Why the fear? Is it real?

[kentuck]

The Republicans appear to be scared to death of Obama and the threat of "socialism"? Why? I am puzzled that they would now exhibit such fear after the last eight years of George W Bush? Now that was something to actually fear. And maybe that is why they are so fearful now?? They see that Obama cannot clean up the mess that Bush created, the threat upon our liberties, and that is at the root of their fears?

[MNDemNY]

1. Dahh! It's 'cause NOW they are being TOLD to be scared.

[redqueen]

2. They think they are losing "their" country.

You know... "their"... read some of that jackass Pat Buchanan's crap about "their" country... he explains it all disgustingly well.

[RKP5637]

4. Yep "their country" and we invaded it, so now the Rs have declared war against

the Ds rather than trying to pose intelligent solutions for significant problems facing the US and working for solutions to benefit ALL of the citizens. Frankly, the Rs are the most un-american and unpatriotic jackasses walking around this country.

[kentuck]

6. Basically, you are correct.

They have declared war on Obama and the Democrats in order to save "their" country.

[NYC_SKP]

3. I think partly, yes.

I think their fears are not unfounded. Nothing puts a person into servitude so much as debt. Think Henry Ford and Company Stores.

So goes the nation. And Bush did create a huge mess that requires massive federal intervention, which they hate.

Also, the party out of power becomes more active and the party in power less, IMHO.

Witness the energy expended by teabaggers lately in contrast to weak turnouts in the gubernatorial elections by 'our side'.

Have many democrats become complacent now that we're in power? :shrug:

[la_chupa]

5. much like any wild animal

they are as afraid of us as we are of them

[notesdev]

7. It comes down to money

The economy is awful and people are desperate for relief.

[tjwash]

8. I usually start by asking them to define what "socialism" is.

Then when the 99 percent of them make the grade-school mistake of equating it with a form of government, instead of the economic system that it actually is, I tell them to look up the actual definition and educate themselves a bit, and then we can talk.

That's usually enough to make them go away for a few minutes. On some rare occasions they actually look it up, and I'll have an actual meaningful discussion with them.

Most times though, they just turn on fox news again and leave me alone.

[RDANGELO]

9. They are controlled by the Right wing propaganda machine.

They are told that they are the good people and that all the other bad people are the ones who are ruining the country. Then they are told that government is bad. It's all tribalism.

[get the red out]

14. BINGO!

The crap they spew, and I know well from living in a red state, comes verbatum from Fox News and right wing hate talkers like Beck and Limbaugh when you talk to them, read their emails or Facebook pages. It is like they are incapable of thinking an independent thought.

My theory is that the right wing preachers/Republican operatives have them trained to simply take direction, so they lap the hate religion up and the hate politics up as all the same thing then spew it back out like a tape recorder. The get their marching orders and follow them. Their various hate gurus tell them their country has been taken from them, they don't think, they feel, fear becomes their emotion. The think nothing through they simply believe what they are told like good soldiers.

The promises made to them are that they can get their "white supremecy" back (subtle and in code), they will go to heaven when they die, they will "save babies", and their religion will have the proper place at the top of the heap as their God intended. And a by product is that they NEVER have to look at their own skewed views like racism, or intolerance; they are applauded for those feelings and told they are right and patriotic.

And it does not matter if they didn't make it to the 6th grade of if they graduated from college, as my right wing tatoo wearing, machine gun fanatic, Obama hating cousin did; they simply do as they are told because the reward is to feel like they are the chosen real Americans who God loves.

[Kablooie]

21. That's the key.

If the conservative media told them that that Obama was from Alpha Centauri, they'd believe.

And I don't think the media moguls believe all this stuff.
Being extreme and shocking draws in viewers and makes them money.
Perhaps a few commentators like Beck believe the crap but most of them just spout what they know makes them money.

To hell with the truth. This is Amerika and I can say whatever I want as long as it makes ME money.

[get the red out]

23. Alpha Centauri

I think they have jumped the shark to Alpha Centauri, saying the "V" series remake is a description of Obama.

Agree on the media, they remind me of when Karl Rove referred to the Christian Right as kooks. The media is laughing all the way to the bank.

[alsame]

10. I think most of it is racism. nt

[get the red out]

15. With a strong dose of Religious intolerance

[bluethruandthru]

25. and stupidity.

they are willing to go against their own best interests because some guy with a microphone told them to.

[Echo In Light]

11. The real wing-tipped fascists who own America don't "fear" that - only the herd does

By design. On command.

[GoCubsGo]

24. Exactly! The herd was always afraid

The fear has just been re-directed. Over the past eight years, they were told to be afraid of terrorists, Muslims, A-rabs (and Middle Easterners in general), etc. Since a large chunk of the herd figured out this was all a crock of shit, it's back to terrorizing them over those awful brown people and evulcommieliburalsocialists who are hell-bent on taking all of their money away from them and turning their children gay.

[kentuck]

26. Excellent point!

These chicken littles have been preaching fear for more than eight years. They have only re-directed it now to the "liberals" and the Democrats and "Obama-care".

[HamdenRice]

12. How are they any different from a substantial portion of DU? People make stuff up to fear

all the time. Some people live by rational discourse and analysis; some people live in fear of their own imaginative creations.

Anyone who writes despite evidence to the contrary that "Obama is carrying out warrantless wiretapping even worse than Bush!!!1 -- and there have been many -- has almost the same psychological profile as a teabagger.

