A recent CNN/OpinionResearch poll found that 41% of all Americans still believe that the current House health insurance reform bill contains language mandating death panels. This is despite pervasive publicity that it is not true and that death panels actually refer to an insurance company and HMO practice called reduction of medical ratio (I know- an HMO tried to do it to my mother in law when she had cancer).These kinds of denial of reality seem to a phenomenon that afflicts the Right when a Democrat is in office and which, for lack of a better term, I will call the conspiracy theory fall-back position or CTFP.

CTFP was in full flower in Max Blumenthal’s recently posted blog that described the current CTFP pandemic in colorful detail as he walked among the 75,000 conservatives gathered in Washington for the Glen Beck’s 9/12 rally (he wasn’t there). Blumenthal described signs and interviewed people who were sure that Obama was setting up prison camps for conservatives, using volunteer service to create a private army, and fronting healthcare reform to turn America into a nation of slaves.

It occurs to me that this is a repetition of the conspiracy theories that were created when FDR was president, when Truman was president, when JFK was president and when Bill Clinton was president. When a Democrat occupies the White House, the Right goes into delusional CTFP overdrive, gives birth to demagogues like Father Coughlin, the John Birch Society, Joseph McCarthy, Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck, and circles the wagons and start shooting (figuratively) at imaginary black helicopters and any Democrat that moves.

This is not to say that there are not Left Wing conspiracy theories – there are, and they are much like the Right Wing theories, and usually involve desert concentration camps patterned after Manzanar and run by the CIA. But they seldom get traction beyond a very kooky fringe and almost always disappear when a Democrat occupies the White House because about the time Progressives decide the election war is over, they go back to their lives because they won and nothing bad will happen for another four years. The Right’s conspiracies go much farther and last longer, and today, seem to have significant influence over the Republican party.

So why? Why does the Right retreat into CTFP and attack when they don’t win elections, while the Left retreats into apathy when they do?

I think Riane Eisler, a Newsmaker guest on my show, The Fairness Doctrineon WDIA-AM, put her finger on it. She pointed out that one way to categorize cultural thinking is into two types of people, “Dominators” and “Nurturers“.  Dominators see the world as a hierarchical system in which each level dominates the one below it with fear and violence and is in turn dominated by the level above it all the way up to a wrathful male God. Fathers dominate families, men dominate women, whites dominate other races, the rich dominate the poor, Christians dominate Jews and “pagan religions”, etc, etc.

Nurturers see the world as a series of mutually reinforcing relationships, in which, while there is organization and even some hierarchy, peoples’ lives are built around cooperation for the common good and communities prosper together. In the Nurturer’s world, which party governs is not an issue; what is important is that the government and the people work together to nurture the next generation and take care of the current one. Women and the nurturing work they do are highly valued; war and male glory are not.

When a Dominator culture is out of power, as the Right is when Democrats take the reins of government, it expects to be dominated and lives in fear of that domination. So it withdraws, circles the wagons and readies for battle and launches pre-emptive attacks that seem baseless to others. The Dominator values of violence and fear are subconscious, but still supreme. They need a target, hence the conspiracy theories about what “the other” – Democrats, or the liberals or the UN or whatever the most convenient bogeyman is – is preparing to do to them or their values or the country.

When the Left is out of power, it takes them a lot longer to adopt the values of battle and fight to regain power. Once there, they drop battle readiness and try to govern, forgetting that politics is part of governing and making them sitting ducks for the always battle-ready Right.

Now these are broad strokes, and I don’t mean to suggest that all conservatives are conspiracy kooks and that all progressives are cooperative nice people. We all have both Dominator and Nurturer in us and most of us – conservatives and progressives, do not believe in conspiracy theories. But it seems that the authoritarian and “rugged individualism” of the Right lends itself to the Dominator world view and thus, to conspiracy theories and attack mode. The Left, not being organized for battle because battle is not a Nurturer value, retreats when it wins and retreats when it loses – creating a different set of problems (some say that the Left has a hard time organizing for anything, a charge with some truth, but less so every day).

A second question is what happens when you overlay the theory of another Fairness Doctrine Newsmaker guest, Michael Hais whose research indicates a far less Dominator generation is now emerging in the US and around the world. If this is true, does this mean that the Republican party and the conservative movement will shift more toward a balance of dominator and nurturer and regain its core values of investing in the future, competence in governing, fiscal intelligence, and faith in America’s future. And, will it consign conspiracy theories to a very small outlier minority?

I think so. Another recent poll gives me hope. The Pipa World Opinion Poll found that of 24 nations surveyed last month, the US ranked very high in its perception of how fairly opposition parties are treated and how well protected free speech is.  So we still have Hope.

(tune into The Fairness Doctrine, Left-Right Radio for the Radical center every Friday at 11am PST on www.wdisam.com or listen live in Boston at 2pm EST)

(cross-posted at dailykos and wdisam.com)