EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
- Wisconsin Bill Would Treat Organic Milk, Sharp Cheddar, Brown Eggs as "Junk Food"
- Patent Filing Claims Solar Energy ‘Breakthrough’
- Climate Change's 'Evil Twin': Ocean Acidification
- Disaster Capitalism Strikes as Hedge Funds Circle Near-Bankrupt Municipalities Like Vultures
- Ignoring Bee Crisis, EPA Greenlights New 'Highly Toxic' Pesticide
- Patent Filing Claims Solar Energy ‘Breakthrough’
- Wisconsin Bill Would Treat Organic Milk, Sharp Cheddar, Brown Eggs as "Junk Food"
- Climate Change's 'Evil Twin': Ocean Acidification
- In 'March Toward Disaster,' World Hits 400 PPM Milestone
- Ignoring Bee Crisis, EPA Greenlights New 'Highly Toxic' Pesticide
Popular content
Today's Top News
Paranoid Politics: Say Hello, Wave Goodbye
A few weeks ago we had Joe Stack, crashing his plane into an IRS building in the name of tax freedom. Next up: last week's assault on the Pentagon at the hands of John Patrick Bedell in which two Pentagon police officers were wounded before the well-dressed gunman was shot and killed.
FBI investigators are looking at a number of Web posts believed to have been written by Bedell. One post, The New York Times reports, speaks of the author's interest in "establishing the truth of events such as the September 11 demolitions and institutions such as the coup regime of 1963 that maintains itself in power through the global drug trade, financial corruption, and murder."
Another post reads: "I have an intense personal desire for freedom...my desire for freedom is inevitably centered on the role of government in society."
As cliché as Richard Hofstadter's celebrated 1964 essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" may have become, it's impossible to ignore its lasting relevance.
"American politics has often been an arena for angry minds. In recent years we have seen angry minds at work mainly among extreme right-wingers, who have now demonstrated in the Goldwater movement how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority. But behind this I believe there is a style of mind that is far from new and that is not necessarily right-wing."
The essay is worth revisiting, if only to remind ourselves that the Joe Stack's and John Bedell's of the world are not necessarily certifiably nuts, which is often how they are characterized by those invoking the "paranoid style" theory.
But Hofstadter was careful to note that "in using the expression ‘paranoid style' I am not speaking in a clinical sense, but borrowing a clinical term for other purposes."
In fact, the late historian wrote, "the idea of the paranoid style as a force in politics would have little contemporary relevance or historical value if it were applied only to men with profoundly disturbed minds. It is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that makes the phenomenon significant."
So even if you're not into history, you gotta give it up to Hofstadter for offering insights that are still useful today in identifying the politics of paranoia - from the near evil omnipotence ascribed to political enemies ("a kind of amoral superman") to the obsession with pedantry ("McCarthy's 96-page pamphlet McCarthyism contains no less than 313 footnote references").
Not a happy diagnosis, for sure, but useful in a world full of birthers, "death-panel" demagogues, and tea party patriots.
And though neither Stack nor Bedell have been tied to any particular hate group, it would be naïve to think they weren't animated by the same re-surging spirit discussed in a new report by the well-known hate-group tracking organization, the Southern Poverty Law Center. It's no coincidence conservatives have called Stack a hero.
The SPLC report, "Rage on the Right," documents a 244 percent increase in the number of active Patriot groups in 2009, up from 149 groups in 2008 to 512 groups in 2009.
Militias - "the paramilitary arm of the Patriot movement" - were a big reason for the growth, with the number of militias increasing from 42 in 2008 to 127 in 2009.
According to the report, these groups have been stoked over the nation's shifting demographics, rising debt, economic stagnation, and a laundry-list of Obama administration initiatives labeled as "socialist" and/or "fascist."
Mark Potok, editor of SPLC's Intelligence Report, sees it as cause for "grave concern," considering that "the people associated with the Patriot movement during its 1990s heyday produced an enormous amount of violence, most dramatically the Oklahoma City bombing that left 168 people dead."
Keep in mind, Potok says, the Patriot movement has embedded itself deep into the conservative political scene. "The ‘tea parties' and similar groups that have sprung up in recent months cannot fairly be considered extremist groups, but they are shot through with rich veins of radical ideas, conspiracy theories and racism," the report says.
