A Facebook friend made a group comment on a Fox News group she belongs to, and this showed up in my feed. She was lamenting how disappointed she was at Fox’s decision to fire O’Reilly. He was the first person she had ever watched on Fox. This may indicate that O’Reilly is a gateway brainwashing agent. My friend is not a foaming-at-the-mouth right winger, but she obviously leans conservative. However, the other commenters on this group were, well to say the least, astonishingly narrow in their thinking.
What struck me most in reading the comments was the absolutism regarding O’Reilly. There was only one comment in the several hundred that browsed through indicating any hint that the commenter felt O’Reilly had any responsibility for his own downfall. Most, of course, blamed the Lefty Liberals. They had been gunning for O’Reilly for years, so of course it was their fault.
I am astonished to see the level of “group think” that exists on the political right. I mean I knew it was there, but I am not exposed to it on a regular basis since I don’t frequent right wing blogs. We on the left disagree quite often, and the Daily KOS blog has been witness to our disagreements. Not so on the right. They conform their opinions to the party line of conservative orthodoxy. The sole commenter who suggested O’Reilly may have a problem made her suggestion quite timidly, and she begged not to be put upon for stating O’Reilly might be responsible for his demise.
What this demonstrates to me is that there is no reasoning with the conservative mind, because it is not rational.