The way I grew up thinking

A news article in Salon this morning on Nader voters really disturbed me, but probably not for the same reason as everyone else. This bit sends chills up my spine:

Pat Lister, 44, of Des Plains, Ill., recently lost her job as a data-entry clerk and her husband has been unemployed for two years. "Dan and I very much are far worse off than four years ago,'' she said. "We need a change and it better come quick.''

But she's been a Republican since the cradle.

"Republicans, good, and Democrats are bad, is the way I grew up thinking,'' she said. "That darn upbringing is what haunts me.''

She said she would feel disloyal abandoning the GOP for the Democrats, "but if I voted for Nader I won't feel so bad about it.''

There are, of course, plenty of Democrats who could never vote for Republicans, but this woman's viewpoint is one that's been shared by more and more people in the last fifteen years or so, and it's something that reaches beyond just simple party (or even political) loyalty; it's outright blind following of propaganda. Conservatives and Republicans have done a fantastic job making people believe that Democrats an evil, society-destroying scourge, who'll raise your taxes until you're poor, dismantle the entire military, will make all of your children gay and abort all pregnancies by law.

Okay, the second two are exaggerations, but the first two aren't. There are a large number of otherwise reasonable, rational people who see voting Democrat as a sure road to financial ruin and military weakness. These people are Bush's strongest ally, because he knows that he can do whatever he wants, screw up whatever he wants, and those people will still vote for him, only because they can't face voting Democrat.

The worst part about the quote above is how unbelievably stupid it is, and how much it says, in a deeper sense, about blind prejudice towards large groups of people. This woman hates Democrats so much that she'll vote for a candidate who's so liberal that he won't even align himself with the Democrats, and she'll run the risk of ending up with the same economic situation that she has now. Genius.