I confess: I find Freeperville fascinating. Repulsive, sure, but a glimpse into a large

[cali]

chunk of the American electorate and its psyche.

With that in mind, I offer you this post from a thread there that exemplifies cognitive dissonance.

You know, seriously, I believe anyone who conscientiously votes for Hillary Rodham Clinton is in serious danger of eternal damnation.
1. She is for killing the unborn
2. Her life is full of lies and scandals
3. She will appoint Supreme Court political appointees that will destroy America forever.
4. She has covered up and enabled a rapist lecherous immoral husband for years

Having said that I believe she will be elected by this evil country.

DJT has brought a lot of this on himself by self destructing when we needed him the strongest. (Yes for you GOPe haters out there , I am going to vote for DJT even if he runs through the streets naked!)

For the next 8 years Bible-believing Christians might have to underground like Chinese house churches.

The cries of the unborn will go unheard

Socialism will destroy america like it destroyed Venezuala

Our fighting forces will be PC and feminized to the point we won’t know what to fight for

Her Islamacist allies will continue to massacre and debauch the world.

It's from a thread on HRC leading in Georgia. The freak out is predictable and kinda awesome in a schadenfreude way.

[jberryhill]

1. It is breathtaking

You have to wonder how many people there are just trolling.

Although the thing about churches having to go underground is a common paranoid theme.

These folks need to get out more among normal people in the US, some 20% of which attend church every Sunday. They don't seem to have a grip on actual reality.

[cali]

2. oh, I don't think many are trolling. A handful, sure, but these people believe this stuff.

[jberryhill]

4. Yeah, true

But they can't figure out how, outside of their limited social circle, nobody else thinks the sky is falling.

[C_U_L8R]

3. It's like their brains have calcified

stuck on an endless loop of Fox News bullshit.

I guess this is the same deluded hysteria that every despot taps into.

[Hortensis]

38. Actually, this irrational demonization of outsiders has

been encouraged in America since at least the 1970s using mass manipulation techniques developing by advertising agencies -- by would-be despots, or at least oligarchs.

For conservatives, to differing degrees dark views of human nature and suspicion of and hostility toward "outsiders" are inborn and were already present. The task was to change dislike to hate, suspicion to conviction, resistance to determined opposition, fear to attack. As you say, developing a deluded hysteria for the purpose of using it.

We're seeing the results of over 40 years of development of varying degrees of mass fear and hatred of at least half the population by the rest.

Divide and conquer.

[GoneOffShore]

56. And yet the ad agencies we work with push diversity.

Haven't had a client in 20 years who would only hire P&G look models.

I'm sure that there are 'evil' agencies out there. Look at what the head of Saachi just got into. But, the bulk of ad companies know that the world is changing and the only way to survive is to change as well.

[Hortensis]

59. Ad TECHNIQUES developed by agencies were the beginning, not

not the agencies themselves. The string-pullers and their agents are not advertising agencies.

They're extremely wealthy ultraconservatives who subsidized further research into mass manipulation. They're people who subsidize organizations and think tanks that provide "information" to the MSM, hire and pay the right talk radio hosts lavishly, give endowments to universities for schools that teach "useful" ideas, stack school boards with conservatives who will hire acceptable teachers and create useful curricula, purchase giant chains of newspapers that push certain ideas, and cable news stations that do the same, (resulting in corruption of competing media suppliers who want the same large viewerships and profits as the first), provide political leaders to lead us, and so on.

Not only have these efforts changed the way over half the nation thinks, creating excessive enmity and demonization of all they see as not one of them, they have also brought into mainstream acceptance extreme right-wing economic and social ideas that were once considered very unacceptable and even indecent, even by most conservatives.

Paul Ryan's extreme ideology would have earned him complete and appropriate rejection prior to 1980, and even after that it took another 20 years before he could present his ideas for rejection after rejection without ruining his reputation, and even after another 10 years a very watered-down version was too extreme for the 2012 election. But he and his philosophy embody what the dark-money people behind him have been working toward all this time, and today he's near the very top of his party (no accident) and highly respected on the right.

