Do you think that well educated Conservatives BELIEVE their garbage?

[JanMichael]

You know like the "Welfare Queen" myth? Or that Social Security is in "crisis", sort of like Bush said back in what, 1978? But which is by all accounts doing fine, and of course will need some tweeking eventually but there are ways to do it without turning Retirement into a Giant Roulette Wheel.

You'll rarely hear them admit that the Great Society cut the Poverty rate in HALF, yet it's documented top down.

What gives?

I ask this because I'm puzzled, is it willful ignorance?

Or is it what I think it is, which is , anecdotally, a deep seeded Racism.

OK, once again, I'm not talking about the Fundy types that live in the back woods, we know why they're "Conservatives", I'm talking about successful professionals like one side of my family. Engineers who hate Unions, Hate Welfare, Hate Democrats, Hate FDR/Johnson, and every so often the "N" word slips out.

Oh, and of course the GI Bill paid for their college, mortgages, and their parents are living independantly because of Social Security and Medicare.

What do you think? How could they not see the evidence?

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. How do they feel about hearing the words.....

"I never knew you".....

[Mend]

2. They truly don't give a shit....it is all about their taxes....eom

[Thtwudbeme]

7. Not necessarily. They have already got money.

It's got to be more...

[nookiemonster]

3. One of our purchasing people

at work used to teach high school history prior to his move. Really bright dude.

He listens to and worships the Oxycontin cowboy on the radio during his lunch break.

It doesn't make sense.

:wtf:

[stillcool]

4. Hook, Line & Sinker...

and they will not give an inch to any other way of thought. The pure rage they invoke is sick. The arguments are circular so they never get off the track. Around, and around it goes and if the other side does not back down they threaten violence.

[Disturbed]

5. Most RWs believe in the following:

Abolish

Social Security
Medicare
Employer supplied health insurance
Unemployment Benefits
Welfare
Abortion Rights
Collective Bargaining
EPA
Public Education
Public Housing
IRS

[Spider Jerusalem]

6. It's a completely and utterly different wordview.

Facts which do not accord with that worldview are inconvenient, and disregarded as irrelevant or dismissed as fabrication; the truth is that for a lot of people, politics is a religion, and they have articles of faith to which they cling despite rational and serious evidence that it just ain't so. Part of it is because of propaganda...Huxley was right; X thousand repetitions make one truth.

Also, conservatism seems to spring largely from TWO things: fear, and selfishness. The fear is fear of change, fear of an unfamiliar and frightening world, and it is ALSO fear of the Other; all those blacks/gays/atheists who "aren't like us". The selfishness might not necessarily seem like such, to the casual observer, but it forms a large part of the conservative, and, indeed, of the American character...the myth of the "rugged individualist", the spiritual influence of Calvinism...so it's every man for himself, and, if you make it, then fuck you, Jack, I got mine.

And well-educated and intelligent people are actually pretty good at self-deception and rationalisation.