Why are Republicans so "angry"?

[zanne]

I mean, they're so shrill and angry all the time, y'know?:evilgrin:

[hobbit709]

1. Constipation

mental or physical will do that to you.

[BeFree]

23. You mean?

The repuliconstipated party members?

Hey! That's a new word -

It's fun to call them stupid names especially when the name fits, but really, those people are constipated - as you say.

War is building up inside them, while peace exudes from us.

And that is just one example of the dif.

[Riddler]

38. They're pissed because John Edwards has a big house...oh, wait a minute, that's DU'ers. Never mind!

[Roland99]

2. Repressing their sexual desires in exchange for a search for more money.

They truly are anti-Christ, aren't they?

[B Calm]

3. because we are not doing enough for corporations

[zanne]

5. I was just thinking back a year or so ago...

When the Republicans tried that one on us; calling us "angry" was very popular with them for a while. They were hinting, in their own passive-aggressive way, that there was something "unbalanced" about us. Now that they're kicking and screaming, they've forgotten all about their "angry" smear against Democrats.

[OneBlueSky]

4. "The cornerstones of conservative ethos are sexual hysteria, meanness, and hypocrisy. . .

It all fits together -- if they weren't so fucked up about sex, they wouldn't want to be so mean, and they wouldn't have to be so hypocritical." Rod Downey

[annabanana]

6. They've been caught out.... with no place to hide...

Standing there with their pants around their knees staring at you like a deer in the headlights:
"Did not... not me...never happened.. what th'. . huh?...GET OUTTA HERE..."

[RC]

7. What they do in the privacy of their own home is

disgusting. Yuck.

[Maccagirl]

8. They've lost (temporarily) the one thing that they want

It's called power.

[Clark2008]

16. But, they were angry when they had all three branches of

government.

Why were they angry then?

(Edit: myopic spelling)

[treestar]

31. Even when they had all three branches, it turned out that

dissenting voices are still allowed. The media other than Fox and the people and the damned libruls still didn't get it and when on criticizing them. That had to be frustrating. They thought it would be nothing but praise and a blank check to do whatever they thought "best." Any opposition frustrates control freaks.

[no_hypocrisy]

9. I think it's anger from several sources.

Mostly disillusionment.

I think the Era of Republicanism was the 50s. Economy was good. No wars. Republican in the White House for most of the decade. Social conformity for the most part (even among teenagers). Women stayed at home happily being wives and mothers. Men went to work and mowed their lawns. Boys were boys and girls were girls. Kids married right after high school if they didn't go to college and the guys got good-paying jobs right away. Families went to church every Sunday. Patriotism without question.

What was missing: Abortion, the Pill/birth control (even for married couples), premarital sex, counterculture youth, sex and drugs generally, women wholesale in the workplace, partnership marriages, skepticism about the president and the government, etc.

Some reasons why they're angry now:

1. Massive wealth redistribution since 1980 with tax cuts, etc. The top 1% are republicans and don't want to lose "their" money. The other non-1% republicans cling the dream/illusion that if they work hard enough, they'll get their fair share.

2. Republicans got intoxicated with power once they took Congress in 1992 and the White House in 1980. They don't want to share power, they don't want to lose it. They feel it's their "turn" to make the rules and make them apply to the rest of us.

3. There is a contingent of republicans who would like to erase the social mores established during the 1960s and return to the 1950s (see above), but maybe even pre-1920s with the "new woman" and more towards the Victorian era.

Generally I would theorize why republicans are angry is being they are receiving resistance instead of passive defeatism from a segment or segments (or target) of their wrath who will not roll over and "take it". I think it's the vocal dissent and using the government and the Constitution to slow them down (they refuse to believe they are fighting for an unworthy goal).

[zanne]

13. I'll add segregation and discrimination to that list.

It was the era of White Men. They had it all. Nobody could top them; they had the power; professionally and domestically. They called the shots at work, in public policy and at home. They kept minorities safely away from that power and from their "way of life". Now, they see some of their power slipping away; they still control most everything, but when you've had all the power for so long, any sign of equality with the rest of the world is a threat. They won't let go.

