As a follow-up to my last post, I'd just like to mention that I think one of the things driving conservative insanity is the cognitive dissonance between their fantasy of being the underdog and their desire for being in the majority. So, while they like to see themselves as a growing movement that's slowly educating America about what Obama is up to, they also like to imagine they're already in the majority. And you can pick up on both of these narrative threads within the same post, even if they're entirely contradictory.
And they're absolutely thrilled to see 70,000 like-minded people while pretending it's two million people, and will insist that this is a mass uprising which bodes ill for Obama and his evil minions. Yet, McCain won over 58 million votes last year, which wasn't enough to defeat Obama. And Kerry won over 59 million votes in 2004, yet they considered him to be a major loser who flamed out in defeat.
So, while two million people is a large protest, it's fairly meaningless in terms of a political movement which requires more than thirty times more people; particularly if all two million were part of the 58 million which suffered a major defeat. For as much as they're imagining this to be some massive uprising against Obama, this is nothing more but a continuation of an election that is long over.
And so they're powerful underdogs who insist that some game-changing event has happened in D.C., even though they're just a small fraction of a much larger group which still isn't big enough to win. And all the same, no matter which fragment of their grand narrative you're listening to, and whether they're the rebels fighting the emperor or the victors reaping the spoils, one thing is clear: It's all an epic struggle with them as the good guys and us as the bad guys. Rest assured, they will prevail; even if they can't figure out the plot.
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I got a message from a right-winger saying "Humph! The media will count all the people who were actually in the Mall, but they won't count all of the house parties going on at the same time."
That appears to suggest that's how wingers ended up with the two million number (I warned the guy that they might end up confusing the media over this).
Of course, if that's the way they want the media to count the number of people in the demonstration, then they're essentially asking us to accept a number they basically just pulled out of their ass.
There's absolutely no possible way to really count such people.
Wow! If that's the wingers method of counting - house parties included - then it is safe to say that there were 57,000,000+ people at the Obama inauguration.
I think they think they're living in some sort of apartheid state -- they're the horribly oppressed majority. That way they can still play the victim (which they love) while at the same time saying most people agree with them.
I think one of the things driving conservative insanity is the cognitive dissonance between their fantasy of being the underdog and their desire for being in the majority.
Yes, and the weird thing is they whine even when they're in power, which they wield cruelly and incompetently. For instance even though they got to call all the shots in Iraq, they still complaining that the Dirty Friggin' Hippies were somehow pulling them down. They always try to steal from the Treasury and otherwise abuse power, but most of all, they always whine and always try to start witch-hunts.
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