Wow.

You know this sort of madness exists, but seeing it starkly in black and white like this stuns me.

Beneath his madness and distortion, the man has a point I actually agree with him on: poor people in this country are being thrown to the dogs. Instead of blaming those who are actually responsible, however, he turns reality complete on its head, falls for the authoritarian myth, and blames allegedly all-powerful liberals.

I sincerely hope you're wrong, Alex, about more of this down the road. But I fear you're right.

Yeah. Quite a manifesto, there. And yet, alls I can feel is an overwhelming sadness. It's clear that the real demons he was trying to kill were his own. Hateful rantings aside, it is clear that the man was terribly ill. That in his illness, he saw his world falling apart, he made that final leap of blaming those that are unlike YOU. Something that Reagan used to become president, and has been a republican staple ever since. He obviously drank that kool-aid. The republicans should be ashamed of themselves. And, should try helping the poor instead of preying on them for political purposes. And so should we.

Here is a notation on a new book out about AUTHORTARIANISM:
The writer...who posted on PHB noted remarks from it referring to Religions Fundamentalists: (I keep wanting to say extremists, because that is the way we are headed..wonder if I shoud also send this reference, carefully, to the Secret Service?)
.pamshouseblend.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=9417

Religious Folk and Authoritarianism (+)
by: Christine Johnson
Mon Feb 09, 2009 at 22:39:29 PM CST

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Yesterday I came across a most interesting book, available on-line at The Authoritarians, which provides a significant body of scientific research that goes a long way to explaining why religious followers (and leaders) have such a hard time with us GLBT folk. The author is a professor of psychology at the University of Manitoba and has been studying authoritarian people for decades as a psychological researcher. His results are very pertinent to issues relating to GLBT liberation, and I highly recommend the book, especially since it's free :)
I took some notes, and a few really important paragraphs are instructive:
p. 139-140: This chapter has presented my main research findings on religious fundamentalists. The first thing I want to emphasize, in light of the rest of this book, is that they are highly likely to be authoritarian followers. They are highly submissive to established authority, aggressive in the name of that authority, and conventional to the point of insisting everyone should behave as their authorities decide. They are fearful and self-righteous and have a lot of hostility in them that they readily direct toward various out-groups. They are easily incited, easily led, rather un-inclined to think for themselves, largely impervious to facts and reason, and rely instead on social support to maintain their beliefs. They bring strong loyalty to their in-groups, have thick-walled, highly compartmentalized minds, use a lot of double standards in their judgments, are surprisingly unprincipled at times, and are often hypocrites.

But they are also Teflon-coated when it comes to guilt. They are blind to themselves, ethnocentric and prejudiced, and as closed-minded as they are narrowminded. They can be woefully uninformed about things they oppose, but they prefer ignorance and want to make others become as ignorant as they. They are also surprisingly uninformed about the things they say they believe in, and deep, deep, deep down inside many of them have secret doubts about their core belief. But they are very happy, highly giving, and quite zealous. In fact, they are about the only zealous people around nowadays in North America, which explains a lot of their success in their endless (and necessary) pursuit of converts.

He then goes on to examine "social dominators" or people who attempt to use whatever methods necessary to achieve their goals, which often involve manipulating the right wing authoritarians (RWA's) to do their bidding.
But beyond the social dominators, there is another smaller group, which he calls the "Double Highs," who are both social dominators and right-wing authoritarians. These people, not surprisingly, rise to the top of the political world. It is not difficult to surmise that people like James Dobson, and Kenneth Zucker fall into this category.He says (p. 178) that:

So who are these Double Highs? Simply put, they are “religious” social dominators. They usually had much more religious upbringings than social dominators typically had, or they may have “got religion” as adults. As a group their fervor does not quite reach the levels found among ordinary right-wing authoritarians. But they go to church much more than most people in my samples do. Ditto for being religious fundamentalists. Ditto for being religiously ethnocentric. They thus respond to the religious content on the RWA scale, which ordinary social dominators do not, and that helps make them Double Highs.

Dr. Altemeyer provides some suggestions at the end of the book to counter the effects of authoritarianism, and the consequent impact on our society, but I think it would be better if folks here read the book and drew their own conclusions. Still, I think the scientific evidence would be most useful for those fighting for LGBT rights. As Autumn has said: "Know your enemy."
That seems to me wise advice.