by SUSIE DAY
I have become a card-carrying, tax-paying moderate, thanks to a study I found in Politico.com. In this study, psychologists Kaitlin Toner and Mark Leary discovered that the more extreme politicians’ views are, the more they think they’re right. In fact, politicians’ “belief superiority” — the certainty that their own viewpoints are correct — was linked to “political extremism.” Conversely, moderates showed less belief superiority and “supported a middle-of-the-road approach to political issues.”
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Code Pink publicly denounces unavoidable mishaps caused by U.S. military policies, such as innocent foreigners dying in U.S. drone strikes. They dress up in unfashionable shocking pink and act out during prestigious occasions such as Presidential press conferences, yelling things like, “Apologize to the thousands of Muslims that you have killed!“ Then they get dragged off and interrogated by Secret Service agents.
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Mehanna was held for two years without bail in 23-hour-a-day lockdown. His charges did not include any terrorist act, nor was there evidence that he had met or communicated with anyone in Al Qaeda. Mehanna also argued that he didn’t share Al Qaeda’s worldview, notably that of killing innocent civilians.
Because the case against Mehanna was based on his ordinary acts of free speech, the real danger here must have been Mehanna’s belief that his views were “superior” to ours. So I totally get why a prosecutor, in his opening remarks to Mehanna’s jury, would explain: “It’s not illegal to watch something on the television. It is illegal, however, to watch something in order to cultivate your desire, your ideology.” (Heads up, Code Pink.)
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