Just like being in love, except...

For those who are reluctant to accept the projection theory of right-wing rage, it may help to compare it to being in love - or, more precisely, being infatuated.

Think about yourself and others you've known who have been in the grip of a passion for another person. It's not based on reason, or evidence, or facts - all too often, it's not even based on the actual person! We all know from our own experience that the object of desire can be a trigger for something within ourselves, something that cannot be reasoned with or argued out of. It just has to run its course.

Much of what's going on with the extreme right wingers and Obama is analogous, except that it's about fear and hatred rather than love. Think of the total irrationality, the imperviousness to logic and evidence, the refusal to engage in reasonable argument. Something about Obama (his race, his name, his appearance, his attitude) triggers something in them which is a sort of dark, negative infatuation - he has become the focus and repository of all their fears and hatreds. There is something bizarrely ecstatic about it.

Usually, the 'cure' for infatuation is time and familiarity - as the real person behind the magical façade is revealed, infatuation wanes; and that's when real love begins.

Let's hope that as time passes and more and more people become more and more familiar with the president, it will become increasingly difficult for them to sustain the nefarious illusion. Of course, I don't expect (or even hope) that something like real love will emerge - only that this mass negative infatuation can run its course before someone does something stupid.