The most sobering aspect about paranoid politics - to resurrect Hofstadter again - is that "it comes in waves of different intensity" and "appears to be all but ineradicable."
But that shouldn't be a cause for despair because Stefan Zweig is right: "every wave, regardless of how high and forceful it crests, must eventually collapse within itself."
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
58 Comments so far
Show AllWonder how long it will take for some poster to criticize Dees and the SPLC for being money-grubbing and fund-facing using fear. But we HAVE reason to fear these groups, they ARE dangerous in their views, And they have LOTS of guns.
And their are fellow-travelers, who may not belong to what a few years before would have been merely a guns and gripe group, but believe the same way and also have a few guns in their safe and stashed about the house and vehicle.
I know some members, and have seen the massive increase in presence and literature at gun shows (I attend with one of those friends). It's scary as hell.
Gary
"Being slightly paranoid is like being slightly pregnant - it tends to get worse."
-- Molly Ivins
There aren't all that many people, though, who act out. Most are just big talk and posturing. There's not a lot of room between being too cautious to act out and too disordered to act out. The arsehole who shot Dr Tiller is one of the few who was crazy enough to do it *and* able to maintain long enough to plan and carry out the act.
So even if you're not into history, you gotta give it up to Hofstadter for offering insights that are still useful today in identifying the politics of paranoia - from the near evil omnipotence ascribed to political enemies ("a kind of amoral superman") to the obsession with pedantry ("McCarthy's 96-page pamphlet McCarthyism contains no less than 313 footnote references").
------------------------------
No, actually, I don't "gotta". Hofstadter wrote as an Establishment thought-herder. For the overprivileged like him, nothing exists outside their personal world.
We saw the same thing during Civil Rights days: the bewildered Whites saying "but I asked our maid and she told me she doesn't want to vote and her life is just *wonderful*. And our gardener said the same!"
Pity Gonsalves has such limited perception in this instance. It's neither paranoia nor a "paranoid style" to talk about what really exists.
There really *are* any number of ruling-class conspiracies in operation. We can tell because the description of what's going on pumped out by the ruling class's tame media and the reality as we experience it couldn't be more different. The sad and half-crazy ones are those who choose to believe the media, not those who believe their own experience.
Why don't you give us a list of these conspiracies? Spell them out for those of us who are too dimwitted to recognize them.
If you think everything is fine and that the media and politicians tell the truth, then you're beyond any help I could give you, so I'll not waste my time trying.
Sheepherder indeed, thanks for putting your agenda clearly into your login. What's your other login COINTELPRO?
>Pity Gonsalves has such limited perception in this instance. It's neither paranoia nor a "paranoid >style" to talk about what really exists.
Obama not being an American citizen? Death-panels? A conspiracy of climate change scientists? A secret government plan to turn the government socialist? These things really exist? WTF r u talking about?
>There really *are* any number of ruling-class conspiracies in operation
Well, no sh%&, but none of the conspiracies as conceived of by the people discussed in this piece are based in reality. And the concept that the rich are in collusion to run the world is NOT a conspiracy. It's the way the system was designed to work and operates in plain sight.
Obama not being an American citizen? Death-panels? A conspiracy of climate change scientists? A secret government plan to turn the government socialist? These things really exist? WTF r u talking about?
---------------------------------------
People can be correct in part and wrong in part, or can be wrong because they're being fed horseshit or because they misinterpret (perhaps even wilfully) information they have. And yet they're not demented or evil, they're just *wrong*.
Obama's citizenship? Considering how he was sold to us, and what we know about government crimes of various kinds (COINTELPRO comes to mind), do you really believe they wouldn't invent citizenship for him, if that were needed? He's the first one since post-Revolution days, I believe, not to have 2 natal-citizen parents, the first to be born outside the continental US, and the first to have been educated in part in a majority-Muslim country. There's a lot of room to hide things in that biography.
Death panels? As *many* have pointed out, death panels really do exist: they're used by the insurance companies. If insurance companies have them, why would you think government wouldn't have them too? You can't believe our rulers have *our* wellbeing in mind.
Conspiracy of scientists? Why not? The climate deniers certainly conspire, so I don't see why it's impossible that some climate scientists do too. I myself don't believe that, but it's not impossible and if someone turned up good evidence, I wouldn't try to ignore or deny it. It wouldn't impeach the reality of what's coming, so I'd see it as an unimportant-and-not-even-very-interesting factoid.
