We often wonder what motivates the teabaggers and the intense rage on the right that usually makes no coherent sense and is totally devoid of facts.
As reality-based people, we scratch our heads in confusion.
"What the hell are they freaking out about?" we ask ourselves.
The answer is a very simple one, and at the core of everything that infuses the republican party since the Christian moralists took over in the last 25 years or so:
Sexual frustration.
And I don't just mean sexual frustration in that they want to get laid. I mean the profound existential crisis of being unable to rectify the core sexuality of the self with the lifestyle one lives during the day.
This emerges through three main republican archetypes:
1. The self-hating closeted homosexual
Forced to live a lie, the rage of repression is channeled into morality and judgment of others. The sanctimonious thundering blowhard judges others so that he may not be judged. ( Jesus knew what he was talking about when he warned about judgment.)
2. - The Didn't Get Laid Enough in Highschool/College
This is the vast majority of Republicans, those who married too soon or simply didn't get the opportunity to fool around in their youth and were forced to settle on only a very small number of sexual partners. Now, safely married in a likely sexless marriage, theirs is a rage at the "cities" that comes from nothing more than lurid fantasies and existential panic that "liberals" are having more sex, better sex, and a greater variety of sex, without consequences, than they are.
This often translates into the abortion rage, which, as should be obvious to anyone, has absolutely shit-all to do with fetuses or babies, and everything to do with their insistence that there be "consequences" for having sex.
The idea that other people are hopping into bed, having a great time, and then going about their lives without paying a "penality" for their transgressions is the greatest anxiety invoking panic for the Republican, for it implies that they missed out on something they deeply deeply wanted, but refused to let themselves have.
This is why they don't want to fund rape/abortion test kits, or provide pregnancy planning, or give out condoms.
It has never been about the baby. It is about the broad panic that young people are having, and enjoying, casual sex, and they they, the republican voter, did not when they had the chance.
This explains the obsession with impeaching Bill Clinton, the personification of the "free love" hippie generation who dared to have consensual sex with another adult outside of his marriage.
It's also why they're so willing to forgive Republican sex scandals, which in their fevered minds, are a totally separate matter.
Democratic sex scandal -- morals free casual good time, which should be condemned
Republican sex scandal -- the fall from grace of one who attempted to live the virtuous life, but was unable to maintain the stringent standards required, which task even the best of us, and cannot always be upheld.
3. The Raised Before the Internet Age of Easy-Access Pornography
This third group of Republicans represent the older generation who had to smuggle dirty black and white pictures from National Geographic into their bedrooms at night. Their rage comes from the ease of the mass media age. The ability to access pornography and erotics without any barriers.
These are the ones who bemoan "Hollywood" or the "loosening of media standards" in games and music videos and on TV. Janet Jackson's boob, for example. They remember their great trauma and suffering trying to find pornography, and as such, they're enraged that now others can have what they did not.
Lets look at linguistics their pundits always use, filled with sexual innuendo that it doesn't take a Freudian to decipher:
The healthcare bill -- "Jamming it down our throats" or "Ramming it down our throats." Constant references to being forced to "take something" physically, an act of physical sexual exchange. Mouths or anuses are constantly invoked as the metaphor for having to submit to a bill they do not want to pass.
The various wars -- "The Surge" "Shock and Awe" "Suck on This" (Tom Friedman). The various heroic masculinity of the republican actor-heroes (Fred Thompson, Ronald Reagan on a horse, Arnold Schwarzenegger before he stopped dancing for them, George W. Bush clearing brush) and the hyper-feminine fetish (Laura Bush, Sarah Palin)
General analogies of not wanting to "bend over" or "grab our ankles" when democrats do something:
Calling Male Democrats "fags" -- John Edwards's hair, John Kerry "looks French," Barack Obama is "effete," etc. etc.
Calling Female Democrats Lesbians -- Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, etc. etc.
The entire Republican party is one giant sexual crisis.
One massive existential panic that other people are having better sex, easier sex, freer sex and consequence-free sex, while they are forced to repress, withdraw and hide their own sexual frustrations.
This sexual sublimation emerges as "politics."
Rage at the democratic party over "values" (aka: "getting more sex than I ever did or ever will"), rage at the cities, a desire to contain and control young women, and a need to blow up foreigners and prove masculinity and virility through war.
The next time you ask yourself what motivates the Republican Cult of 2010, ask yourself this: Is there any other reason other than a massive crisis of intense sexual frustration and anxiety?
They are a people who didn't get laid in high school. It really is that simple.
If we took a poll of political affiliation and number of sexual partners over a lifetime, how would it line up? Is there any doubt?
Freud taught us that sexual energy (and anxiety) sublimated, will always emerge in other ways.
That's what we're seeing today. A party in sexual crisis. And a world being punished as a result.