What is in there minds? Or, the composite creation of conservatism.

I am at a lost.

When we look at these groups today assailing the president and the various work to try and help people across the country...I have to ask myself...what is in there minds?

Is it as simple as what Pres. Carter suggests, so much racism and bigotry?

In truth it seems complex. There are many pieces on the board at play and moving. There is some simple ideology at work, moving ever forward on the board. There's the party loyalty zigzagging away. And there is a nastiness, hoping forward proudly and certainly landing unexpectedly and calamitously.

In truth the nuttiness is not conservative-centric. It can be liberal in bent. But that part is always so small. There are 9-11 types, but they are there grand conspiracies are in the minority. But the damage that Republicans and conservatives have done to themselves shows quite painfully.

So might say this goes back to the start of the 00's and the call to fear after 9-11. Others will say it goes to the new attacks through media and groups in the 90's You could go to the time of power in the 80's, and so on. But this goes back to a key moment in this nation's history. The moment that the Democrats and the Republicans chose sides and allies in regard to civil rights.

Let us build up a bit first. Republicans love to hearken back to Lincoln all the time (though it seems much less since the election). They led the fight then. They gave blacks power. They pushed Constitutional amendments. It is a good record.

But through the dark days of Jim Crow things were rough and this country dealt with much via it's social conscious. You were we? Did we have laws that declared equality, but inaction we knew the way things ought to be? Or did we really want to live by are principals?

And that moment came to decide. Leading democrats chose to break with less illustrious position of the last century and embraced the fight for civil rights. Meaning action, schools forced open, children protected, and murders and scum brought to justice. Republicans saw this, and in spite of heroic stands of another century turned away, they took in the defecting Dixiecrats as there own. They took the South as a new base of support, at least white support. They made a pact that they have long since built upon.

It gave them many victories and to this day allows them many safe seats in Congress. It means may electoral votes every four years. It is power. But at what cost?


Because this tact continues to haunt there steps. When demographics began to sweep them at of power. They turned to the "quiet" religious right. And they roared. Offering moral superiority, for the sake of attacking science, medicines, and certain minority rights. It was deal they could live with. They took on the cloak of righteous Southern indignity, and now the scepter of moral certitude. They fed off a powerful sources of aid, and in the years that followed from the middle of the last century, they were changed.

They had numbers, causes, and also constraints. The old cause was now theirs (one they once led an army against -- ironic). And with the needs at the start of the 80's they know were expected to lead always for the righteous ends of Christ (they may say Judeo-Christian all the time, but even as judeo sits at the start of the term we all know where judeo ends up in the end with them). And with the changing technology of the 90's and the Clinton years, the conservatives embraced more and more the baser parts of its outliers, the fringers. Where a once a few Congressmen would would meet in a rural setting and mutter wild claims, it was now growing more acceptable, more public, and easier to get around via the Net. And Republicans fed off of it, and fed the fear (that murderous cocaine king in the White House - not Bush, Clinton!). And they took up a sword of wingnuttery for a fine trifecta of power, paranoia, and poor thinking. Leading to today. Where they carry an old white fear at there core, religious turpitude towards outside ideas, and a paranoia about the other.

Now this is not to say there are not people of conscious in the party, in power. But they do keep there heads down, they keep silent, they vote "with the party." Early on this year as Limbaugh said some stupid and clearly disruptive things about where governance should go for Obama's first term, some people among the Republicans stood up and said no to him.

Do you remember how many apologized afterwards and shut up? Since then they seem to have embraced his position and live up to it, haven't they? They have a facade to maintain and a beast to sustain, to keep their power, to increase it, so they can in turn feed the beast more.