Reply #12: Cognitive dissonance between their racism & avowed Christianity. [View All]

Interesting question. I think most conservatives who are not among the uberwealthy have lots of deep fears,resentments and insecurities about their self-perceived lack of success, i.e., they espouse GOP greed and tax breaks for the wealthy in the deluded belief that they will one day make it to that top economic echelon. But with every day that passes, that future dream recedes a bit farther away. The farther down they go on their economic self-measurement scale, the more they look for scapegoats to blame for their dismal economic state, and those scapegoats are foreigners, migrant workers, emigrants, minorities, uppity women, etc. I think these people want to see all Muslims dead (the same exteme "final" solution of which they accuse all Muslims). And so they take pleasure at the news of the atrocities. BUT subconsciously they have all their childhood Christian platitudes about loving your neighbor, whatever you do for the least of these, more difficult for a rich man to enter heaven than a camel to fit through the eye of a needle, throwing the moneychangers out of the temple, suffer the little children to come unto me, etc. That results in cognitive dissonance. And if they are savy businessmen, they know it is better to keep their racist opinions and hatreds to themselves.