re: #71 freetoken

It’s not just willful denial, it’s willful hatred.

In Obama’s case, they hate him because he’s mixed race and has an exotic name that doesn’t sound “American.” As for Wilson, maybe they hate him because he was smart (Princeton graduate, former president of the school, even) and proposed the League of Nations. Who knows?

re: #72 Sol Berdinowitz

Recall the central image of the Tea party: armed uprising aginst a tyrant and usurper.

Without a tyrant to rail against, their whole petty costume party falls apart.

I suspect many of these people feel marginalized or live empty lives and need someone to blame or a group to belong to. They want to associate themselves with the early Christian martyrs and the American Revolutionaries (and probably the Confederacy), who all were in more dire circumstances than these armchair dissidents are now. They want a tyrant figure to give their lives meaning.