[no_hypocrisy]

20. I'd sum it up with the Republicans have a pathological and unhealthy

need to "win".

They didn't get to "win" Vietnam, the "culture wars", the civil rights era (you were right), the feminist era, the technology "war", the American Dream above all else in the world. They got a hollow victory with the "fall of communism" in East Germany and the U.S.S.R., but now realize they still didn't officially "win". IMO, that's why they have so much pegged on Iraq, possibly Iran now. They HAVE TO win. To not win, means to lose, and that is something that would metaphorically destroy them. Seeing life in black-and-white terms, absolutism is the only way they can define issues and make decisions. They cannot easily relate, if at all, to others who employ the shades of gray/relativism model to analyze and make decisions.

[Clark2008]

22. A couple of points:

First, there WAS premarital sex in the 1950s. There always has been. It wasn't talked about and flouted, but it did occur and quite frequently.

Second, there was abortion in the 1950s. My grandmother was a nurse-in-training during that time and she always told me that, if a woman was wealthy enough, abortion was readily available. It was just chalked up as a "uterine cleaning" for the "health" of the woman.

I think you're on point, sort of. I think Republicans BELIEVE all that you said was the way it was - like an Ozzie & Harriet or Father Knows Best episode - but it never really was like that. They try to assume it WAS like that, but it never really was and they want us all to behave like said 1950s television shows.

Granted, there wasn't as much divorce, because, both culturally and for the fact that women had fewer economic options, it wasn't "acceptable," many times to the detriment of the wife, but it did occur.

[Warpy]

10. Preachers and the media

Preachers whip them into a frenzy over all the babies being murdered and all those perverted young men who want to fuck each other on the front lawn while the kiddies are coming home from school, 'cause that's what married people do, don't they? Oh, and Christians are so persecuted because there's a lot of entertainment out there that doesn't even mention Jesus!

The media tells them if they don't vote GOP, then black whores in the inner city will steal all their money because that's who Democrats give it to when they raise their taxes. They'll be walking around in rags while those whores are popping a baby out every single year trying to get more money and driving around in Cadillacs, ferkrissakes! Plus, their sons are going to be recruited by those hoe moe seckshuls fucking on the front lawn and their daughters are going to turn into sluts, not only screwing around but ENJOYING it! Plus, daddy rabbit is struggling and Ma had to go back to work at Walmart just to keep them all fed and the house is a mess and daddy rabbit would be doing so much better and get so much more pay if he didn't have all those n**** out there taking jobs away from him, and now, would you look at that! they got p***** who think they can do a man's job! It's enough to make them go mad, let alone get mad!

Now, you and I both know that this stuff is hilarious when looked at with any degree of objectivity, but the one thing an angry man (or woman, for that matter) is capable of is objectivity, and those preachers and that right wing media make sure they stay that way.

That's why they're all so angry.

[aikoaiko]

11. They get angry over losing their way of life

[dogday]

12. They are not angry, they are mean, and even

if they held all three branches again, they would still be mean.. It is the nature of that beast...

[zanne]

14. If they held all three branches again...

They'd be worse.

[dogday]

17. Yes, it is the nature of that beast know as the Republican Party nt

[rock]

15. Ideological failure

Bill Clinton showed their red asses. The 'Publican party is a failed party for a Democracy. They would fit in better say in Iraq.

[Darkhawk32]

18. Society's lack of support for incestuous breeding. n/t

[hatrack]

19. It's really very simple

Somewhere, someone, somehow might be having fun - and that's BAD for America!

Toss in naked greed, self-righteous nastiness and a heapin' helpin' of Apocalyptic Jeezus, and, well, there you are.

[cassiepriam]

21. A mentally ill president attracts mentally ill followers.

People who now have a focus for their hate and venom.
Which covers up their deep sense of inadequacy and incompetence.

And or greed.

[Swamp Rat]

24. They hate themselves for being so cowardly... too scared to serve in Iraq.

They loathe themselves, but are too scared to look inward in order to recognize and acknowledge it.