[get the red out]

16. We can question each other

In right wing land there is NO questioning. Even getting put down on DU is nothing compared to the rage they feel for anyone thinking differently from them.

We can discuss things MUCH better than they can. And I agree, there is a lot of whacked out stuff on the liberal side as well, but the Conservatives now accept no dissent, NONE. Our battles are rough, but at least they exist.

[FSogol]

13. A bunch of reasons

1. They are afraid of change
2. They are afraid of minorities
3. They are poorly educated and believe the ridiculous things they hear from RW radio.
4. They are poorly educated and believe the ridiculous things they hear from the GOP spin-miesters.
5. They are poorly educated and don't understand how the issues really affect them or their families.
6. The are scared because they are getting older.
7. They are scared because the America of today doesn't match the idolized America of their youths.
8. They are scared because they are powerless.
9. They trust companies and politicians that don't have their best interests at heart.

[Sinti]

17. I'm pretty sure if any President could

bring about the kind of changes that "socialism" engenders, at least to the head of the hydra, the Republicans who have power should be fearful - they'd never regain any power. Any change in policy, or program that does good for the average people chips away at their ability to control the masses through fear. Even in foreign nations any people programs are anathema to their belief system. The "people" are not human beings with value, they are tools to be used.

The grassroots of the party, however, fears because they are told to, they don't need real reasons. Most of all, I think they fear being on the wrong side of Supply Side Jesus first, and Stalinism second. Of course the party leadership and media models inaccurately use the word socialism to describe Stalinism.

It's weird that they're so authoritarian in mindset, yet fear authoritarian archetypes. I can't imagine being so divided against myself. Stupid must be painful, it hurts me just looking at it.

[Grey]

18. It's been going on for as long as I can remember.....

Scared of the atomic bomb, (duck & cover)
Scared of "the Red Horde",
Scared of Communists, Socialism, etc.
If you go back to Orsen Wells, War of the Worlds, from about that time
you will see the message is "Be Scared".
Vote for me or something HORRIBLE will happen.
It's clear, Do this or something BAD will happen.
Don't allow that or something BAD will happen.
TV repeats and repeats the "BE SCARED" message over and over.
To a point now, I believe it to be a part of your culture.
A fellow We were chatting with said He was "scared" to visit Canada
because he couldn't bring his choice of guns into the country.
He had no reason except he was "Scared". Those guns made him feel safe.
I just find it sad....

[JerseygirlCT]

19. I don't know... perhaps knowing how much wrong they helped

to do, they're now afraid of payback (what would be their reaction if the situation was reversed).

And of course, there's that *gasp* black man in the White House.

[Igel]

20. Neither is worth the fear.

People were terrified of WWIII after * bombed Iran. They were afraid of the imposition of martial law and suspension of voting or of the 2009 inauguration. They were afraid of all sorts of things. And we constantly heard that * was going to 'starve the beast' and his reign augured the imminent imposition of fascism--which, as we were all reminded, was a close alliance of corporations and government. We were going to have humongous inflation because of $450 billion/year deficits.

I mean, when the national emergency law was rewritten people were terrified. Well, some, at least. The law was horrible, they said--how is it possible?

Now it's flipped. Instead of "starve the beast" we have "bankrupt the country." Those arguing that $450 billion deficits were too huge now balk that a $1.4 trillion is too small. Instead of Bush fascism, we hear that (a) Obama is a fascist or that (b) he is a socialist. Instead of bombing everything in sight he just wants to give it away.

Those that argued that speaking truth to power was always good, that dissent is the highest form of patriotism, that anonymous sources when exposing governmental wrongdoing were great and understandable, and that as soon as you decried somebody as "unpatriotic" or questioned their loyalty you'd crossed the line into unreasonable hyperpartisanship now tend to believe that speaking truth to power is bad, that dissent is to be squashed, that anonymous sources when exposing government wrongdoing are evil and can't possibly be comprehended, and that it's insane not to recognize people as unpatriotic and question their loyalty if they disagree.

So that we have somebody saying that the role of the President's office and the US government--forever the oppressed, weak underdog, one must assume--is to speak truth to power by arguing with Fox News. Right.

The root of their fears is the same as the root of the fears of many on DU in '2007. They (both) have utter distrust and contempt for the other side, and while they are willing to find justification for those in their own tribe they are more than willing to go to find and ascribe devious and malicious motives for those on the other side. The other side is fully dehumanized in terms, often, that slave owners from 1850 or Jim Crow advocates from 1950 or Joe McCarthy or Lunacharsky would recognize--they're stupid, shiftless, devious, cunning, lazy, ignorant, industrious, selfish, backwards, incapable of telling the truth, and this is not just from lacking education but from genetics. Hell, their "masters" even have *real* masters behind the scenes, and they're serving some nefarious end that, fortunately (only) we understand--they're out to get our women/money/property/goats. They aren't really people, not like us. They need masters, and we're the ones to be their masters for their own good--we even understand them better than they understand themselves. So it's up to us to save the world/country/pizza. Whatever.

Such people, from either party, often seem more interested in their egos and their group membership/identity than they are in understanding anything much more serious than their (own) navel lint. I'd say that they should be ignored, but whichever side they're on they're dangerous because, once they get critical mass, they become the demagogues and demagogue enablers that can create real problems. Sadly, both sides at time seem to consider these loons to be the best from among their tribe.

[kentuck]

22. The difference in right-wing fear and left-wing fear?

They want you to be afraid of them. They are willing to threaten to get their way. They will take guns to the place where the President is speaking, for example. What left-winger would even dare to do such a thing??