lot of heavyweight thinkers have offered explanations of the irrationality of modern political behavior--you know, behavior like Medicare recipients at town halls screaming about the evils of government-run health care or otherwise reasonable people likening Obama's plan to Nazi eugenics. George Lakoff theorizes that conservatives interpret reality through metaphors and meta-narratives modeled after authoritarian family structures. Drew Westen argues that they interpret facts according to emotionally based investments in conclusions they already hold, bypassing cortical centers of reason altogether. These and other analyses are powerful and helpful. But they aren't satisfying to me because they aren't specific enough to account for the passionate urgency and self-destructiveness of the right-wing rejection of a program that will obviously benefit them.
Blaming others may be a time-honored strategy to alleviate feelings of guilt and helplessness, but because it's defensive, it doesn't last very long. It has to be stoked over and over with new accusations, new grievances, and thus the creation of new and powerful "others" posing a threat to us. At the end of the day, however, the self-blaming resulting from the illusion of individual free choice comes back to haunt us.
Other folks get consumed with envy of people that they imagine are being taken care of, in effect complaining: "We're sacrificing and enduring deprivation and those people over there are getting away with something, getting a free pass. We're responsible for our own lot in life but they seem content to get handouts." This was the psychology behind Reagan's demonization of the mythic "welfare queen" that so stirred up the envy and resentment of white working class men in the 1980s. And it lies behind the equally vitriolic resentment of the imaginary others who will be taken care of by the Obama administration-the uninsured or the poor-while "we" pay the bill through our sacrifice and higher taxes.
Unconscious longings and conflicts such as these are especially apparent in the bizarre claims about "death panels." The sheer irrationality of the claims suggests that something psychically powerful and conflictual is at work. The fantasy behind these claims is that the handicapped, the elderly, and the demented, will be killed. What these groups have in common is that they're innocent and helpless. Those raising the specter of government ordered euthanasia are defending the innocence of others because they are so terribly conflicted about giving voice to their own. They feel terribly guilty and ashamed of their own legitimate dependency needs. Unable to accept them, they project them onto others, locating them-in a sense, the vulnerable and innocent parts of themselves--in others who are indisputably dependent to whose defense they can safely come. My view is that they can't experience fully that dimension of their own lives in which they are innocent and helpless, for example, in their families, communities, school systems, workplaces, and health care system. Their militancy on behalf of grandma is a disguised once-removed militancy on behalf of themselves.
Full Article here.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/what-is-he-thinking/200908/what-makes-right-wing-mobs-tick
Blaming others may be a time-honored strategy to alleviate feelings of guilt and helplessness, but because it's defensive, it doesn't last very long. It has to be stoked over and over with new accusations, new grievances, and thus the creation of new and powerful "others" posing a threat to us. At the end of the day, however, the self-blaming resulting from the illusion of individual free choice comes back to haunt us.
Other folks get consumed with envy of people that they imagine are being taken care of, in effect complaining: "We're sacrificing and enduring deprivation and those people over there are getting away with something, getting a free pass. We're responsible for our own lot in life but they seem content to get handouts." This was the psychology behind Reagan's demonization of the mythic "welfare queen" that so stirred up the envy and resentment of white working class men in the 1980s. And it lies behind the equally vitriolic resentment of the imaginary others who will be taken care of by the Obama administration-the uninsured or the poor-while "we" pay the bill through our sacrifice and higher taxes.
Unconscious longings and conflicts such as these are especially apparent in the bizarre claims about "death panels." The sheer irrationality of the claims suggests that something psychically powerful and conflictual is at work. The fantasy behind these claims is that the handicapped, the elderly, and the demented, will be killed. What these groups have in common is that they're innocent and helpless. Those raising the specter of government ordered euthanasia are defending the innocence of others because they are so terribly conflicted about giving voice to their own. They feel terribly guilty and ashamed of their own legitimate dependency needs. Unable to accept them, they project them onto others, locating them-in a sense, the vulnerable and innocent parts of themselves--in others who are indisputably dependent to whose defense they can safely come. My view is that they can't experience fully that dimension of their own lives in which they are innocent and helpless, for example, in their families, communities, school systems, workplaces, and health care system. Their militancy on behalf of grandma is a disguised once-removed militancy on behalf of themselves.
Full Article here.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/what-is-he-thinking/200908/what-makes-right-wing-mobs-tick
