Jonathan David Carson has an interesting piece today on American Thinker: Articles: Does High Unemployment Really Hurt Obama?. Essentially, he notes, but does not try to explain, that areas in the U.S. with the highest unemployment show the strongest support for Obama. And vise versa.

Obviously, this turns upside down the traditional thought that those out of work will be most desirous of changing the folks in charge.

There is an interesting comment that made me recall a section in my novel. The comment, by MaskedKayakMan, notes

From WikiPedia: In the learned helplessness experiment an animal is repeatedly hurt by an adverse stimulus which it cannot escape.

Eventually the animal will stop trying to avoid the pain and behave as if it is utterly helpless to change the situation.
Finally, when opportunities to escape are presented, this learned helplessness prevents any action. The only coping mechanism the animal uses is to be stoical and put up with the discomfort, not expending energy getting worked up about the adverse stimulus.

Over fifty years of indoctrination in the government schools have finally yielded results. Political correctness has effectively neutered the American male. When everyone gets a trophy, why even try? Why work when you can go on permanent disability or unemployment? We’re deluged with example after example of lottery winners, people who have gotten rich simply for being famous, criminals who have profited from their crimes, and so on.

Obama’s supporters are life’s losers, and they are bitter. They’d rather watch it all burn than do something constructive to fix it.

I don’t agree that “all” Obama supporters are life’s losers–as clearly, that’s not true. Indeed, the statement is offensive.

But, an inescapable conclusion from what we see is that far too many on welfare are quite happy with the situation… And they are generally not voting Republican.

Still, there is something else at work, I think.

Nate Smith, in my novel, encountered a situation that ought to have raised the ire of a number of people. Yet, no one objected to what was happening, and this confounded Nate until he came across a quote from Alexis de Tocqueville who was commenting on what he saw happening, even back then, in America:

It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting: such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the Shepherd.

My conclusion is this: we have been beaten down, continually administered pain, and overwhelmed by complicated rules to the point of becoming, at best, a flock of timid but industrious animals, and a worse, a horde of loafers quite happy to remain on welfare.