Irrational Hatred of Obama May Be Easy to Fathom

Hatred of President Obama

I just finished reading Cynthia Tucker's thoughtful piece Irrational Hatred of Obamacare is Hard to Fathom.  But what made the experience truly educational were the flood of comments at the end of the article.  One commenter declared:  

"It isn't hard to fathom [why I hate Obamacare] when you are a person like me and have healthcare costs that average out to less than $20 a year for the last ten years and I am now [ten years older and] facing an increase to $4,000 per year just for premiums."

Another opined:  "OBAMACARE is illegal."  And a third insisted: Of the 7 million enrolled, how many lost their insurance due to Obama Care? How many lost their jobs due to Obama Care?"

These comments were a fairly representative sampling plucked from several thousand.  Of course the level of venom in these comments show that Cynthia Tucker was not exaggerating the "irrational hatred."

For years, I have pondered a similar question from watching Obama's election being called illegitimate by those claiming his birth certificate was forged, to the government being shut down, while some members of Congress worked to ruin America's credit rating as a means of destroying the Obama presidency.  But I may have stumbled upon the truth, although it is an unsavory one.  Please be patient as I lay this out. 

A small but not abnormal segment of American society, by psychological standards,  suffers from paranoia.
A small but not abnormal segment of American society, by psychological standards, suffers from anti-social behavior disorders.
A small but not abnormal segment of American society, by sociological standards, suffers from exceedingly high levels of aggression.
A small but not abnormal segment of American society, by sociological standards, suffers from authoritarian personality disorders.
A small but not abnormal segment of American society, by sociological standards, is virulently racist.
A small but not abnormal segment of American society, by sociological standards, is virulently sexist.
A small but not abnormal segment of American society, by sociological standards, is virulently homophobic.
A small but not abnormal segment of American society, by sociological standards, are religious fanatics.
A small but not abnormal segment of American society, by sociological standards, are anti-science/primitivist advocates.
A small but not abnormal segment of American society, by sociological standards, believe that education is evil.

Whereas once these groups may not have been as noticeable within political discourse because their members were distributed equally between the two main political parties, the minor political parties and many were apolitical.  They were, as a consequence, drowned out by what all parties agreed to be an acceptable standard of discourse.  But that no longer exists.  Every last one of these groups has  found a home in the GOP. Many intelligent, thoughtful, rational people remain in the Republican Party. But their voices are muted.  This rather embarrassing situation has been helped along by Rupert Murdoch's FOX News.  I am not saying this to be cruel, but rather to analyze what happened to the political party into which I was born and that I once embraced. I feel sorrow and shame for highly educated, patriotic Republican politicians who thought they were devoting their lives to public service only to find out too late that they were running a home for the societally handicapped, and for a couple of screwball megalomaniacs within their own ranks.