For those of you wondering but not saying anything. Yes, it's fairly well established at this point that leftists are basically aids in human form.
Dr. Ryota Kanai of the Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience, University College, London led a team which did some research into the brain structures of political ideologues. In their 2011 study, Dr Kanai's team examined MRIs of the brains of ideologues on the left and right, and found that there were two main structural differences between the brains of liberals and the brains of conservatives. This research further supported earlier work examining differences between the cognitive processes of partisans.
In short, Dr. Kanai and his team found that liberals possess a smaller right amygdala volume and a larger anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) than their conservative counterparts. This is consistent with other work which has linked amygdala function with political affiliation.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22282583
http://sci-hub.io/10.1038/nn1979
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3092984/
The amygdala is a brain structure most commonly described as being responsible for the generation of fear. This definition is incomplete, however. The amygdala is primarily responsible for assigning emotional significance to encountered perceptions. What that means, is that the amygdala essentially scans all incoming information and flags the information that it deems as important. Likely due to this, it is also strongly associated with the ability to perceive threat, and it is this which leads many to say that it is responsible for the production of fear.
https://sci-hub.io/http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627300804754
In several studies, the amygdala has been found to be involved in the reading of emotion in facial expressions, the judgment of threats presented by others, and the analysis of the intentions of others. The amygdala is therefore crucial to the perception of threat presented by other individuals, likely through attaching significance to, and drawing attention to, subtle indicators of threat in other's countenances.
Reduced amygdala function is assumed to reflect diminished development, and reduced functionality. Humans exhibit a fair degree of variability in amygdala volume, even accounting for differences in measuring criteria. In an experiment, monkeys with damage specifically to their amygdalae, were found to be unable to read social cues, or respond to threat stimuli. As a result, they were described in the research as, “retarded in their ability to foresee and avoid dangerous confrontations.” To anyone who is not a leftist, the similarity is obvious.
https://sci-hub.io/http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v393/n6684/abs/393470a0.html
It is interesting that liberals exhibit a larger “envy center” within the brain, given frequent left-wing calls to “tax the rich,” or engage in other forms of what is referred to as “class warfare” and income redistribution from successful to unsuccessful.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19213918
Other research shows that reduced amygdala responsiveness underlies the reduced cooperation seen in psychopathy. Research has also found that those who better read emotional cues in peers (and therefore likely exhibit larger amygdala development, and therefore likely tend conservative) exhibit more pro-social behaviors. Given the 260 + million who have been murdered by leftist revolutions throughout history, this should make anyone think twice before supporting a leftist, and should bring into question the genuineness (and practical utility) of any leftist claim of empathy.
Liberals would also seemingly display impaired fearfulness in the approach behavior they demonstrate towards threats, be they terrorists or criminals. No matter the obvious danger, or the conservative calls to confront it and dispatch it, liberals insist that any perceived threat is a result of irrational fear, and should be disregarded.
Similarly, in monkeys with amygdala damage, the absence of any fearful stimulus produces the docility and pacifism which marks the r-strategy. Impaired fearfulness is also a trait commonly associated with personality disorders such as psychopathy, with some theorizing that the absence of this fear stimulus is what unburdens the psychopathic conscience, and facilitates the psychopath's immorality and rule-breaking.
http://sci-hub.io/10.1016/j.biopsych.2006.07.021
http://sci-hub.io/10.1016/j.tics.2007.07.003
http://sci-hub.io/10.1037/1528-3542.7.2.239
http://sci-hub.io/10.1016/s0278-2626(03)00276-8
The key to understanding this data and in what context it can be judged is understanding how environmental factors come into play, what group behaviours led to the rise of the cohesive societal structures we have now, and how you keep them. The left/right political divide is not necessarily a case of conservative values vs liberal values. It seems to be more an r-selected vs K-selected , the correct thing to say(though nowhere near as fun or reaction provoking) Is that a smaller amygdala is an evolutionary advantage in a r-selected environment, where as a larger amygdala Is an evolutionary advantage in a K-selected environment.
The important thing to note, is that we live in an inherently K-selected environment.
The science behind r/K Selection theory was hashed out decades ago. It emerged as biologists pondered why some species reproduced slowly using monogamy and high-investment parenting, while other species reproduced explosively, using promiscuity and single parenting. We know that high investment dual-parent rearing is objectively better than another in terms of outcomes when looking at a large population of humans.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2930824/
The first environment an organism may face is the presence of freely available resources, which is referred to as an r-selective environment. This most often occurs when a predator keeps a population consistently lower than the carrying capacity of its environment. Those individuals who waste time fighting for food will be out-reproduced by pacifists, who simply focus upon eating, and reproducing. Fighting also entails risks of injury or death – risks which are pointless given the free availability of resources everywhere. Hence this environment will favour a tendency towards conflict avoidance, and tend to cull the aggressive and competitive. It will also evolve tendencies towards mating as early as possible, as often as possible, with as many mates as possible, while investing as little effort as possible rearing offspring.
In the other environment, a population exists at the carrying capacity of its environment. Since there is not enough food to go around, and some must die from starvation, this will evolve a specific psychology within such a species. Termed a K-type psychology, or K-Selected Reproductive Strategy, this psychology will embrace competitions between individuals and accept disparities in competitive outcomes as an innate part of the world, that is not to be challenged. Since individuals who do not fight for some portion of the limited resources will starve, this environment will favour an innately competitive, conflict-prone psychology. Study shows, such a psychology will also tend to embrace monogamy, embrace chastity until monogamous adulthood, and favour high-investment, two-parent parenting, with an emphasis upon rearing as successful an offspring as possible.
