Thread by @sunnshiiny

I’m going to illustrate what denial and minimization does to the body politic.

While O’Toole was just elected leader of CPC officially, his past record as MP can be used to assess his character and propensity for using forthright vs subversive or negative tactics.

https://twitter.com/Ottawa_Cameron/status/1298009297847087104

Minimization is the propensity to undersell or ignore the importance of established personality characteristics and past behaviour to predict future behaviour and trustworthiness.

Minimization is the effort to get those with intuitive fears to ignore them.

People come in all varieties. Some are predictable and easier to identify as threats to our person because they present as stereotypical tropes. Sometimes our fears are based on facts and sometimes on false fears, but instincts are not based on emotions.

Instincts, intuition or “gut feelings” are based on human hard wiring and serve to protect or warn us of danger in a complex and multi stimulus environment. Women tend to respond to intuition more than men. Women use intuition with more ease.

Men do possess intuition or instinct, but they often ignore it, taught to ignore their emotions.

So women have the advantage using intuition. Some women are better at listening to their instincts.

An example: when everything is quiet, mothers know there is something wrong.

Mothers go looking for what their intuition is telling them to attend to. And generally find toddlers or preschoolers experimenting quietly, so as to not get caught.

Men don’t trust their intuition as easily as women do.

The ability to hone in on intuition is a skill.

So not every woman is adept at listening to intuition and not every man ignores their “gut feelings.”

But when you experience an uneasy feeling about someone, your senses are telling you something. Learning how to interpret that unease takes practice. Years of practice.

Intuition is your primary senses picking up minor changes in the environment. Variations that are almost imperceptible, but register in your senses nevertheless. Combined in your brain as blips on your radar. It translates to a “feeling” of unease or anxiety.

Years of practice improves the reliability of intuition. Or a mischievous toddler.

So when someone tells you to ignore your intuition and unease, they are minimizing your experience of the world.

To what purpose, I don’t know. Only they can tell you that.

But minimizers are attempting to override your personal biological security system. That’s what intuition is. A sixth sense. It’s your 5 senses being attuned to subtle and seemingly imperceptible cues prompting you to attend to a potential threat.

It’s information that your brain interprets as abnormal at an unconscious level and you experience that “abnormal” as a feeling of unease. It’s an evolutionary back up security system to warn you about potential external threats.

Who knows why women are more adept at using it? Our inferior strength to rely upon for safety, our role as primary caregivers to mischievous children who could easily endanger themselves. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I don’t know. But I know intuition is real and a valuable tool many use frequently.

So when someone tells you to override that feeling of unease, you’ve got to decide for yourself if you are going to obey or not.

If that person chooses to ignore their own unease, or is unpracticed in the use of intuition, they have no right to interfere in your experience.

And you have no obligation to obey their request to ignore intuition.

I’m going to point out the enormous number of women who sent out a collective warning when Trump was elected, & the corresponding huge number of men who ignored those warnings. Citing “give him a chance.”

The voters who voted for Trump are overwhelmingly male, white and “macho” strong man types. People least likely to use human intuition. Yes there are women that voted for Trump. I’ve already explained it’s a skill which needs to be honed. Don’t do the honing & it’s useless.

But there were way more women who voiced concerns that something was not right with Trump. Beyond the tabloid rumours. Beyond the Russian interference accusations. Just a sick feeling of unease.

Many were compelled to ignore their intuitions. Repeatedly.

Many did.

Women are less likely to be a Trump supporter. It’s intuition. In combination with facts and evidence that support the experience of unease.

The more vulnerable you are to threat, the more likely you are to practice and attune to intuition.

Often the most vulnerable have the best attuned intuition. In the US, Democrats are now consulting black women’s caucuses to help shape policy and determine threat levels from police for the BLM movement.

It’s about time.

Black men and women have been voicing concerns for generations about right wing policies and politicians. Modern technology of smart phone videos has revealed common experiences with law enforcement.

So we now have evidence that abuse is rampant. Confirming the intuitive bias.

Needless to say, if you’re feeling unease about the CPC’s newest leader, trust your intuition. Be objective looking for confirmation for your bias, but don’t write off your intuition as irrational emotions of fear.

Those that are working hard to convince you to override your intuition are minimizing perceptible indicators of threat.

And a journalist I’m fond of has charted the results of the CPC leadership race.

CPC membership base is composed of three ideological factions. Live and let live libertarians, hardline conservatives (aka SoCons) & radical Dominionist religious zealots.

It wasn’t the libertarians who chose O’Toole as their leader. It was SoCons & religious zealots.

Representation of O’Toole as moderate SHOULD be viewed with scepticism. It was SoCons who elected him, & religious zealots who chose him as second or third choice. O’Toole is not a moderate. He’s definitely not a centrist.

He’s a hardline conservative with SoCon values being pressured by extremists to accommodate increased extremism.

That’s reality.

Like Harper, he will attempt to present as moderate or centrist to attract voters, but he is not ideologically aligned with centrism or moderation.

Learn to trust your intuition. Certainly you must investigate & verify your instincts before acting on them. But don’t let anyone tell you your intuition is wrong, hyperbolic, or biased. Or to ignore them and offer trust blindly.

That’s the mistake Americans made with Trump.