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Politics : The Left Wing Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: S. maltophilia who wrote (5036)	7/12/2001 6:15:58 PM
From: Poet	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 6089

Hi Khalil, OMG, that was SO funny that I'm printing out the article! It made my......night. -vbg Grand old nightmares examined Conservatives' dreams scarier than liberals', study finds John Wildermuth, Chronicle Political Writer Wednesday, July 11, 2001 The midnight hours are a lot scarier for Republicans than for Democrats, according to a new study by an East Bay dream researcher. Conservative Republicans have three times as many nightmares as liberal Democrats, and those nightmares tend to feature aggression, misfortune and physical threats, said Kelly Bulkeley, who teaches at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. "The prevalence of nightmares among people on the right was striking," said Bulkeley, who described himself as a Democrat raised in a Republican family. Bulkeley is the first to admit that his study, which he will present today at a meeting of the American Association for the Study of Dreams at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is not the most comprehensive project ever done. The results are based on dreams reported by 56 college students, half who identified themselves as Republicans on the right and half who called themselves left-leaning Democrats. "The sample size is small, but the people involved are highly committed ideologically, so that makes a difference," Bulkeley said. Nightmares in general are characterized by fear and other negative emotions, he said, and often include a feeling of helplessness in the face of threats. They can be so intense that people wake up sweating and gasping for breath. Nightmares among the group studied included examination fears, fighting a corpse in a car and being trapped in a public bathroom with bears and a gun that doesn't work. Republicans also were much more likely to have lifelike dreams that resembled their daily lives, while the Democrats often had bizarre dreams, with unfamiliar characters and settings and events that are improbable or impossible. Does that mean that conservatives are more realistic while liberals are more imaginative, or are Republicans more insecure, anxious and repressed and Democrats more irrational, deluded and utopian? Any or all of that could be true, Bulkeley said. "I'm trying to see how dream content reflects cultural phenomena, like politics," he said. This isn't Bulkeley's first attempt to find the stuff political dreams are made of. Since 1992, he's worked to interpret dreams dealing with the presidential elections. In 1992, for example, he found that people were experiencing "Dreams of Bill," casual, intimate and sometimes romantic thoughts of the incoming president, which Bulkeley said indicated a feeling of comfort with Clinton's policies and an emotional connection with him. The bizarre 2000 election brought with it what Bulkeley believes was "the single most troubled night's sleep in the country's history," when election day came and went without a new president. By the time George W. Bush was finally named president nearly a month later, there was a sharp drop-off in reports of politically related dreams, Bulkeley said. "People seemed sick of the whole thing," he said in his paper.

To: S. maltophilia who wrote (5036)	7/14/2001 1:56:19 PM
From: YlangYlangBreeze	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 6089

TS posted the same study to me on the BR. I followed his link and clicked through on a related study that showed that Nightmares have a genetic basis and are strongly linked to mental illness, scientists have discovered. news.bbc.co.uk My syllogisms are kinda rusty, but, um it seems worthy of inquiry, Given that Republicans have more nightmares, and that nightmares are strongly linked to mental illness, is Republicanism the cause or perhaps the result of mental illness?