A RW Political Weakness: They want the World to Burn

[cthulu2016]

If I was someone who trolled RW message boards (hypothetically, of course. I don't recommend it. Gaze not into the abysss...) I would be going full tilt on the "radicalize the people" angle... that this is the election the Right Wing needs to lose in order to win.

A substantial part of the Republican base is apocalyptic, and not just religiously. They want to be on the righteous side, but in their hearts the want the world to explode because their righteousness means little without the Gotterdammerung that will show everyone they were right.

If you waste your income every year on ammo and dehydrated food, at some point you start rooting for the end of the world. The end of the world is a personal validation. Without the end of the world you look like a fool. And imagine a world where only fire-power is the measure of a man, where you can shoot looters and moochers with impunity... where gold and ammo are the only currency. It is the world many people think they want. When the end comes they will be like kings.

So with the antichrist in place (a black president) and an unsympathetic non-Christian financier as Republican candidate looking like as ass, this is surely the long-awaited test.

When we read these lurid fantasies of what will happen if Obama wins, of the coming race-war and food-riots and mass-rape and Sharia-law, they are to some degree wish fulfillment fantasies.

And that is potentially a practical political weakness... a base that, in part, secretly hopes the other guy wins.

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. And you just summed the danger

The difference is those of us who get it, don't want it. They dream of it.

[Zorro]

2. They pray for Armageddon

It's one key reason behind fundie support for Israel's expressed desire to attack Iran.

It helps fulfill the prophecies.

[Speck Tater]

3. They don't just want to watch Thunder Dome on the big screen,

they want to live the hero's part in a childish fantasy of playing at war in their own back yards. What's funny is that most of them would be dead within a week if they had the chance to act out their reckless fantasies. They would learn too late that real war is not at all like video games.

[longship]

4. Gold, like that would help them after their Gotterdamerung.

I have a very smart and very self-sufficient friend who is the type of person, while not wishing for a world-ending situation, would likely survive it.

He says that if things come to this end, he would love for somebody to offer him gold for food. He would laugh in their face.

His tag line is iconic: What good is gold if society has collapsed?

So it is funny that the tea baggers simultaneously love their guns and gold. If they get what they want, the gold would be worthless.

[SpartanDem]

5. The scary part is how many will try to fulfill those wishes on their own?

at some point some will stop rooting in their mothers basements

[porphyrian]

6. Immanentize the eschaton! n/t