The Republican fundamentalists

Since it was posted yesterday, I have been both horrified and fascinated by the results of this DailyKos/Research 2000 poll of Republicans. It’s impossible to cherry pick the results from the list to make my point because so many of them are so very distressing. Andrew Sullivan posted a great explanation of what this is about:

It has a parallel in the way in which non-violent Islamists have doubled down on medievalism as they feel an overwhelming sense of their own failure to succeed in modernity. There is a profound insecurity and dysfunction in these subcultures which cannot make the transition to modern life and thereby surrender more totally to the ancient past and to hatred of those who succeed. The hatred of Obama – a clearly decent and obviously Christian man – is not about him. It’s about them. It’s about their resentment of a man who has integrated his own identity and made a place for himself in a pluralist world. They cannot do that – so, like Palin, they invent a world of ancient virtues and moral absolutes that they routinely fail to live up to in reality. I mean: look at Palin’s family and Obama’s. Whose is the more traditional? And yet Palin is allegedly the avatar of family values – and Obama is a commie subversive.

I just don’t know what you do with a person who believes that ACORN stole the 2008 election on behalf of a foreign-born socialist who hates white people and should be impeached. These same people are ready to ban openly gay teachers from public schools unless they agree to teach the book of Genesis in science class. I don’t think education is the answer.