Fear of loss is a greater motivator than opportunity to gain

[BR_Parkway]

In most sales training - that is one of the standards - people will go to greater lengths and effort to protect what they've got than they will to get something new.

One thing I'm noticing with the angry right more and more (especially the tea-baggers) - most of them have government checks coming in - Social Security, Unemployment, VA benefits or retirement, Medicare, their kids are getting student loans for school.

I also see the racial component in many (not all) of their protests and wordings.

And I think for many of them it comes down to this - that big scary black guy in the White House is going to give stuff to these other black people and we won't be able to keep getting our stuff.

Translation - "We want our country back"

The most visibly successful of Obama's policies seem to be scaring them the most, causing even more anger. That seems to be the trigger with Health Insurance reform - if he somehow passes this, too many think that there's going to be less for them.

I just found out my brother's a bagger (always knew he was conservative, but we've kept it civil)and I spent most of the past day turning over in my mind how he - the retired military guy with check and medical benefits, kids going to college on student loans, wife a civilian employee at the base with her own gov't health insurance - could be so off in his thinking. I guess that's when it dawned on me, in his mind, for others to get what they don't have, then those who have are going to have to "lose" something.

I think I liked it better when I didn't know any tea-baggers so personally.

[LiberalLoner]

1. I totally empathize. (((HUGS))) It IS terribly hard to know these people in real life. :(

Depressing, too. And I think your analysis is brilliant and spot-on. Helps me understand better, because I've been very confused about all of this. It never seemed logical to me before. Now it still seems wrong, but logical in a way if you follow their misguided belief system.

[BR_Parkway]

4. That was what got me, the illogicial part

[napi21]

2. I never thought of hat, but when I read it, I agree, you're right!

I thik that must be an instinct most people are born with, at least all the non- risk takers amoung us.

[marginlized]

3. More likely and more depressing

is that their distrust of the public sector is that they don't see themselves as part of it. They don't see the connection between their own salaries and taxes. I'm reminded of Tony Kusher's one act East Coast Ode to Howard Jarvis: a little teleplay in tiny monologues based on real events in a New York tax revolt by, of all people, NYCPD officers. I'm sure I don't need to explain that race was not an issue.