re: #14 Killgore Trout

I’m trying to make sense of this head long rush into madness that the very closed to any outside input right-wing machine (blogs + ClearChannel + Fox) seems to be aching for.

I can only surmise that they are feeling highly frustrated that they have failed to stop President Obama in his major agendas. First it was the Stimulus bill. Then it was Health Care. Now with financial reform polling very well with the public, it looks like Obama can score another victory before the 2010 elections.

Yesterday talking to an acquaintance who was spouting the usual RW talking points (over Democrats, the health bill, etc.) it felt so distant - here was a guy with little reason (as far as I could gather from what I know of his personal life), any reason, to pick up those memes - but he has. However, I noted that in general he has an axe to grind with about anyone. And therein lay a clue.

Ponder the thought that deep down we communicate with each other through mostly non-verbal means. Unhappiness is catching - we can affect those around us emotionally - positively and negatively. Also ponder that repetition is indeed an important learning method - simply repeating actions, or listening to the same thing over and over, creates deep inside our mind images that are connected to emotions.

I propose that the unbroken repetition of the themes of loss, victimhood, doom, and hate that has been building in the right wing machine over many years has crossed a threshold.

Now, because we are a very large and diverse nation I do not believe we will go the way of certain notorious nations in history, as some project. Yet I do think we are purging something out of our collective (heh…), and it is just something we have to go through. Not that we should encourage it, and we should confront hate wherever we find it, but still the changes are necessary.

I’ve been thinking about this more and more as I’ve been dealing with a few creationists lately. The change in mindset is so large that they psyche rejects it - too scary, too fearful. Dealing with reality is difficult for many of us, in the best of times.