Right wingers just aren't good at foreseeing things.

[Jackpine Radical]

Condi couldn't foresee the likelihood of anybody flying an airplane into a building, and the hate messengers (Rush, Beck, Coulter, Palin, etc.) couldn't possibly foresee that some crazy person might take their little jokes a bit too seriously and be inflamed into action.

In reality of course, is is precisely the deranged and delusional elements of the population at whom these messages are aimed. The psychosis provides a level of cover, of deniability, between the instigator and the murder.

I have dealt with a lot of paranoid delusional types, and found very few whose delusions were based in liberal ideals of peace, justice and love. Such creatures are about as rare as Unitarian fanatics.

So, even if a Machiavellian left-winger wanted to incite an assassination, there really would be no population of loony followers for him to goad into a homicidal state.

[Cirque du So-What]

1. It's a form of mental impairment, really

Short-sightedness & RW ideology go hand-in-hand. I'm sure Hitler never foresaw the possibility of failure when he invaded Poland, due in no small part to a cadre of similarly short-sighted capitalists & industrialists (including one father & grandfather of RW presidents - Prescott Bush) who thought it was a capital idea to bankroll this fascist. Channeling their thoughts: 'hey, this is OUR kind of guy! Maybe he'll become powerful enough to kick some sense into that bleeding-heart Roosevelt!'

[patrice]

2. It's so ironic, because it's an addiction to gratification, the more immediate/hard-wired thebetter

[nashville_brook]

3. i couldn't agree more.

"The psychosis provides a level of cover, of deniability, between the instigator and the murder."

fucking nail meet head.

[DirkGently]

4. They keep lighting matches in the powder room, but act surprised when things go "boom."

Rightwing rhetoric increasingly substitutes hysteria for logic and extortion for argument. Then, when the natural consequences flow from that, it's either random coincidence or someone else's fault. Holding unemployment benefits and the debt ceiling "hostage" are just the latest extension of the rightwing's reliance on threats of destruction and anarchy to get what it wants. And they rely on a sense of entitlement to do it. They don't really mean it. They wouldn't really pull the trigger. Maybe . . . And then, like magic, they get what they want, but are never blamed for their increasingly hostile and anarchic tactics.

[DCKit]

5. Nicely said.

"So, even if a Machiavellian left-winger wanted to incite an assassination, there really would be no population of loony followers for him to goad into a homicidal state."

That hypothetical Machiavellian would be forced to borrow one of theirs (the looney), and the chances of that turning out well aren't very good.

[Kablooie]

6. A conservative is by definition someone who looks to the past, not the future.

They can't foresee things because their whole focus is bringing back the past and the familiar.
They abhor new ideas and so can't envision any future except one that repeats the past.

[Amonester]

7. They obviously aren't good at anything.

Except at creating chaos, that is.

They're so not good at anything, that they constantly vote against their own interests.

Go figure.