Living in an America where uneducated, poor, working class, and underpaid or under employed middle class white Americans are bombarded with images of wealth, glamour, power, and affluence; powerlessness morphs into helplessness, which morphs into hopelessness unless solaced by the balm of anger, hate and feelings of superiority--to somebody.
Tea Party Republicans and conservative pundits have taken advantage of this fact to coerce and scare the white working poor and white middle class Americans to engage in rhetoric and behavior that is unprovoked, un-patriotic, and economically suicidal. The Republican party has succeeded in convincing conservative white America that it is patriotic to be poor, uneducated, and jobless as long as they hate liberals, hate democrats, hate minorities, support the wealthy, and feel superior to anyone who is not like them.
In no small way, anger and hate as a prescription against powerlessness is the virulent sickness that convince right wing conservative white America on all sides of the economic scale to rail against a Democrat Party that promotes, as best it can, inclusion and civil rights for all Americans regardless of race, sex, sexual orientation, political affiliation, age, education, and economic status.
This sickness allows right wing conservatives to embrace the divisive and combative rhetoric of the unpatriotic right wing. It convinces white Americans, especially in poor southern red states, to vote for a Republican party that consistently and relentlessly exercise power that is not in the personal and family's best interest the working poor, the white middle class, nor the best interest of the red states and the America in which they live.
Red states, those that elect to be governed by Republican governors, Republican legislatures, and Republican city officials, suffer the most from the people they vote for. They have the worst education system, the greatest number of working poor, and are more viral in the Republican war on women. And even though conservative working poor in red states are vociferous in their complaints about the "liberal" government giving away their hard earned money to lazy blacks and lazy liberals, red state conservatives receive more federal dollars than they pay in taxes to the federal government.
Unfortunately, the virulent sickness appears to be near epidemic. This is not surprising and even understandable since most right wing white Amerivan voters get their news and ideas about patriotism and morality from right wing politicians, conservatives faux news services, and right wing anti-christian religious leaders disguised under the cloak of Christianity.
Fortunately, the reality of what Tea Party politicians and right wing conservative Republicans policies have done to the country as well as to individuals and families is beginning to inoculate many of the faithful against this viral infection with the vaccine of common sense. In the end, it may enable them to realize that the need for survival is superior to the need to feel superior.