[applegrove]

25. They have been taught that liberals want to steal all their money and "turn"

their children "gay". Wedge issues make for angry people. Because they have been taught their lives are being attacked.

[librechik]

26. yes, it's a good thing liberals are so even-tempered and sane

somebody's got to balance out all those screaming extremists on the Raging Right!

:evilgrin:

[Marr]

27. Because modern conservatism is a a hate movement.

Modern conservatism has a sort of siege mentality, like most hate movements. It's built around the concept that their group is under constant attack by something far more powerful. With modern conservatives, it's liberals, but you'd find the same ideas in Nazi anti-Jew propaganda, or white supremacist rhetoric, or just about any other group that seeks to foster anger and hatred. They promote the idea that their group is at once small and vulnerable, and the majority. Reality and logic don't figure into it.

The liberal wins simply by existing. The only way they could ever win would be to extinguish all dissent (an idea aluded to by more than one right-wing pundit, especially as their power was at it's peak- early in GW Bush's presidency).

[smirkymonkey]

35. Great meme! I have never heard it put that way before, but you

are right on. Modern Conservatism is a hate movement just as surely as the Ku Klux Klan, Nazism and Fundamentalist Christianity/Islam are hate movements.

The next question is, why all the hate?

[petronius]

28. When a person is called on a lie, it's not uncommon for the person to get angry

Partly out of embarrassment that morphs into anger, and partly in an attempt to intimidate the caller into backing off. Since all Republican policy and philosophy is based on lies and intellectual dishonesty and they know it, they become angry that reality is continually calling them on it...

[conscious evolution]

29. Not angry--Afraid

is more like it.
They know their world is about to come crashing down on them.
Remember-They know what the bible says:Those who live by the sword die by the sword. You shall reap what you sow.
I'm sure there are other bible verses that are haunting their thoughts also.

[ClassWarrior]

34. Bingo. But not just now... Always.

They're authoritarians. Fear is their constant state of mind.

NGU.

[treestar]

30. They always want control

But control of other people is impossible to maintain. Even with all the tools of totalitarianism, it falls apart. They can never get what they want - a county where everyone is in lockstep. Even if they could force everyone to be white and Christian (per their definition) there would be another schism. Some part of them knows that and so they are always angry at the world.

[Little Wing]

32. They're all packing little, tiny

houses

[donco]

33. “we have met the enemy and he is us.”

Not all, but some of the people on this thread should step back, take an impartial look at some of the post that you put up, I believe you will most likely say, like Pogo “we have met the enemy and he is us.” Just my 2 cents.

[ourbluenation]

36. They feel they should keep every penny they works so hard for and assume

all their taxes is paying for some welfare queen to ride around in a caddilac. I shit you not. Hear it all the time.

[Bobbie Jo]

37. They've always been angry

Even in the majority.

[salin]

39. when I worked in DC in the mid eighties - they weren't so angry just really

smug.

This upshot Congressman was throwing partisan bombs -but genereally being dismissed ... then he helped to engineer a takeover (Gingrich) and his bombthrowing was emulated by many.

Then there was this talk radio host (back then most talk radio that was political - was local, not synicated) - the more firey his rhetoric - the more over the top and angry - the more money he made - so others emulated him.

This angry republican is really a creation of the last 16-18 years.

Funny thing - is that suddenly the big echo chamber is almost becoming a parody of itself - and I believe more folks are tuning out. Suddenly the bombthrowing and over the top claims like... Liberals are MORE of a threat than Terrorists... lines that 'worked' for them a few years ago - now sound ridiculous and make them sound ridiculous. I think the pendulum is about to turn... FINALLY. Too over the top for too long - and in doing so complete neglect of issues that matter to the people... finally the appeal of the anger is starting to wear thin. Several relatives who joined the bombthrowers at the end of the Clinton era - are now disgusted by Bushco and the enablers in congress, now find Rush absurd, and have tuned out the RW Shrill noise as that - shrill and hard to listen to. I think that they are not alone.