"People can't tolerate feeling helpless and self-hating for very long. It's too painful, too demoralizing and too frightening. They have to find an antidote. They have to make sense of it all in a way that restores their sense of meaning, their feeling of agency, their self-esteem, and their belief in the possibility of redemption. They have to. They have no choice. That's just the way the mind works.
"The paranoid strategy is to generate a narrative that finally 'explains it all.' A narrative -- a set of beliefs about the way the world is and is supposed to be -- helps make sense of chaos. It reduces guilt and self-blame by projecting it onto someone else. And it restores a sense of agency by offering up an enemy to fight. Finally, it offers hope that if 'they' -- the enemy, the conspirators -- can be avoided or destroyed, the paranoid person's core feelings of helplessness and devaluation will go away."
Contrary to my theory that teabaggers are simply Republicans looking for an excuse to play dress-up and get out of the house, Dr. Bader says teabaggers could come from anywhere. (That sounds like a public health advisory: "Anyone could become a teabagger, even you. At the first signs of rabid anti-government paranoia, please consult a physician."):
"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 Glenn Beck, reading the Federalist Papers, books by Ayn Rand and George Orwell, and started visiting radical right-wing Web sites.
"The Times writer then makes a crucial observation: 'Many describe emerging from their research as if reborn to a new reality.'"
Even if fellow lib'ruls don't agree with his prescription, we should take note that, therapeutically speaking, teabaggers can't be reasoned with. I'm no shrink, but I coulda told ya that, for I have tried and tried to no avail:
"The 'problem' is that Tea Party activists move from legitimate feelings and normal longings to paranoid political positions that are dangerous and cruel. But because these positions serve an important psychological function, because they resolve an emotional dilemma, they can't be changed by rational argument. 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."
If we don't understand how decent, god-fearing, victimized people can come to espouse such dangerous ideologies, we won't be able to fight them effectively.
By Michael Bader
March 2, 2010 | AlterNet
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