How do you negotiate with crazy people?

[andrewducker]

• 67 percent of Republicans (and 40 percent of Americans overall) believe that Obama is a socialist.
• 57 percent of Republicans (32 percent overall) believe that Obama is a Muslim
• 45 percent of Republicans (25 percent overall) agree with the Birthers in their belief that Obama was "not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president"
• 38 percent of Republicans (20 percent overall) say that Obama is "doing many of the things that Hitler did"
• Scariest of all, 24 percent of Republicans (14 percent overall) say that Obama "may be the Antichrist."

From

I mean, I know a lot of, say, Conservatives in the UK have beliefs I don't agree with.  But the vast majority of them, so far as I can tell, just have different experiences to me, and different opinions about how things should be organised.  They don't believe that the leader of the oppositon is the fucking antichrist, or other things that can be disproved by 30 seconds with Google.

Comments

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

Actually, yes it is. The Tea Party is a nativist/populist movement; it's ideology is a reaction against changes in society that they perceive to be threats to "traditional American values". Said values, alas, include blatant racism. (In all the photos I've seen of Tea Party protests I don't see anyone with so much as a good tan.) That they express themselves as minarchists is part false-flagging and part self-delusion; in actual fact, they want nothing to do with anybody but their own kind and are perfectly willing to repress others to get their way.

-- Steve can't see the Teabaggers ever condescending to recognise anyone on "the left" as allies, with all the anti-left rhetoric they throw around.

[meihua.livejournal.com]

What on earth is the "left" in America? Is it the Democrats? Or is it the Starbucks employees who unionise under the IWW? Some of those may even be teabaggers.

Look, I'm not talking about platforming or legitimising them. I'm saying there is this massive base of dissatisfaction with government, and the only people mobilising it are the right, under false pretenses. There is no grassroots tea party organisation, of course, we both know it's all Fox.