Why Do Republican's Delude Themselves?

[DemocratSinceBirth]

One of the arguments I hear on Reich Wing radio is that America wasn't respected in the world during the Clinton years and now it is...

Don't they know the American government, not the people, are hated in most of the world...Do they ever look at surveys of world opinion? Do they ever talk to people who travel abroad?

[Catherine Vincent]

1. They're delusional idiots.

That's all I have to say about that.

[Maccagirl]

2. They are wrong about everything

Why wouldn't they be wrong about world opinion? Being delusional is the only way they can look in the mirror and/or sleep at night.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

4. They Are Very Insulated

All my friends who travel abroad talk about the grief they get for Bush*'s perfidy and malfeasance...

[denem]

3. It's the BIG lie.

A small lie won't do it.

[Lucinda]

5. If we knew why or how they did it we could de-program them.

I'm still going with my "alien pod people have replaced half our population" theory.

[laconicsax]

6. They exhibit classic signs of

mental illness. If you challenge the fantasy-world that right-wingers live in, they get belligerent and insist that you're wrong. If you present proof that they're wrong, they get more belligerent and stop listening to you. Even if you can convince someone like that that they may be wrong, they'll never admit it, and any proof you show them is either 'biased,' 'untrustworthy,' or fake.

I had numerous arguments with an idiot RW Xtian about various topics and got him to at least consider that some of his specifics were off by feigning ignorance and using the line "That doesn't sound quite right" or by pretending to agree with him but to a lesser extent with "I've heard about that, but I don't think that it's quite like that." I got him to check out his facts and he came back to me the next day claiming that the sources he found that agreed with me were so wrong about a lot of things (some of these sources included encyclopedias) that he couldn't put any trust in what they said about the topic we were discussing. I gave up.

Direct answers to your questions:
"Don't they know the American government, not the people, are hated in most of the world" Nope.
"Do they ever look at surveys of world opinion?" Nope, can't trust them.
"Do they ever talk to people who travel abroad?" Yes, but only people who are stereotypical asshole tourists.

[PurityOfEssence]

7. It makes perfect sense: they equate fear with respect and domination with leadership

There are a lot of false equations made these days, and they're just the typical ones that have always plagued mankind. Admitting a mistake is seen as a sign of weakness. Quelling dissent is some kind of necessity. Disliking certain candidates is either sexism or racism. The ends justify the means. My candidate's been unfairly attacked so I can scorch the earth and still retain my victim status. Others must recognize my complex specialness, but I have every right to dismiss them as the slapdash caricatures they are. My mistakes are honest ones, while theirs are deliberate lies.

One's worth as a human aren't shown by how one behaves at one's birthday party, but by how one behaves at times like these. Although it's easy to focus on the pettiness and foul behavior, many very nice and conciliatory things are being said right as we speak on this board, and it's important to regroup for a second every once in a while and notice that.

Back to your point, though, this truly reflects their worldview: it's one of dominance and submission, and the kind of pluralism that typifies leftist politics disgusts them as a form of spinelessness. Conservatives operate out of fear and revenge; the former can often be an aberration of weakness, lack of imagination or pessimism based on bad experience, but there's really no excuse for the latter. Much as some conservatives are deliberately promoting what they know to be a lie about our prestige abroad, many actually believe this because of a different view of power: the primitive and forcible kind.

[lvx35]

12. Good thoughts.

It is clearly a dominance thing...But there's even another component, this idea that you can make something true by shouting it hard enough, getting enough people to believe it...Its a dominance thing, but its like a faith based dominance.

[RaleighNCDUer]

8. Bizarro world.

In the 90s, the whole world was laughing at us for making a big thing of our president playing around. NOT because he WAS playing around, but that we made a big THING of it.

"Those silly Americans, they have a good heart but are SO provincial."

Now it's

"Those damned Americans, they CAN'T be trusted to do the right thing."

[DemocratSinceBirth]

10. Ha

When Bill Clinton got the standing ovation at the UN during L'Affaire Lewinsky, William Buckley wrote that the reason the members gave him the ovation is because they "hated" America...

What is one to infer from that?

I guess he was suggesting they applauded to "stick it to" the American people...But only about 30% to 35% of Americans wanted to see him gone, ironically about the same amount of Americans who still think Bush* is doing a good job...

[JDPriestly]

9. They live in a different world than we do.

[rwenos]

11. They're Too Scared Not To

Pubs are scared of EVERYTHING -- sex, travel, languages other than English, music other than what THEY listen to, religion other than theirs, rush-hour traffic, people who look different than they do.

That's why they're so tribal -- the existence of ANY different or foreign reality threatens them.

On the whole, they're scared rabbits. Probably not orgasmic either (ha!).

[lvx35]

15. Its a big part.

The world is an incredibly scary place. It looks an awful lot like we are a bunch of hairless apes with slightly better brains living on a tiny piece of dust floating aound in a vast vacuum dotted with super hot sustained nuclear reactions, and that our population and resource consumption are exponentially increasing and therefore unsustainable. It looks as though we've evolved to an environment we are no longer in, and in this new Oz we have the power to alter our climate to the extent of destorying our planet, but have no social mechanisms for stopping this process. And on and on. Being a republican is about having soothsayers tell you that none of these things are real, its all just a dream just vote for Bush...(or whoever)

[Vickers]

13. Change radio stations.

:thumbsup:

Sidenote: most hardcore Repukes I've met have never been out of the country, so they have no first-hand knowledge of how other countries see us.

Hell, I've met Repukes that have never been out of the STATE they were born in. :crazy:

[tblue]

14. Because they like living in a fart bubble nt

[sandnsea]

16. They equate fear to respect

whole different way of thinking.

[Raejeanowl]

17. Because The Truth Is Ugly? n/t