But rage and hatred are a real rush, and a real motivator.

as the payoff for enabling the ongoing smash & grab of the world's resources.

nt

I figured it out with my mother's family. If you pay attention you get it. The only thing that matters is the rage fix, and dysfunctional families have that down to a science. It's like living the movie Groundhog Day only the repeated thing is the fights that always start the same way and end the same way. Everyone gets their fix and things calm down for a little while. Solving the problem isn't the goal because that would mean not getting their rage fix. This happened every single time the family would get together for some occasion. It's brutal and there is only one way to deal with it if you want to stop. You have to walk away from it.

I'm still waiting for the Republican top leadership to denounce the middle-tier leaders in their party who admit they're trying to block the minority vote, who claim the holocaust never happened, that we should start shooting Mexicans, etc.



Still waiting.

Arguing with rage-alolics is indeed a waste of time and energy. Thank you for saying what so many of us have come to understand.

I blame Fox for brainwashing otherwise kind Americans into this state of mind

When I started to see the holes in the MSM propaganda(Gore WAS elected by us!), I went underground for more accurate news and wound up here.

When the facts are available, and they choose to spout lies instead, that's their own will speaking...just given a dose of "They said it was true!"

so true

but yes-- they are evil assholes. I've given up trying to rationalize their behavior otherwise.

The teabaggers know they are being kicked in the ass. Someone is to blame.

--Back to Lenny Bruce. (Paraphrasing)

So the Pope says the Jews didn't kill Christ. Well, someone did it. So lets see who it was. I got it. It must have been 'Da PortaRikans.'


Anyways --- as pointed out in the o.p., they can't be pissed off at the 1% because they know they will be a member as soon as their rich uncle gets out of the poor house or Friday night at 11 p.m., Eastern.

If they only had super-recs.

That also explains why so many conservative Christians (an oxymoron if ever there was one) are so angry. Because when they see their beliefs challenged, rather than think about it, because that would cause fear, they immediately leap to rage.

Mother nature may just trump god and Fox noose for us soon... very soon...
Replace "chiffon" with "exceptionalism" through the following:

good for a chuckle if not prophetic...
My pasted soapbox for today:



Don't think of education of the ignorant as futile, the little chips in their... "ahem"... logic appear over time, generations and . How many times can unchecked greed masked as archaic exceptionalism wreck even the most alcohol addled voter's whole world before it starts to soak in that their own choices destroy their own health/survival/happiness? OR... what their offspring observe: Think of your own parent's antiquated views, logical "in their time" simply doesn't match our current overpopulated situation? My own attempted to drive their own race-exceptionalism value system into siblings and I, none of us see any sense in it today.
Words resonate when the facts that reveal themselves are undeniable.

Isn't Chiffon one of those revealed to be unadulterated TRANS FAT?

"Rush, Hannity, O'Reilly and all the rest are their drug pushers. It doesn't matter if Fox lies to them. They don't care. They need their fix. Truth and rationality have nothing to do with it."

K&R

As I've been arguing it since I wandered into the internets over a decade ago, and started interacting with rightwingnuts I wouldn't give the time of day "out here", the cause of the rage is morality-based, and largely hinges on/is tethered to, a thing known as disgust. If as Saint Raygun once famously declared, morality and politics are inseparable, then I'd say it is their immorality/amorality that is the fundamental cause of their evil.

That is the primary chord in the rightwingnut minion their masterminds sought to pluck from the beginning -- disgust, which naturally results in the rage you write of.

This is why they were over time, given a license to lie freely without fear of political or financial reprisal, because the lies have been piling up and retaining some vestige of truth to them no matter how thoroughly debunked they are -- to maintain, or indeed, constantly increase the disgust their minions have and hold for their opposition, to be found in everything from their racism, homophobia, islamophobia, to the anti-war people hating the troops and loving the terrorists, or hating success and loving the lazy.

so after a while they learn to seek out rage triggers as a way of escaping their anxieties and blocking their awareness of their own inadequacies.

There's a lot of truth in this comment imo, but in my "model" so to speak, I'd argue that disgust is used as the building block of denial and the long and very high wall they've produced from it. After being on the wrong side of history over just about everything of significance that has moved this country and humanity forward, and more recently the many and varied failures during the Bush years (lost treasure replaced by much blood, etc), of course they have a great deal to feel inadequate about, and more importantly, shame.

The disgust and denial they produce from it is an individual and collective ego survival mechanism to hide from their historical failures as well as those they currently pursue, like for example, another round of "trickle down". It is also what provides the moral justifications (in their minds) for the costs they've extracted as an ideological movement in terms of human lives lost and human misery. How else do you explain for example, over 50% of them still believing wmds were found in Iraq? Their manufactured disgust for their ideological opposition keeps them from drowning in the Sea of Shame where they belong. It's why they are so horribly dishonest and in denial about so much, and why they are so dependent on such things as scapegoating, deflection, projections -- an array of tools designed for and intended to, provide that figurative bowl of water Pontius Pilate used, to wash their hands and dark souls so as to maintain a self and ideological-wide perception that they have the moral high ground.

The reality is, they are in the untenable position of claiming the moral high ground and being the smartest tools in the proverbial box, when they've stupidly been historically wrong about almost everything of significance, while only paying lip service to the good book upon which their morality is based.

Their rage and the endless search of a fix, is a product of the morality-based disgust that's been cultivated and grown in them for so long, and a putting of it into action -- an outward manifestation of it. It is nothing more imo, than an effort to deny and hide from, the disgust they should be feeling for themselves.

