Democracy.  “Declaration of the Muslim Reform Movement / Signed by AIFD (December 4, 2015).

Berman, Ilan.  “Morocco’s Islamic Exports: The Counterterrorism Strategy Behind the Mohammed VI Institute for the Training of Imams.”  Foreign Affairs, May 12, 2016.

Varagur, Krithika.  “World’s Largest Islamic Organization Tells ISIS to Get Lost.”  The World Post / Huffington Post, December 3, 2015.

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FTAC – Absolute Power – Extremism – “Different Talks — Same Walk.”

15 Friday Apr 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology

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https://conflict-backchannels.com/…/malignant-narcissism/

There are differences in how different scriptures work and (!) how they may be leveraged into religious or secular autocratic power.

I’m the editor of the blog cited, and for the idea that more human misery has to do with the character of leaders and their followers than with related artifacts — books, legends, poems, songs, etc. — I’ve used for dictators the phrase, “Different talks — same walk.”

In general, most people don’t like the “walk” — or strut — laid down by a strongman, but for the medieval of mind, the crowds or “masses” matter much less than relationships with similar powerful persons, their own inner circles in business, military, and paramilitary communities, and then the constituencies that have bought in with them. Out of that complex political community come the “evildoers” and those leveraged to cooperate with them.

“Different talks — same walk.”

The latest in polling has given us the “94 percent” figure: what is different then about the six percent who would endorse the violence against innocents that may be delivered with the cry “Allahu akbar”?

I think the true immediate axis in global conflict is that between medieval and modern conceptions of man and related concentrations or distributions of power in those who govern. How absolutely powerful a tyrant is compared to the leader constrained by institutional powers greater than himself.

Chatyping in social media dredges up a host of ideas familiar to BackChannels readers, not least among them the idea that a kind of personality produces for itself a political environment suited to its need for control of the surrounding world — and that to the point where it may mete out suffering to others with impunity.  Such power proves always deeply destructive and sadistic.

It’s best to catch it at the gates — in the truly functioning democracies, at the polls — but even then the popular will may invest in an egregious choice.

Addendum – April 16, 2016

Regarding narcissism, which may be malignant or reparative in its balance, one possible trigger for the malignant — those who seek absolute power over others and in the process lose their brakes (or “exceed limits”), an instance or pattern of “narcissistic mortification” may set off attempts at covering (hiding) and repair that lead to the barking, as it were, and the rejection of criticism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_mortification

The reinvention of the self that follows may include a verbal part that then serves to aggrandize, elevate, empower the narcissist, and when it gets going as a kind of cycle and dare, then develops the business that is a cult at the lowest level and a dictatorship at the highest.

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One may infer such a development between Jim Jones, the mass murder by Kool-Aid guy, and Bashar al-Assad, the mass murderer by way of whatever means have happened to be at hand, but not find the incident or period of mortification as that resides in the narcissist’s memory.

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FTAC — A Wrap-Up on Mentality — Malignant/Medieval and Reparative/Modern Narcissism

11 Monday Apr 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology, Politics, Psychology, Russia, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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In our common malignancy, perhaps, our narcissism lends repair to psychological damage to self concept. Life’s rough and in part insults us, less or more, but, again perhaps, the greater the insult to esteem — the heavier the hand — the more passionate the want of self-aggrandizement, security, and wealth.

In the healthy, it’s good having basic and somewhat above good circumstance in freedom, money, and general security. In the malignant, the same wants get Up There and Out There. On Back-Channels, I’ve likened such qualities to the recognized psychological pathologies that are bipolar disorder and narcissistic personality disorder. In our general political psychology and related sociology, we aspire and trade up in comfort and prestige, and we do that through laws an practices that accommodate a healthy general development with concern spanning the distance from penthouse to street.

The malignant do things quite differently.

Muammar Qaddafi’s Mullah Shweyga story (easily looked up) tells the difference. Such leaders take full advantage of the possession of the power to visit suffering on others with impunity. All of the crimes that may be visited on one may as well be extended to others: capricious “justice” or detainments, imprisonments, hangings, tortures. Each dictator asks: “who is going to stop me?” And off each goes into the high life on the backs of the hungry, the powerless, and vulnerable.

