Fred Clark, one of my favorite bloggers, offers the first explanation of the teabagging movement that makes sense to me (I prefer ‘teabagging’ to ‘tea party’ due to teabagging’s delicious double entendre).
What fascinates me here is not just that the Tea Partiers are choosing voluntarily to abandon reality, but that they’ve elected to fabricate a world that’s far worse than the actual one. They’ve chosen to populate their imaginary world with their worst nightmares. That’s a very strange choice.
What I don’t get is the kind of deliberate delusion in which a person chooses to pretend the world is more horrifying and filled with more and more-monstrous monsters. Why would anyone prefer such a place to the real world? Why would anyone wish for a world filled with socialist conspiracies, secret Muslim atheists, Satan-worshipping pop stars and bloodthirsty baby-killers?
But the Tea Partiers cling to these nightmares with a desperate ferocity. They get angrily defensive at the suggestion that this world isn’t actually as horrific as they’re pretending it is. They’re very protective of their precious nightmares. They cherish them.
In trying to understand this choice, this weird preference for a world more monstrous than it actually is, I’ve come around to two explanations. The imaginary monsters are thrilling and they are reassuring.
Read the rest of Fred’s blog post to find out why the teabaggers find their monsters thrilling and reassuring.