This is why it is such an intractable and ever-escalating problem, because obviously the only means of breaking this cycle is for them individually (as some do) is to risk their self-identity and world view, and to take responsibility for having supported it in the past. Some manage to do this, as we've seen recently with posts about conversions from individuals or relatives, but even then a lot of denial remains present because rarely is there ever any commentary about those individuals role as a prior participant feeling remorse for that role. More often than not, this is avoided (as we can see for example, from a Bartlett, Frum, etc) by them becoming a worse critic of their former brethren in evil than many of those who have long opposed them are, like a reformed alcoholic or cig smoker.

"Fear of self is the greatest of all terrors, the deepest of all dread, the commonest of all mistakes. From it grows failure. Because of it, life is a mockery. Out of it comes despair."

Psychologist David Seabury (1885-1960)

They are as evil and ugly as they are, and rely upon rage and the offensive offense as defense it produces, because they have no other means of hiding from the reality that is their ugly and evil selves.

Chris Mooney has been looking at the rightwing brain in search of a common denominator to explain its inner workings. I've never thought one needed to look beyond the dynamics behind building a cult, which they closely resemble if not identical to. In the case of the movement conservatives, only the goals and elements have been changed to hurt the innocent. The modern cons in this country are not unlike the German people in the wake of WW11, minus the stark object lesson littering their landscape in the form of death camps that couldn't be denied.

Imo that will be the only silver lining to the upcoming ravaging of the planet AGW has in store, and that will require socialistic solutions that can be laid directly at the con feet -- as well as the guilt for the need to.

your "disgust" perspective is well-reinforced by the work of psychologist Jon Haidt. He would add that obedience to the Hierarchy is an additional "virtue" where liberals and conservatives differ. We admire independence, they value obedience. This manifests clearly in the differences in views on child-rearing between the 2 camps, as Lakoff famously pointed out.

that's why we on the left (not just dems) are like herding cats.

I had Catholic and conservative parents, and learned my own parentling skills from them by doing in most cases, the polar opposite.

The "authoritarian" aspect is what slays me almost the most about them. While it does benefit them greatly by supplying so much cohesion as they are buffeted by the winds of reality, it also keeps them far removed from it, kinda the way their endless lying keeps them together, while being an affront to their god, and being wrong about almost everything of significance keeps them together, but far removed from being "right". Shame and stupidity both like company just like what their sad (and disgsuting) plight should lead them to - misery.

I find the Maslovian heirarchy of needs, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs interesting to, in terms of arguing and establishing which camp -- the faith-based/authoritarian or reality-based/independent -- shows the most potential for full maturity as defined by self-actualization of the individual, as well as a consistently applied moral construct without which much of the rest is artificial garbage maintained by the authoritarianism they are subjugated by. Given the rampant "otherization" their camp engages in, the quality of their morality is easily called into question by the excess of prejudice alone. They don't solve problems, they create and perpetuate them, including the content of this discussion. And as the faith-based camp, acceptance of facts is outta the question.

Their reliance on and fealty to authority, whether it be some religious figure "lying for the lord" (like Mutt is free to do as a Mormon http://www.mormonwiki.org/Lying_for_the_Lord) or pols and pundits doing it for essentially the same "the ends justify the means" reason, is a problem because of who and what they rely upon as an authority imo, not that they bow to authority. Morality is the authority we all bow to, it's just that theirs is full of inconsistencies and contradictions, and therefore worthless as such and not even worthy of such a designation for that matter.

I'm a lefty an a lifelong atheist, but I still understand and appreciate the wisdom and beneficial applications of the golden rule, and a great deal else some religions can teach us about the betterment of our societies and mankind generally. I am also a bit of a moral relativist, because our needs change with time and circumstances. I think that is where our "independence" comes in and distinguishes us from them and their slavery to authority-seeking men. We are slaves to the best ideas and solutions that relieve human suffering in all its many and varied forms -- the highest moral calling -- as opposed to them clinging to inflexible/immutable dogma that more often than not, stands in the way of that.

The disgust they muster and maintain for us is cultivated, grown, and supplied, only for the purpose of maintaining authority and the power that comes with it. I find it unsurprising that cons are more susceptible to it http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/10/disgust-and-politics/ because of the need to hide from that which they should be directing at themselves, as already argued. This can be seen in some individual issues as well. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/09/homophobia-homosexuality-gay_n_1412846.html I don't see how what we're seeing today can be ingrained/hardwired into them biologically, because collectively and individually they are far removed in too many ways from their predecessors on too many issues. And besides, who cares if it is? Being immoral/amoral, apathetic and greedy assholes is bad and/or stupid no matter the cause, no?

The bottom line is, if they have nothing to hide about themselves, why do they have to lie so much about their opposition in defense of themselves and their political/public policy pursuits? Much like with the Medicare thing, it's always a "your side is worse!", full of lies defense, no?

I would remind you what the song writer said, "you have to be taught to hate."

Some of the most insightful research is by Altemeyer. http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

It's a good easy read, has a fun quiz, and helps understand how progressives and RWAs differ, in ways that help people who want to help them free themselves from the spell.

Altemeyer, Haidt, Lakoff, Westen, Mooney, and in an earlier era, Erich Fromm, Theodor Adorno, and a number of others have all given us threads that weave into the complete tapestry of the authoritarian personality.

Their entire psyche is indeed fear-based.