The entry I made about Deepak Chopra and Sarah Palin reminded of the teachings I've had on success and putting yourself in a frame of mind to win. These are teachings I used to achieve success in the business world.

One of the people I really like in that genre is Brian Tracy with his programs such as The Psychology of Success or The Psychology of Achievement or his books. I especially like Maximum Achievement. So much of our success in life is a function is how well we can overcome our personal fears and limitations by controlling our own mind and its thoughts.

When I read the Chopra/Palin article, I was reminded of a passage in David Brock's The Republican Noise Machine with a psychological profile of listeners to conservative talk radio, particularly the shows of Limbaugh and Hannity.
Quoting from the book:

"In a 2003 Newsday article on the Limbaugh phenomenon, psychologis Paul Ginnetty offered this desciption of the core Limbaugh audience:

"Their certitude consigns them to what psychoanalyst Erik Erikson called the state of psychic foreclosure. Foreclosed persons are easily attracted to the beguilingly smple, one-size-fits-all belief systems of powerful others that they adopt as their own so as to avoid the sometimes lonely rigors of personal searching (emphasis added). The foreclosed are the ready disciples of demagogues in every age. Social psychologists also point the normal, near-universal need for "social comparison," the tendency to check out our impressions--say of a movie or, betteryet, an ambiguous scene such as a bar fight or car accident--by instinctively comparing notes with other observers. Our hope is to confirm our own impressions and opinions in an effort to make the world feel more stable, less random. It's reassuring to be reading from the same page as others. Limbaugh's brand of talk radio provides a pathologically intense version of this wish to be singing from the same hymnal. Crucial to this phenomenon is the absence of any real controversy during the broadcast. There are constant sparks of apparnet conflict that make for engaging entertainment ash he shadowboxes (with one hand tied behind his back, of course) with select bites of Hillary Rodham Clinton or Ted Kennedy. . .

"Note that there are never any actual guests on the program; guests, even the conservative ones, risk obscuring simple truths with inconvenient facts or alternative hypothses.

"Sadly, the tradeoff seems to be worth it for them. What they sacrifice in terms of individuality and intellectual integrity is seemingly more than offset by the potent narcotic of reassuring simplicity. Many of them probably also derive a sense of inclusion and pseudo-intimacy via this electronic fraternity of kindred spirits. Consider the somewhat pathetic character, Marty, who checks in daily with his radio "buddy," Sean Hannity, a Limbaugh clone. There are plenty of other Martys out there who regularly light up the call boards of right-wing talk jocks--among them, G. Gordon Liddy, Matt Drudge, and Laura Ingraham--who unabashadly mimic the Limbaugh formula of ideological simplicity.

"What's more, callers may get a sense of derivative celebrrity and charisma from seeming to hang out--if only for a minute or two--with a mega-rich and politically powerful figure like Limbaugh. They get a chance to feel real smart when the master seems to agree with them, failing to see that it is actually they who are agreeing with him."

Here in this Blog, I strive to provide you with contrasting points of view and links to those contrasting views in the seach for the "sweet spot" of truth and the best ideas for solutions to our many problems. For example, I am willing to say again, as I believe I have already said, there is plenty of blame to go around in this recent financial crisis. Both Democrats and Republicans have been corrupted by the influence of what David Cay Johnston calls the Political Donor Class and that influence have given us the situation we have today. We need to be focusing not on who to blame, per se, but rather how the influence of the Political Donor Class can be modified for the good of the population of the whole.

This is a crazy mixed up intermingled world. There are few, if any, simple solutions. The ability to acknowledge that reality is probably one of those few. I'm reminded again of my favorite saying from the Irish poet Robert Burns, "O wad the giftie gie us, to see ourselves as ithers see us."