Contributed by: filbert Saturday, September 30 2006 @ 06:22 PM CST
It’s not me saying it, it’s this Ph.D psychologist[*1] :
This is the nature of projection and paranoia. The unacceptablethoughts or feelings are denied (“not owned”) by the personexperiencing them, and instead are projected onto another individualor–as in this case–a group. Thus, the person who originally had theoffensive thought or feeling becomes the helpless victim of the evil”other” and they do not have to cope with the fact that the evil lieswithin themselves. This is the origin of almost all acts of racism,sexism, anti-semitism, etc. It is the source of most prejudice in theworld; and certain prejudices that become socially acceptable–like thecasual anti-semitism of the Middle East; or the causalanti-Republicanism adopted by the intellectual “elite” of this country.
Projectionis never a good long-term psychological strategy–nor is it healthy–inan adult; and using such a defense mechanism represents a primitiveattempt to shirk the responsibility for one’s own feelings, thoughts,and actions. It causes and has caused much human misery, death,destruction and some of the most horrific acts that humans are capableof. When entire countries subscribe to a projected delusion (e.g., the”Jews” are to blame; the “Blacks” are the cause of all of our problems;”Republicans” are evil; Bush=Hitler) it can lead to genocide and otherbehaviors that are paranoid and psychotically delusional. Full-blownparanoia occurs when one’s mind severs the connection with realityentirely.
My big beef with the opponents of Bush and the Republicans is that they’re intellectually lazy. Instead of staking a position in opposition and arguing convincingly for that position, they retreat into the same tired old cliched rhetoric and repeat it until their opponents get weary and wander away.
Only the most dense of partisans would say that things aren’t going particularly well. But to be taken seriously, the Democrats have to convincingly argue for a better way, instead of continuing this tiresome negativity. We really can’t afford even two more years of this nonsense, but I’ve heard nothing from the Democrats which would lead me to think that they’d do any better if we turned one or both houses of Congress over to them this November. What I have heard is that if they do win even one house of Congress, they’ll bring this entire country to a screeching halt and begin a witch-hunt which will make their beloved McCarthyism of the 1950’s look like a high school debate tournament.
That’s the Democrat’s message this year. Elect us, and let the political trials begin.
Think about it.