In this and other forums I'm starting to see it, not just with the usual suspects like lowing, but with a few others as well. Basically the conservatives have broken into 3 groups:
Obamicans - ones that will vote Obama.
Grumblers - ones that will remain couch potatoes this election, or vote 3rd party in protest.
Rabid Dogs - ones that have become completely unhinged, frothing at the mouth, and becoming nearly fatally upset that their entire identity of privelege may collapse around them.
What I'm actually concerned about is that in the tantrums of the last group, an Obama presidency could actually mean a real-life domestic terrorism problem for the rest of us.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/14445.html
Already a few very real attacks, one on a mosque nursery in Ohio and another on a Unitarian church in Tennessee, have gotten little or no media attention but were very real results of the right-wing hate machine tipping people overboard.
How many others are "right on the edge" and would snap if Obama became president?
Another clip from DailyKos addressing this issue and articulates it better than I could:
How do you undo 30 years of Reagan-Gingrich-neocon brain-washing so that at least a majority of people will become functional members of American society - without resorting to the same tactics that made them this way?
Obamicans - ones that will vote Obama.
Grumblers - ones that will remain couch potatoes this election, or vote 3rd party in protest.
Rabid Dogs - ones that have become completely unhinged, frothing at the mouth, and becoming nearly fatally upset that their entire identity of privelege may collapse around them.
What I'm actually concerned about is that in the tantrums of the last group, an Obama presidency could actually mean a real-life domestic terrorism problem for the rest of us.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/14445.html
Already a few very real attacks, one on a mosque nursery in Ohio and another on a Unitarian church in Tennessee, have gotten little or no media attention but were very real results of the right-wing hate machine tipping people overboard.
How many others are "right on the edge" and would snap if Obama became president?
Another clip from DailyKos addressing this issue and articulates it better than I could:
The above is the basic feeling I've gotten for the last few years from seeing off-the-cuff stuff on various forums, especially after reading about authoritarian psychology.Somehow, even the idea of not winning this election is so fraught with a loss of identity that the idea cannot even be entertained.
The definition of themselves - winners, dominant, tough, favored, right, core, true, etc. - is not about policies so much as their emotional identity as "the favored child." If those core assumptions are challenged, they melt down into tantrums.
Reagan really created this dynamic (entitlement because you wear a flag pin / carry a gun / drive a pickup / oppose abortion / oppose gays). Notice how little effort all those things take - and the outsize reward that results (I am a Real American, therefore I deserve success, including prosperity).
How do you undo 30 years of Reagan-Gingrich-neocon brain-washing so that at least a majority of people will become functional members of American society - without resorting to the same tactics that made them this way?
Last edited by GorillaTicTacs (2008-10-10 07:48:11)