Projection - Why People Vote Against Their Own Interests

Michael Shook: Much psychology posits that the more we react to another's position in life, the more one can be sure that the real "hot button" is in fact within one's self. We project onto others the things we cannot or will not face within our...

selves. Hence, the remarkable number of very conservative Republicans who are eventually outed as gay, to cite one example. Jimmy Swaggert, the thoroughly discredited preacher (and cousin to Jerry Lee Lewis) is another famous example.
Most never are willing, on their own, to face their own projections. Good on you, Tom. And, as always, I am grateful to read your posts. You share things that are very personal, yet universal, and you do it thoughtfully.

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I was raised a Liberal, went into business for myself after college and became quite conservative in my views and politics. I considered taxation to be the bane of society and a royal pain in my gludias maximus. I left the original counsel ...

of my father. I was angry and blind to the pain of those who had less than me, always thinking they were lazy...mostly, I was just eager to prove Dad wrong.

Time passed, the years morphed from season to season. My resentment of the government and those in power grew and grew. I wanted it my way or the highway. It was childish, I admit. All through the years, whenever I was vexed, I drank it away. Then I got sober and had some business set-backs. Some of my own making and others because of the economy. It was then that I realized my previous anger was my own and had NO basis in reality. I learned that sometimes people, hard working people, hit upon hard times; sometimes because they make mistakes and sometimes through no fault of their own.

I changed my politics. In fact, you would be hard pressed to find someone more liberally minded today than I on many issues. People can and do change...if their hearts are open to the fact that sometimes, perhaps most of the time, when we seek to blame others for our own plight, we are failing in our inner humanity to be good people, to be unselfish people, to be good neighbors...to be unselfish neighbors.

The Tea Party philosophy represents EVERYTHING I hate in the dark side of humanity, including my own. I utterly reject it as I utterly reject my former selfish behavior. I have come home to the kindness of community my father tried to inculcate into me.

Thanks Dad! The older I become, the smarter you get.

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