This is why when we look at K-selected species in nature, we see packs of wolves, herds of elephants, prides of lions, and pods of dolphins, and each individual is loyal to their group and its competitive success. Since the only way to survive will be to acquire one’s resources by out-competing peers, this invariably produces tremendously fast rates of evolutionary advancement. For this reason, K-selected organisms are usually more evolutionarily advanced than their r-selected counterparts, and will exhibit more complex adaptations, from increased intelligence and sentience, to increased physical capabilities, to increased in-group preference(Us and them mentality), loyalty and pro-sociality, in species where group competition occurs.
With this as background to put things in context, it’s easy to see how these two deeply imbued psychologies generate different perceptual frameworks within either side. Just as a Liberal will never grasp why conservatives will look down upon frequent promiscuity and single parenting, the Conservative will never grasp why the Liberal will be so firmly opposed to free market Capitalism, or the right to self-defence when threatened. Each sees an inherently different world, and is programmed to desire an inherently different environment.
It is also interesting to note, even today, as r-types gain hold in a civilization, they seek to provide the unproductive and uncompetitive with the free resource availability of the r-selected environment. As in nature, as this goes on, the r-type cohort grows in the population, until the entire financial ecosystem collapses, the government dissolves, and the civilization becomes ruthlessly competitive. As in nature, free resource availability cannot go on forever.
I have had people point out to me that the data shows liberals have smaller Amygdala’s but larger ACC’s (Anterior Cingulate Cortex) and that a larger ACC is a good thing, the ACC is involved in a wide variety of neurological tasks, though it is often described as a neural alarm system. In this role, it signals when something is wrong, or some perceived stimulus is ambiguous and requires more detailed analysis. If the amygdala identifies a reason to panic, the ACC is the button it pushes which triggers the panic.
The ACC has been noted as being activated very strongly during periods of physical pain, http://sci-hub.io/10.1038/nrn894 and is shown to be very strongly activated during the psychological stress of social exclusion,http://sci-hub.io/10.1038/nrn894 , http://sci-hub.io/10.1016/j.tics.2004.05.010 ,http://sci-hub.io/10.1126/science.1089134 (perhaps explaining the liberal’s preoccupation with social discrimination in society, or their inability to perceive their own in-group). It is also activated by perceptions of un-fairness,http://sci-hub.io/10.1126/science.1093535 a stimulus very similar to social exclusion, at least to those of narcissistic tendencies who are socially excluded. The ACC has also been noted as being highly active during the production of envy, when viewing others with access to superior quantities of “self-relevant resources.” http://sci-hub.io/10.1126/science.1082976
More easily engendering a state of envy would also increase the willingness of such an individual to violate rules, and pursue a more direct, less honour-driven path to competitive success. That individuals, unsuccessful in the competitive environment of childhood play, would tend to be socially excluded, might explain this neurological linkage between envy and the psychological pain of social exclusion. Additionally, one who had well developed their ACC (which appears to create a perception of social exclusion) in childhood, might tend to carry an underlying, constant, subtle perception of being socially excluded from their in-group as an adult, thereby diminishing their drive to exhibit loyalty to their in-group and tolerance of differing ideology in the face of the alternative(social exclusion).
ACC activation is also seen during the exhibition of empathy, probably due to it simulating the pain of others. Interestingly, given the ACC's role in fostering feelings of empathy, and the amygdala's role in detecting empathetic cues, and then forcing one to behave in an empathetic fashion, this may point to neither political psychology as being optimally designed for true, selfless empathy.
Due to their larger amygdalae, conservatives have a more compelling psychological force motivating them to act on empathetic feelings, through empathetic behaviours. However their smaller ACC will lead them to feel less empathic sensations of psychic pain. Liberals due to diminished amygdala volume, could be expected to be less capable of correctly flagging cues and perceiving when to feel empathy. They will also have less psychological force motivating the personal sacrifices consistent with true empathetic behaviour. Thus liberals support higher taxes in principle, yet seek to lower their own personal taxes, regardless of their stated stance. A combination of strong feelings of empathy for anyone, regardless of merit, combined with a lack of aversive stimulus driving them to sacrifice personally, would produce this conflict between ideals and behaviour.
Given that altruism requires a certain willingness to endure personal harm, it is interesting that volumetric measurements of the Anterior Cingulate Cortex are also positively correlated with personal harm avoidance. Thus a larger ACC might further deter liberals from both displaying altruistic, pro-social tendencies, and embracing the risk of harm inherent to free competition with peers. http://sci-hub.io/10.1006/nimg.2001.1004
This is consistent with the evidence that liberals give less to charity https://www.gordon.edu/ace/pdf/Spr07BRGrinols.pdf
Trump is appealing to the base impulses of the K-selected individuals in society, so I guess you could call him a demagogue in that respect. The argument could easily be made that the rest of the politicians are the same but on the other side, however the Conservative establishment politicians with the lone exception of Ron Paul espouse r-selected values with their fiscal irresponsibility and pandering to political correctness and their lack of in-group preference in regards to immigration and in policing the world to make things “better” or bring “democracy”.
That’s how far the pendulum has swung due to an unparalleled increase in prosperity in the west over the last 70 years or so. As humans we’re the most K-selected species on the planet, that is largely how we got to where we are. The r-selected ideologies will bring what we know as civilized society crashing to the ground if left un checked...