as arising from the chronic states of fear & rage tht their masters keep them in.

This is not entirely inconsistent with your view, of course.

I have friends (Repub) who support the free market and capitalism.
They say the MC doen't like it because they don't work hard enough
and are looking for something for nothing.

They even support the Trickle Down Theory.

And I can understand the self-worship.

But I don't get the self pity.

Would someone please explain?

Some people see themselves as martyrs. They know that the Republican Party isn't on their side economically. They know that the Republican Party is pandering to them on social and religious issues.

But they don't care. Those issues are more important to them than their own well-being. They see themselves as martyrs for God.

I wish I had an answer to this kind of thinking.

their husbands or fathers tell them to.
I see this when I register voters.

In my registering experience some young women and yes,
young men away from home will re-register as Democrats and
I've helped newly divorced women change their affiliation to the Democratic
Party.

I've even had women stop by the table where I register voters and tell
me that they vote for the Democratic candidates, they just play along with
their repug husband's during the campaign season.

And then there is the single issue voter. :sigh:


Tikki

True, their votes are against their economic interests, if they are the blue collar ones. But people have more than economic interests. They also have social and class issues, etc.

The rich Republicans are very much acting in their own economic interests, to the point of actually harming others, and they don't care. The middle class Republicans probably think that in the long run, their economic interests are served by Republicans, but even if they don't think so in the short term, they care a lot about social interests. They want to stop abortions, stop gay rights, stop affirmative action, build up the white man to where he used to be (so they think), make women REAL women again, stop supporting deadbeats, stop taxes from increasing, etc. These are just some of their interests, and they very much vote for those things.

Many of these social and class issues voters are the deadbeats.

Their philosophy is riddled with hypocrisy.


Tikki

that their best interests lie not in some sort of I got mine "rugged individualist" thought but if a collective society as a whole experienced economic justice and fairness they would instantly be better off.
Add in healthy doses of racism and sexism and you have an unteachable oaf.

It's really a form of tribalism, "Us vs Them", "Don't let Them Take Our Jobs", etc.

One thing that has always struck me about right-wingers is that they often consider themselves the "true" Americans, the "silent majority", yet they still complain about being oppressed by liberals, who, in their minds, are the elitist snobs who want to change the "natural order" of social relations in America, and do it by displacing and attacking "real" Americans (generally, white middle-class Christian families).

There's this implication that the America of the pre-1960s era, which was wholly dominated by white, straight Christian men of means, was somehow nobler or better than the current America.

Liberals, in my (admittedly biased) view, tend to see expanding individual rights and opportunities and working towards social justice as being essential to maintaining collective cohesion, while conservatives tend to see the opposite: we shouldn't expand those rights and social justice if threatens the existing collective cohesion.

It's hard to work around that philosophical difference.

so that Republicans can mess up theirs all they want, while we can finally enact progressive agendas in ours.

is that the Republican messes wouldn't stop at their border. Pollution, economics, war, all affect their neighbors and beyond.

EXCELLENT.


The Tikki family.