What Freepers Really Fear: It's about security, but of a different kind.

[Sparkly]

Why are Freepers are so fascinated with DU? Why are they forever parroting rightwing scripts? Why can they even appear to be intelligent, but still ignore facts, revise history, and spout nonsensical and disproven theories and propaganda?

Here's my observation, based on past years of arguing with such people on AOL boards:

It's not that they're all idiots, because even idiots can see what's going on regarding Iraq, the economy, jobs, Social Security, the military, etc... It's that they're afraid.

They're afraid of letting go of a status quo that never really existed.

They're afraid that giving equality to others will take something away from them.

They're afraid of losing their desperate hold on a fictitious 1950s Ozzie & Harriet scenario the rightwing preaches to them and has them longing for, as if it were a "return" to something. They imagine an America when everybody was white, safe, Christian, and financially fine, with the men in charge and earning all the money.

Everything was wonderful back then, in their fantasy America. No drugs! No crime! No abortion! No welfare! No taxes! No atheists! No teen pregnancies! No upsetting music! No gays! Just white Christian suburbia as far as the eye could see, raising their flags and praising their God.

But then, the tale goes, along came the Wicked Liberals in the 1960s. Sex, drugs, rock 'n roll! Crime! Black Panthers, Gray Panthers, Feminists, and Peaceniks (the veterans among them don't count as veterans). Never before, they insist, was any such thing seen in this country, and it's the cause of EVERY problem in America today!

If ONLY they could get back to that 1950s fantasy -- and only the damn Liberals are standing in the way!

So that's their skewed belief system, and when any news interferes with it, they experience a cognitive dissonance that makes them nervous. ("Huh? We're spending what? The tax cuts only benefit the wealthy? Kerry was a hero? Bush skipped duty? There's a memo?")

They anxiously await the scripts to provide their excuses, and happily parrot them when they arrive. ("Oh, that. We're not spending much really, compared with GDP. Tax cuts always increase revenues. Kerry faked his wounds. Dan Rather's documents were fake. The memo is just somebody's notes. Anything else is Clinton's fault.")

They will grab onto ANYthing BushCo feeds them to support the beliefs they desperately need to hang onto, and they are fed daily. They don't want the truth, they want to avoid the truth. They want the "security" of their fictitious America, and feel they have something to guard in that -- being white, or men, or Christians, or hetero, or whatever.

Anything rattling that glass cage threatens what they believe is "The Real America."

THAT is the "security" they are afraid of losing.

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. Bingo

I stopped arguing with them, complete waste of time

[caledesi]

2. Excellent post Spark!

Wish I could comment more in detail, but since I became ill, it is difficult for me to write in length.

[TahitiNut]

3. Kids afraid to leave Disneyland.

:shrug:

[Sparkly]

4. Good analogy

And they think Mickey Mouse is REAL. We're just murdering his innocent life, is all.

[TahitiNut]

5. It's one I've used before, along with the saying ...

... "Neurotics build castles in the sky. Psychotics live in them."

[The_Casual_Observer]

6. I sense that some of those people are peacetime ex-military

who believe that the country they "defended" is the nonexistent one of their own dreams.

[KT2000]

7. Fear is right!

I believe that fear is the most powerful emotion. So much of what people do is to fight their fear.
Some people think that creating a society of fairness, equality and justice eases the fear and would allow us to live in peace - thereby reducing fear.

Others think that the only way to ease fear is to make sure they have more, can deny access to others and attempt to control the behavior of others. These people are not offended by injustice and take comfort in lack of fairness to others because it means they are still on the inside and will be safe.

They do not share our values and we make the mistake of thinking they do.

You are so right - bushco works the fear issues every chance they get, It is all they have to work with.

[Lexingtonian]

8. true, but it may be even easier than that

Despite their numbers, they vaguely realize that they're an alliance of political species doomed to extinction in the longer run because the world is changing- they're monarchists, theocrats, white supremacists, lickspittles, slaveholders, Uncle Toms, nature theists, pagans of the pre-Christian sorts that corrupted European Christianity and were never extirpated, closeted homosexuals, schismatics, patriarchalists, immoralists, abused children continuing the cycle, the mildly mentally ill, the psychopathological, the social privilege abusers.

They're the manifestations of political and psychological and social diseases of a world that is passing. Of course they object to the change. Of course they want the old pathological society back in which they could thrive in their malice and abuses and pretend it to be righteous and just.

[Sparkly]

9. We may be saying the same thing, or not.

In my view, they're not aware enough to realize they're monarchists, theocrats, white supremacists, etc. They may be all the things you itemized, but they don't recognize the reality nor the reasons (nor even the terms).

I agree that they fear change and want something "back," and indeed there was a status quo relatively recently in which only white men with property could vote (back when our wonderful electoral college was established). You're right, that's a reality many of them want to return to.

But I think the rightwing has also duped millions of people into nostalgiac longing for something that never was. There were always abuse, violence, incest, intoxicants; minorities, women, non-Christians, gays etc. They now pretend these were brought on by "Liberals" just recently.

Yes, they get occasional inklings that their worldview doesn't fit reality and is doomed as progress moves forward. But they only see the 10 inches in front of their faces in their short-sightedness, and can't even recognize their fear.

All they want is an excuse to parrot, and they comply willingly everytime Rove sends out a blastfax.

I think on balance, it takes centuries to change a society. We're still fighting old battles, but they think it's all new; they think all was perfect until "The Liberals" came along in the 1960s, as if said "Liberals" invented gays, minorities, poverty, civil rights, etc...

[ngGale]

10. They are afraid of the truth but...

without truth there will always be fear. It's a false sense of security.

[NMMNG]

11. Indeed

They actually believe life was like what you see on Nick at Nite. They want to jump into that world, a-la "Pleasantville". They are happiest when they are in their little temples, eyes glazed, listening to fairytales about castles in the sky and just rewards for good little doobies. Show them the grim reality outside and the shit hits the fan.