I've just been rading Chipmunk Stew's
thread on LC about Islamic Terrorism, and the responses from the CT nuts are starting to convince me that they hold on to their beliefs partly because they are scared of the unknown enemy. They try to talk themselves into believing that Islamic extremists are merely products of US foreign policy. They don't seem to want to accept that someone could hate them unconditionally. By switching the blame to the goverment they switch the fear to something they can see and understand. The best analogy I can think of is sleeping with the light on when there's a spider in your room, because as long as you can see where it is, you can see what it's up to and you can keep away from it. As soon as it disappears behind something then it becomes scary, because you don't know where its going or what it wants to do, because you don't know how spiders think.
Unless of course you aren't scared of spiders, then you substitute spider with crab, or badger, or Darat, or whatever your particular phobia is.