Read my lips. Two words will explain why... "Fearful aggression."
Fearful aggression is well-known to show dog and thoroughbred horse trainers. It occurs when such animals feel threatened and cornered, and attack instead of running away. Animals are not the only living creatures to demonstrate it. Religious fanatics and right-wing extremists possess it.
What is it that the right wing fears about the left wing? At any moment in time the right wing knows three things:
- they don't care about anyone but themselves
- the left wing knows they don't care about anyone but themselves
- they know that the left wing knows that they don't care about anyone but themselves
There is a saying that if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear. That would also imply that if you have something to hide, you do have something to fear. What the right wing is hiding is a nearly pure dedication to its own well-being and prosperity at whatever cost to all others. And so it would seem that if they are aware that that modus operandi is operating, they might have lots to fear and thus become aggressive about.
Here is what that might feel like.
Imagine you are walking down a street of poor, have-nots and homeless people and that you not only see despair in their eyes, but desperation. You also see that they have nothing to lose and will do whatever they can to just survive. Now imagine that as you walk down that street you are wearing a $3,000 Armani suit, a $10,000 Rolex, and that they just saw you step out of $150,000 Mercedez Benz. Furthermore, imagine that they know you don't care one bit about them, have no desire to help them, want even more than you already have (which is much more than you need or deserve) and have no compunction against going after that. Now imagine that you can't run away from that scenario and there is no place to hide, or safe haven to take you in.
What would you do?
You'd begin to feel panicky and then if you had no other alternative, you'd turn aggressive and fight to survive.
Their sense of greed and entitlement and lack of concern for others that everyone knows about is what causes right-wing Republicans to be so afraid of the Left and of liberals. But of course 1% of 300,000,000-plus people gives them havens and ghettos for the rich in which to hide and make even more money to widen the gap even more between them and the have-nots.