Fantasy is all that is left of their tattered self-esteem.

The following is profound and explains an awful lot about a lot of people. I added the emphasis to the one sentence because of it's unerring accuracy. It addresses most of the fear of big government, gun control, women's rights, and - oh man, most of the issues we face on a national level today. The whole article is excellent and not too long - if you've got 5 or 10 minutes, it's worth the time.

Found on Truthdig

As Southern whites sink into economic and cultural despair, more and more are retreating into a fictional past... in a desperate effort to restore what they view as a lost paradise.
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The rewriting of history in the South is a retreat by beleaguered whites into a mythical self-glorification.
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The steady rise of ethnic nationalism over the past decade, the replacing of history with mendacious and sanitized versions of lost glory, is part of the moral decay that infects a dying culture. It is a frightening attempt, by those who are desperate and trapped, to escape through invented history their despair, impoverishment and hopelessness. It breeds intolerance and eventually violence. Violence becomes in this perverted belief system a cleansing agent, a way to restore a lost world. There are ample historical records that disprove the myths espoused by the neo-Confederates, who insist the Civil War was not about slavery but states' rights and the protection of traditional Christianity. But these records are useless in puncturing their self-delusion, just as documentary evidence does nothing to blunt the self-delusion of Holocaust deniers. Those who retreat into fantasy cannot be engaged in rational discussion, for fantasy is all that is left of their tattered self-esteem. When their myths are attacked as untrue it triggers not a discussion of facts and evidence but a ferocious emotional backlash. The challenge of the myth threatens what is left of hope. And as the economy unravels, as the future looks bleaker and bleaker, this terrifying myth gains potency.