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.

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.