[Brickbat]

6. I'm with you; I have a fascination as well. I really want to figure out what makes people

believe these things so deeply.

[cali]

8. Yeah, I've been trying to figure that out for years.

With little success I must add.

All I can come up with is that we develop prisms through which we see events and people. All of us do that. But some prisms are so distorted that facts are perceived as fiction and fiction as facts. Or something like that.

Take the post in the OP (insert Henny Youngman joke here). This woman who is a self-identified passionately religious Christian, is convinced that HRC will actually persecute her for her Christianity and she sees trump as being the moral choice, despite his well known lack of any morality- either in his personal life or professional life.

[emulatorloo]

22. There's a heavy theme of "I am a persecuted victim" in lots of posts over there

Christians are persecuted in America? A practicing Methodist is going to force churches to go underground? Delusional.


Minorities are persecuting them. LGBTQ are destroying their marriages. The list goes on and on. I wish I had training in sociology and psychology, as Free Republic and similar sites would make a fascinating study.

[treestar]

26. This. I have family who live

nice lives. They have middle class housing they own. Vacations. Vehicles. The latest toys and technology. Medical care. And they talk as if the world has let them down. They will complain about their money going to welfare for illegal aliens. I'm like, how does that hurt you in any way? You have everything. It's not true, but even so, you'd think they were the victims. Poor and disabled people. You want to go what have these people whom you don't know ever really done to you?

[Bernardo de La Paz]

28. They are Right Wing Authoritarian Follower personality type:

See the research by Robert Altemeyer.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/3/1/190887/-

RWA is defined as the convergence of three attitudinal clusters:

Authoritarian submission: A high degree of submission to the authorities who are perceived to be established and legitimate in the society in which one lives.
Authoritarian aggression: A general aggressiveness, directed against various persons, that is perceived to be sanctioned by established authorities.
Conventionalism: A high degree of adherence to the social conventions that are perceived to be endorsed by society and its established authorities.

Table 1: Hostility & Fear Toward Outgroups

RWA's are more likely to:

Weaken constitutional guarantees of liberty, such as the Bill of Rights.
Punish severely `common' criminals in a role-playing situation.
Admit they get personal pleasure from punishing such people.
But go easy on authorities who commit crimes and people who attack minorities.
Be prejudiced against many racial, ethnic, nationalistic, and linguistic minorities.
Be hostile toward homosexuals.
Support `gay-bashing.'
Be hostile toward feminists.
Volunteer to help the government persecute almost anyone.
Be mean-spirited toward those who have made mistakes and suffered.
Be fearful of a dangerous world.

Table 2: Not-So-Healthy Ingroup Cohesion

RWA's are more likely to:

Strongly believe in group cohesiveness and `loyalty.'
Insist on traditional sex roles.
Use religion to erase guilt over their acts and to maintain their self-righteousness.
Be `fundamentalists' and the most prejudiced members of whatever religion they belong to.
Accept unfair and illegal abuses of power by government authorities.
Trust leaders (such as Richard Nixon) who are untrustworthy.

Table 3: Faulty reasoning

RWA's are more likely to:

Make many incorrect inferences from evidence.
Hold contradictory ideas leading them to `speak out of both sides of their mouths.'
Uncritically accept that many problems are `our most serious problem.'
Uncritically accept insufficient evidence that supports their beliefs.
Uncritically trust people who tell them what they want to hear.
Use many double standards in their thinking and judgements.

Table 4: Profound Character Flaws

RWA's are more likely to:

Be dogmatic.
Be zealots.
Be hypocrites.
Be bullies when they have power over others.
Help cause and inflame intergroup conflict.
Seek dominance over others by being competitive and destructive in situations requiring cooperation.

Table 5: Blindness To Own Failings

RWA's are more likely to:

Believe they have no personal failings.
Avoid learning about their personal failings.
Be highly self-righteous.
Use religion to erase guilt over their acts and to maintain their self-righteousness.

