Just like you probably were, I was appalled by the behavior of the teabaggers in MinistryofTruth's recent diary, "Obama operatives" fake child, grandchilds death, say brainwashed teabaggers.
This couple was telling about the loss of their daughter and potential grandchild from an uninsured health crisis. They were shouted down and called "fakes."
A reporter discovered they are not.
It certainly was a low mark in a very dark week. What could be more illustrative of our state's political marshland than openly mocking a grieving family?
"I'm very sorry about the whole lack of dialogue," Wojtowicz said. "My reaction to Midge [the mother who lost her daughter and grandchild]? I don't know what to say."
Neither do I.
Well, I do.
These people are mentally ill.
I explain on the flip:
We all have problems. But constantly recasting reality to suit oneself, despite all real-world evidence to the contrary?
What other word fits besides insane?
I heartily urge everyone to get a hold of Max Blumenthal's book, Republican Gomorrah, because he thinks this vocal, heartless, and rabid bunch of folks have turned to religion to paper over the cracks in their psyche caused by life crises.
After reading his book, I can't argue with that.
Many of us get comfort from religion; it's a way of working through those "meaning of life" questions, and crafting a philosophy with moral and ethical underpinnings. Which is what it is supposed to be about, when you get right down to it.
But that's not what the teabaggers are doing. Instead of taking lessons about compassion and fellow feeling from Christianity, they are not using religion as moral guidance to help them think.
They are using religion to help them not think.
Like Robert Altemeyer explained so well in his free book, The Authoritarians, authoritarian followers love to be told what to do; because figuring it out for themselves causes a lot of cognitive dissonance. Because, as is so abundantly pointed out, here and elsewhere, they are notably bad at following any of their claims to logical conclusions.
They are able to go on their merry, constantly self-contradictory, way because they don't think about these things. They simply parrot what they have been told to say, with feeling. Not thought.
Yes, they lead unexamined lives, and they probably aren't worth living.
This is where my own compassion comes from: the fact that they are far more miserable than I'd have the heart to make them. This means I don't have to hate or despise them. They really are suffering.
Throughout Republican Gomorrah, Mr. Blumenthal draws on various sources to show how the rampant sexual confusion, kinks, and acting out has their roots in inadequately handled attitudes about their own problems.
We all have problems. So many here have struggled with dysfunctional families, and the subsequent dysfunctions we all grapple with. But we tend to do two things the teabaggers, and their leaders, are unable to do.
We recognize the problem.
We try to fix the problem.
Those who are still Republican abundantly, constantly, and angrily regard their problems as external. None of it is their fault.
They fear counseling and other mental health help the way vampires fear garlic. They project, and deny, and overcompensate.
I can't find the comment now, but I'll always remember it:
I used to think Freud didn't make any sense. But Republicans show he was right.
We may know some of them. They may be well off, or not. They may be holding down jobs, or not. We can be baffled by them because they seem to be successful, or sensible, or admirable... except for this one thing.
But while people are not seamless like potatoes, and we are all better at some things that others, it might help to remember that they are just barely keeping it together. That this rage comes from deep within as parts of themselves war with other parts. That their human feelings are all tangled and distorted by the tremendous effort they must put into the denial and projection that is their only way of coping.
They are contemptuous of psychology and therapy because their own minds are black boxes; unknowable and unworkable.
And they live in fear of opening those boxes.