The right is projecting its shadow onto Obama. The same qualities that make him a saint to the left make him the devil to the right - he is easy to project onto.
That is why he is the out of control spender when they sat on their hands through all of Bush's malfeasance. That is why his talking to schoolchildren is dangerous when our government wiretapping its citizens wasn’t. That is why saving the financial system from years of Republican regulation is taking away our future. The more evil revealed about the right’s excesses on torture, or wars of choice, or nearly destroying the economy, the more evil Obama will look in their eyes, as they cannot tolerate owning responsibility, because in their own minds they are only good.
That is why he is the Fascist/Communist/Socialist/Muslim… that is the list of our shadow projections over the last 60 years. In their minds he is now the USSR ("my grandchildren will have to stand in line for toilet paper!") or even the Anti-Christ. The Obama they see is a projection of their own psyche, not that actual man in the White House. Missing birth certificates, death panels, indoctrinating children, these are all the projections running in their own heads, not things happening in the real world.
2 comments:
It's a pretty good analysis. I know people who aren't racists but are CERTAIN Obama wants their guns, wants to kill them, wants to coerce children into some Totalitarian cult, wants the government to run EVERYTHING, etc, etc. They are certain he is personally responsible for the state of the economy. These are friends and family, some of whom are holding their breath, hoping that he'll be murdered before he can ruin the country. And their fears are all based upon ideas which they can express only through generalized abstractions. It's as if they are grasping to describe a fevered, surreal nightmare from a while ago but finding they lack the vocabulary to convey what they experienced.
One of the ideas I've become preoccupied with recently is the notion that it is courageous to admit from time to time that (1) you don't know some things and (2) you are wrong. These people REALLY don't know what they are talking about. They are frustrated, they are powerless, they feel something but they don't REALLY understand why. So they turn to charismatic "authority figures" who provide a simplistic explanation and a scapegoat for that frustration.
I think Andrew Sullivan is damned idiot. He's mixing "projecting" with "perceptive".
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