Table 6: RWA's Political Tendencies

RWA's are more likely to:

Weaken constitutional guarantees of liberty, such as the Bill of Rights.
Accept unfair and illegal abuses of power by government authorities.
Trust leaders (such as Richard Nixon) who are untrustworthy.
Sometimes join left-wing movements, where their hostility distinguishes them.
But much more typically endorse right-wing political parties.
Be conservative/Reform party (Canada) or Republican Party (United States) lawmakers who
have a conservative economic philosophy;
believe in social dominance;
are ethnocentric;
are highly nationalistic;
oppose abortion;
support capital punishment;
oppose gun-control legislation;
say they value freedom but actually want to undermine the Bill of Rights;
do not value equality very highly and oppose measures to increase it;
are not likely to rise in the Democratic party, but do so among Republicans.

[longship]

47. And John Dean's wonderful book, "Conservatives Without Conscience"

(Yes, that John Dean.)

He delved deep into Altemeyer's research and wrote a devastating critique of his former party.

Highly recommended read.
Wiki: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatives_without_Conscience

[Hayduke Bomgarte]

44. My opinion is, and I know people like this

Is that they, for whatever reasons or intellectual shortcomings, are unwilling or unable to really think for themselves. It's as if they find even the attempt to, painful. They are quite content to allow others to tell them what they WOULD think and should think and gravitate to those, faux snooze, rw noise radio, RWNJs, who gladly subject them to their brands of bull shit.

JMO

[MissB]

49. I liked this column this morning from The Oregonian: "Trying, and failing, to reason with a bigot"

http://www.oregonlive.com/washingtoncounty/index.ssf/2016/08/trying_and_failing_to_reason_w.html#incart_2box

*snip*
A bigot doesn't always yell. Sometimes he offers you coffee and a seat at his table. But eventually, he'll ask you to leave because there will be nothing left to say.

I came into this situation — at a stranger's kitchen table — with the naive assumption that a man who wrote terrible things about Muslims had never met any. But it was also about simple curiosity: What kind of man has such a dark view of the world?

Last week, in response to a column I wrote about an exchange student headed to Turkey, I received an email that read in full: "Rather than waste a lot of my time in an attempt to enlighten you..... I'll just jump right to the point. The Muslims need to be wiped off the face of the Earth. There will come a day in your life when you will agree. In the mean time, please refrain from painting such a lovely picture of evil."

I initially decided this message was unworthy of a response and moved it to my trash folder. But a few hours later, I reconsidered.

*end snip*

(more at link)

[lapucelle]

7. I'm a teacher and I've actually heard some of my fellow teachers say things like,

"Well, if it's Hillary or Trump, I'll just have to swallow hard and...vote for Trump."
The 20+ year long "Hillary is evil" narrative is part of some people's DNA at this point.

A math teacher also said to me this year, "We got through the entire 20th century without the communists taking us over. Who would have thought it would be happening now with that Bernie Sanders."

And these are educated people. The mind reels.

[cali]

12. That is disturbing. What state are you in?

[lapucelle]

16. New York!

metro area!

We're city folk...BIG city folk.

That's what makes it really scary.

[cali]

18. Yikes and yikes.

When I read NY in your title line, I was sure you were going to say upstate.

[PJMcK]

29. How any teacher can vote Republican is unfathomable

A few weeks ago, I met a teacher from inner-city Philadelphia and was shocked when he started making statements in support of Donald Trump. He's got a Master's degree and several other post-graduate achievements yet his disconnect had me shaking my head.

The anti-Clinton propaganda of the past 25 years has taken hold in Americans, even those who should know better.

[deurbano]

45. My mom is like that. Can't stand Trump, but Clinton hatred "is part of [her] DNA at this point,"

so she'll vote for him. Party before country.

[Drunken Irishman]

9. It was one of the most enjoyable places to visit after the 2008 and 2012 elections.

Both times, they convinced themselves they were going to win.

Both times, the reality set in that they weren't going to win.

[cali]

10. It's deja vu all over again. They're still convinced Trumpy has a YUUGE lead

[PaddyIrishman]

11. You've got a mean streak.

I like you.

[jcgoldie]

13. I'll see you in hell!

Eternal damnation AND feminized fighting forces how terrible!

