When Our Neighbors Wish Us Dead or Broke, We're in Trouble with More Than Our Health Care System

[zazen]

22. "magical thinking" and distancing . . . ^^ this ^^

'There's also some magical thinking involved: "If I hate the poor and unfortunate enough, God will see that I'm not like them and will spare me from misfortune."'

I think you're onto something here. Yes, the US has had the white racial purity theme historically, but it was not driven in the same way that the German need was to self-identify as Teutonic and physically perfect (a need that was satiated every time they could kill one more "imperfect" person).

But that's really not what I sense when I sense the hatred of the Tea Party types, most of whom I think would rather see a white liberal suffer than a (middle class) Black Republican--in other words, party ideology tends to trump racial or ethnic heritage in a way that would have been unthinkable in Nazi Germany. I think if they can find a Muslim who'll spout the Glenn Beck talking points, they'd throw them up on the podium.

It's very odd, historically. It's like they get off on people sharing their willingness to cognitive distort or something.

Whatever the case, another psychological drive than eugenics has to be in operation here. I've been assuming for a few years that it's this inchoate terror that the Age of Growth is ending, yet they have no narrative for it, so they have to pin the dire consequences of unconscious recognition resource depletion and degrowth on some scapegoat. Maybe they think it won't happen to them if only those bad people would die already. I dunno. I think your thinking is intriguing, though.

We should probably start another thread exploring the psychological explanations of their current hatred.