I’m always happy to share the Reuters piece on Khamenei (“Assets of the Ayatollah”), but I think it better that others embark on similar journeys as regards the entire host of figures whose power has proven malignant and resides in the brutalities and related fears and levers (e.g., bribery and patronage; intimidation and murder) known more to the medieval mind than the modern one.

Yes, this may be the only blog on earth suggesting the reader continue doing the research.

🙂

Here’s a related comment on Moscow’s role in managing conflicts in a manner fit to destroy those it manages to manipulate and prize from the same conflict-related income and, at least in its own hive-mind, power and prestige.

Moscow, representing Putin’s political police, himself, and the oligarchs, may be a greater power than Tehran. It may barely be keeping its political image clean — remember: officially, Moscow is helping Damascus fight “The Terrorists” — but it may have the habit of manipulating political situations to its advantage.

From Somali General Galal, who is still alive, here’s a densely compacted recap of the Somali vs Ethiopian war over the Ogaden: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03pk9c1

In the PROCESS of that war, Moscow apparently manipulated Somali leaders into laying claim or reclaiming the Ogaden, pitting first guerrilla then regular forces against Ethiopian control of the space. As advances pushed Ethiopia out of the contested space, Soviet Russia stepped in to arm Ethiopian forces, who then pushed back the Somalis. The Ogaden continues to host some related “low-intensity conflict”.

Who won?

Getting away from one’s own interests, in this instance Syria, and venturing to overview Moscow’s involvements in conflicts worldwide across time may help us more brightly resolve (accurately perceive) states of affairs in Syria and the Middle East Conflict.

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FTAC – A Comment on Attitudes and Beliefs and Religion

08 Monday Feb 2016

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology, Psychology, Religion

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I believe in Judaism, but I don’t want to see a religious court developed in place of a secular one.

As an American, I appreciate the symbolism of the Jordan River as depicted or used in the Torah, but my river is the Potomac and my soul altogether American.

_God is Red_ by (Native American) Vine Deloria, Jr. makes an interesting case in regard to the relationship between a land and its people.

Also of basic interest may be Daniel Everett’s _Language: The Cultural Tool_ and _Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes_, both of which tell about our use of language as a tool of survival.

Those “internal variables and functions” operate with and through language over a base of emotional turmoil and valence.

In “Attitude-Behavior Correspondence” studies (at least back in the 1980s), for some, “Attitude = Belief x (Affect x Intensity) / Primacy”. What needs looking at are the arrangements of multiple beliefs. In survey form with the Likert scale, “Do you believe in God?” (1 = Not At All, 5 = As Strongly as Possible” becomes one question and “Do you believe that Muslims can never be friends with Christians and Jews” (1 = Completely Disagree, 5 = Completely Agree).

Add 38 more questions, distribute to 150 students on one campus somewhere, apply regression analysis to the response set, and see how “beliefs” — or statements about beliefs — correlate with one another.

Recapitulate on another campus.

Recapitulate with another age group.

Such studies can go on a while, but I would suggest that through social science and other methods, one will find certain beliefs, like the belief in God, primary, and other beliefs, like that having to do with not being friends, either dismissible (“completely disagree”) or minimized in the mind of the surveyed subject, and, when aggregated (through survey method), also minimized.

“Attitude = Belief x (Affect x Intensity) / Primacy” may be the BackChannel’s author’s own addition to the more customary configuration, “Attitude = Belief x Affect”.  It simply adds in the intensity of good or bad feeling (“affect”) about a belief and it recognizes that some of what we believe about our existence — start with one’s own name, which is fairly “low level” or basic in the programming of our own personalities — may be more dear to us than other aspects of an object, including ourselves as our own possession.

As regards an “American religion” — might there be such a thing? — BackChannels may turn some attention to revisiting early American literature and the classic visitor commentaries.

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