[Happyhippychick]

14. Have you noticed how few threads are devoted to Trump over there?

Sure there are some but yesterday I went over there and there were only two on the first page that even mentioned him. Few of them are excited about him.

[Stonepounder]

43. Ummm, I wrote an OP a few days ago ...

about how few threads being devoted to Hillary right here on DU. The vast majority of threads here are about the Donald or his followers. Of course it is the same with the MSM. Tune in CNN or MSNBC and you get hours of tRump and minutes of Hillary.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12512340260

[leftyladyfrommo]

15. I live with these people.

I try to ignore them. It is impossible to talk to them.

[ronnie624]

17. "feminized"

Meaning rendered cowardly and weak. The contempt for women is so obvious.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

25. Completely out in the open

Whatever moron wrote this has regressed from twelve to four years old

four months old is more like it...infantile, estrogen infused males, what women running our social structure is going to produce...

39 posted on 2016-08-03, 4:13:23 PM by IrishBrigade

The problem is Trump running his mouth without engaging his brain

The problem is morons who vote. Many with a lot of estrogen.
52 posted on 2016-08-04, 1:18:56 PM by riri (Obama's Amerika--Not a fun place.)

These Democrats can't seem to see even ONE step ahead of their estrogen filled frenzy.
1 posted on 2016-07-27, 4:01:26 PM by Mariner

[ronnie624]

36. The feminine is a slur. n/t

[stevenleser]

42. That's also the standard kneejerk attack on any male media person with whom they disagree.

My ex-wife and I had a 1 hour laugh session reading their reaction to one of my appearances where they alternately called me gay, metro-sexual, etc. You see this over and over again with different male liberal personalities.

[sofa king]

19. It's a giant case-study of the Dunning-Kruger Effect

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which relatively unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability to be much higher than it really is. Dunning and Kruger attributed this bias to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their own ineptitude and evaluate their own ability accurately.

[cali]

21. Never heard of it, thanks for the info.

[sofa king]

23. It's gonna change your life!

As a recent article on the subject said, the key to understanding Trump supporters is that they are too dumb to know that they are dumb.

It also explains why many Republican leaders live and die by the rule "never tell the truth." They understand that the truth means nothing to people who are incapable of rational thought, who make it up as they go along and believe what they wish to believe without even knowing the concepts of consistency or hypocrisy, much less their definitions.

[wiggs]

20. Don't forget....Fox News BS is mild compared to the 24/7 propaganda spewed on

talk radio. 90% of talk radio is RW and even crazier than Fox. And older white America listens to talk radio.

[treestar]

24. Apparently they don't know the Constitution either

They believe Hillary will be able to cause all of this? I guess they are thinking we will win Congress too.

[Loki]

27. The Republican Party

has become the largest chapter of the Klu Klux Klan and Aryan Nations in this country.

[Matrosov]

30. HRC being elected President will show the system is rigged

At least that's what a coworker believes. He bases on the fact that he doesn't know anyone personally who supports HRC, and he thinks Hillary's popularity is really just something fabricated by the 'Marxist media'. Therefore, without any real support, the only way she can be elected President is if the Democrats engage in large scale voter fraud and also find a way to rig the Electoral College, he says.

I guess it goes over his head that most people around us are hardcore conservatives, and of course they aren't going to be supportive of HRC or any Democrat. It's also why I'm keeping my support for her to myself, and have been keeping my politics mostly to myself, because people like him and many others would have a meltdown if they knew I was one of those 'Murica hatin, immigrant lovin, terrorist enablin, commies'

[lpbk2713]

31. Their 1990's Bulletin Board style is quaint.

But of course anything more sophisticated would leave their mouth breathing users dazed and confused.

[Maynar]

50. I figure it's simpler than that.

They're just too damn cheap to buy into the 21st century.

[guillaumeb]

32. My feeling is that these people are terrified of change.

This country elected a black President,
legitimized marriage equality,
elected a black President,
properly (but not completely) removed religious references from courtrooms and schools,
elected a black President,
legalized abortion and brought it into the open,
elected a black President, and seems ready to elect a female President.
and so on.

