I just realized how simple it is...about The Others (teabaggers, et al):

[OneGrassRoot]

While most are anti-intellectual and perfect targets for manipulation by Faux and Company, encouraging this lack of original thought process, I know some Limbaugh Republicans I would consider intelligent and informed (granted, they interpret facts as they choose to fit their world view).

So, why would people like that be a teabagger/Limbaugh Republican?

THEY NEED THE WORLD TO BE BLACK AND WHITE.

Quite literally.

They need to focus their hatred, frustration, self-loathing on one target. The real state of our country, our world, is entirely too complicated and thus distributes hatred and frustration, weakening the external hatred, making the self-hatred build.

No, they need to externalize this hatred in order to survive in this world. They need the "good guys" and "bad guys" to be very clear. The rules need to be very clear.

How perfect for them (and those "handling" them) to have all these people of color in positions of authority now. It's the end of the world as they know it, and they're terrified.

The Obama Administration is a perfect focus, a perfect target for their hatred, in spite of all the talk of taxes and such. That's really too complicated of a subject for them.

For most of them, I firmly believe it's about BLACK and WHITE.

[Berry Cool]

1. Bingo.

They cannot acknowledge the presence of gray areas in life. That's too confusing, complicated, requires them to make too many intellectual and moral decisions that Might Not Be Right.

The world is much easier to handle if one views it in a binary fashion. That is why so many people are binary thinkers...even (sorry to say) some liberals, sometimes. So much easier to say "If you're not for me, you're against me" than to acknowledge all the degrees of difference.

Edited to add: And to put it in those literal, "black and white" terms: well, that's the reason so many conservatives are racists. Much easier to tell the players on the field--which ones are your team and which are the enemy--if you can do it by skin color.

And you know what really makes them crazy? Anyone who's really not quite on one team or the other, or at least it's hard to tell based on how he looks or what you know of his background.

People like that need to be quickly categorized into "other" and singled out for special hate for not being easily categorized or "not knowing their place."

Obama fits that role perfectly. Damn him if he wants to play both sides of the fence! He can't! That means he must be declared BLACK and, therefore, one of the BAD guys, and that's IT as far as they're concerned.

[MindPilot]

2. And they absolutely MUST have an enemy

They define themselves by their victim-hood and perceived persecution which is why conservatives can--with a straight face--present themselves to be oppressed revolutionaries even when they hold power.

And when they do hold power, you'll notice there isn't much actual implementation of revolution, because they can't not be the oppressed minority. But they will be busy protecting us from the enemy du jour.

[Democracyinkind]

3. Absolutely - they define themselves thru what they "oppose" -in fact, they become what they "oppose"

A psychologist might want to bring "projection" into the game.... That's where the ACORN-conspiracy shit ties in... Since they've meddled with 2 elections they are fucking convinced - even against evidence - that we/they/others are going to do the same.

I think most of these people hate themselves, and that is what drives them. I know this sounds stupid, or too pesudoscientific, but I really see it that way. In my view, anyone wishing for a "turner diary" or "left behind" scenario is basically just a sick suicidal fuck who loathes himself so much that only the destruction of others eases the pain a bit.

[mwb970]

9. I was just thinking "they must hate themselves" this very morning!

I was pondering how there can be female right-wingers, gay right-wingers, black right-wingers, etc. All I could come up with was that they must hate themselves for what they are and so they join a group that also hates them. :shrug:

This might explain the anti-women women, the anti-gay gays, and the anti-black blacks that we see so often on the right.

[Democracyinkind]

10. It may even explain the in-betweens, say like Ann Coulter :-)

I mean her apple, not her politics... LOL

[DFW]

4. Colbert nailed this perfectly

I saw the clip where he destroyed Glenn Beck saying "WE surround THEM!"

Colbert said, "Who's 'them?' Them's the ones we're surrounding!"

It doesn't matter WHO "them" are. Al song as there is a "them" out there, then
the lunatic fringe has a reason to be out there hating "them." Once "they" get
a name (other than "libbruls" or "terrrrists"), or worse yet--are found to not
be there at all, their world built on confrontation falls apart.

So many decades ago, Pogo the possum said it so succinctly: "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

The second the radical right figures this out, they melt like the wicked witch of the west.

[KharmaTrain]

5. Absolutism...The Tool Of A Dictatorship

And make no mistake about it...the boooosh years were a dictatorship. It's the age-old Machavellian game of controlling the flow of information and thus the message and the way people think. It was a major device for organized religions...keep the peasants ignorant, fill their heads with absolutes of their religion and this protected the power of the clerics and royals who claimed "divinity"...authority based on "absolute truths"...such "truths" that over centuries have metasisized into the foundations of many of these religions and are shown constantly by the religious zealots...be them fundies, Islamic fanatics, right wing orthodox Jews and so on.

Many people need/want absolutes...they want to believe in man's superiority over heaven and earth. There are no questions as either a bible or leader will have all the answers. It's intellectually lazy, but also very "secure" as those who subscribe to these tenets can justify anything...including the cruelest of treatment to other humans...in some "legitimacy". No matter how enlightened we may become, there will always be those who resist change...upsetting the status quo. What you hope for is a society where those who live in absolute worlds can do so, but that others beliefs must be respected as well.

[rucky]

6. Which naturally extends from authoritarian upbringing and beliefs.

why, you ask?

BECAUSE I SAID SO

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

7. Yes , they are trapped in duality thinking

Their worldview is simplistic because they have some comfort with this, I think. They are really quite fearful of the world, and use this worldview to try and get control over what is happening. Their problem is, of course, that they have forgotten the wise words of this well known song with a spiritual message: Row row row your boat, Gently down the stream, Merrily merrily merrily merrily, Life is but a dream.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

8. Literally.

[Turborama]

11. What's the solution, though?

Perhaps that re-education camps idea isn't such a bad one after all..?

:kick: & R