I’m not a big fan of psychological analysis of political issues but this article from Psychology Today is interesting….
We Need to Have Empathy for Tea Partiers

Paranoid beliefs about Obama and the government promulgated by the ultra-right have a similar genesis and meaning. In the Times story about the tea-party movement, the writer describes how most tea-party activists are not loyal Republicans. “They are frequently political neophytes,” he writes, “who prize independence and tell strikingly similar stories of having been awakened by the recession. Their families upended by lost jobs, foreclosed homes and depleted retirement funds, they said they wanted to know why it happened and whom to blame.”

They began listening to Beck, reading the Federalist Papers, books by Ayn Rand and George Orwell, and started visiting radical right wing websites. The Times writer then makes a crucial observation: “Many describe emerging from their research as if reborn to a new reality.” In other words, like my patients, the tea party folks find in their paranoid views about politics a narrative that “explains it all,” that reduces their sense of helpless confusion, and that channels their feelings of victimization into ones of self-righteous militancy. They go from passive victim to active agent, from guilty to innocent, but all at the price of distorting reality into one full of malevolent conspiracies.

The payoff is that they are no longer confused. They are reborn and now, thankfully, have the “answer.” And that answer is that big forces are hurting and enslaving them.

It’s worth a read for those curious about the irresistible attraction of anti-government conspiracies.
Also found this interesting…..

I have never been able to help a paranoid patient even a little bit by arguing with his or her view of reality. Not one bit. The only way I have been able to make any headway is use our relationship to provide real experiences that have a shot at providing an alternative and more satisfying “solution” to their underlying fears. Only then can I begin to offer a counter-narrative, one that acknowledges their pain and innocence, but enables them to more accurately identify its sources and, therefore, its antidote.