And all of these changes are frightening to some people.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

39. Bingo. They want "their" America back. "Take back MY America". A 1950s that never was. . nt

[guillaumeb]

41. Agreed. But their fictionalized America

provides a comforting false memory. A memory that is played out in many country music videos where all of the US is a small town filled with great people.

[colsohlibgal]

33. Looney Tunes

They are breathtaking in their total and complete stupidity. They are the type who likely still believe nonsense like "Manifest Destiny", and that the Universe is just 5 or 6,000 years old.

They are not much more than holy roller old testament thumping Nazi skinheads in disguise. And hopefully they go the way of the dinosaurs.

[Becky Louden]

34. Didn't they say

the same things about Obama?

[progressoid]

37. Hey Becky!

Welcome to DU!

[bluesbassman]

57. Said the same things about Bill too.

In fact you can trace back to Joe McCarthy for the source of it. Somehow, rather than being repulsed by McCarthy's approach, the GOP embraced it and has been singing the same tune for all these years.

Reminds me of the Apocalypse preachers who just keep on rolling past every date for the second coming they announce that comes and goes.

[retrowire]

35. voting Hillary sends us to hell because shes a sinner

But voting Donald is voting for a saint?

I thought we were all sinners?

Pah, religion...

[Hayduke Bomgarte]

40. " the next 8 years Bible-believing Christians might have to underground like Chinese house church"

LMAO!

Well they might be thankful they won't need to build very many.

All genuine, honest to God xtians will probably fit quite comfortably in just one underground church-house. With room to spare.

[uhnope]

46. doppelganger syndrome

[Johnny2X2X]

48. The polls are fake

I must admit to reading threads there too, the ones about the polls are hilarious. "It's the numbers at rallies that count!" And anyone who posts a shred of truth gets shouted down. "He's toast" was a good post.

[Rex]

51. So they know how to spell debauch, but not Islamist?

Freeperville is full of lost souls, angry at the world for existing. Hopefully these absolute morons don't get violent when Dump loses in a landslide, that is my main worry.

[redstatebluegirl]

52. I live around a lot of people like this.

I know for a fact a lot of their thinking comes from the Baptist Church in town that preaches politics from the pulpit. They tell them that Hillary is killing babies, encouraging young people to be gay and is going to "round up Christians" when she is elected. Between that, Fox News, Rush and other RW propaganda they have been brainwashed to be terrified of Hillary and any Democrat.

This really all boils down to the religious right and Fox in the end. I truly believe it was a conspiracy of some type to take control of the country.

These people are fervent believers in Trump and anyone else who is going against Hillary and those damned "librals".

[bananakabob]

53. If you want to be repulsed,

Visit the donald subreddit on Reddit.

It makes Freepers seem like choirboys with the blatant racism, sexism, ableism, and stupidity.

[andym]

54. Demonization and its opposite, hero worship, of potential leaders are prevalent

It appears to be human nature to demonize those potential leaders who disagree on heart-felt issues/beliefs and hero worship those who agree. For the right wing they not only have websites, but talk radio, Fox news and social outings via local churches etc to reinforce their fears and amplify them. I'm sure there are many who hero-worship Trump on FR, with similar convoluted reasoning.

Similar things happen on the Left. For example, there are Reddits and websites where HRC is demonized from the Left into such a distorted image as to be unrecognizable. I've found that no political website is immune to demomization/hero-worship. Taken to extremes this tendency results in cult-like adherence to rationally unjustified beliefs.

There is a simple test for demonization. If a person can say absolutely no good about the target, then that person is demonized. Of course, there is a reason such behavior is part of the human psyche: it helps organize resistance to leaders who do cause a surfeit of harm such as a Hitler (who was of course worshiped by many in Germany at the time).

[nolabear]

55. They're scared to death. Some of what they say reflects real fear and some desire for others to fear

so that they can, in their minds, ascend to power, or retain power.

The hyperbole is astounding. It doesn't reflect thinking, but fear-based feeling.

[MidwestTransplant]

58. Here's a good one re Trump and black people

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3456833/posts

Favorite response on the thread: Trump has a bond with African-Americans not seen among Republicans since Ulysses S. Grant.