Secret government plans? Do I really need to say *anything* about the reality of that idea? If you heard someone talk about a "secret government plan to turn the government socialist for the rich while maintaining capitalist discipline against us" would you think *that* far-fetched?
Oh boy. I don't have the time or inclination to get it into with a birther. Inventing his citizenship? R u serious?
>He's the first one since post-Revolution days, I believe, not to have 2 natal->citizen parents, the first to be born outside the continental US,
What about McCain? He was born in Panama. Do you question his citizenship?
Death panels? C'mon man. Of course, insurance co's and doctors make end of life decisions for other people, which nobody labels death panels. But the notion that's been pedaled by the Sarah Palin's of the world is that of some blood-thirsty neo-Nazi agency designed to weed out useless old people, which is pure paranoia.
>Secret government plans? Do I really need to say *anything* about the reality of >that idea? If you heard someone talk about a "secret government plan to turn the >government socialist for the rich while maintaining capitalist discipline against >us" would you think *that* far-fetched?
Again. That's NOT a secret! It's the way the system was designed and has always worked. Out in the open. There's no conspiracy. It's called capitalism and it's knowingly supported by most Americans.
Don't fixate on the details, look at the general principles: do government agents conspire to commit vile acts or not? If they do, then unless you can show that all the vile acts are committed within a well-bounded contextual space, it follows that any act might be committed by them *whether or not in fact a given, particular act was*.
Sioux
SAY WHAT: I hear you. You raise some compelling points.
I don't "gotta" either.
FWIW, this celebrated Hofstadter essay has some worthy insights, but I agree with your point that Hofstadter was also an apologist for the status quo. It makes his arguments a little too pat.
Hofstadter achieved iconic status, so his "Greatest Hits" are readily seized upon as transcendent and definitive classics; like citing "De Tocqueville", it gives one's writing a bit of cachet. Again, I'm not rejecting it altogether; it does nicely explain some aspects of wingnut politics. But it's too selective; I think you're correct that Hofstadter's own academic and social status limited his ability to turn that critical eye on less distant Others.
In assessing "paranoia", the devil's always in the details. Hofstadter's broadly-brushed canvas is too easily used as a formulaic way to attack the splinter in The Other's eye while overlooking the beam in the attacker's own. In fact, it suggests an incipient counter-paranoia all its own.
Agreed, which is why the author acknowledges citing Hofstadter as cliche. And like you said, it doesn't mean Hofstadter's stuff is worthless b/c it's not. And that's why I like the fact that Gonsalves quotes Hofstadter making the point that the term isn't meant to invoke a clinical diagnosis. What makes that interesting is in trying to understand how such crazy ideas like death panels, climate change denial etc. can be held and passionately expressed by people who are NOT certifiably crazy.
Who gives a flying F$%6 is Hofstadter was an apologist?
As for this counter-paranoia you speak of: care to elaborate? Are you saying that people who are worried about yet another wave of white men in Patriot groups committing domestic terrorism amounts to paranoia?
As for this counter-paranoia you speak of: care to elaborate? Are you saying that people who are worried about yet another wave of white men in Patriot groups committing domestic terrorism amounts to paranoia?
---------------------------
Yes. (I'm answering for myself, of course, not OS)
Look up the stats on terrorism. You have a greater likelihood of being struck by lightning than to be harmed by terrorism. You have an eNORmously greater likelihood of dying mangled in your car. So, yes, being worried about "white men in Patriot croups" committing terrorism is an unrealistic, overvalued fear. Not "paranoia" in a clinical sense, but in a colloquial sense, yes.
>Look up the stats on terrorism. You have a greater likelihood of being struck by >lightning than to be harmed by terrorism.
Yup. That applies to the "terrorism" of al Queda. The chances go way up when you're talking about the terrorism of angry white guys going after blacks, Jews, Mexicans, gays etc. You do recall that less than 75 years ago, a black person was lynched by domestic terrorists - ahem, Patriotic Americans - every other day, often times with thousands (you should see the photos) of smiling white "Christians" standing around the swinging corpse looking on in glee. For you to discount that history and pretend like it couldn't happen again is a luxury only a white guy (or the historically ignorant) can afford.
There's a HUGE difference between someone being nervous about a resurgence of domestic terrorism based on actual recent living history and some angry white male worried that America has been overtaken by "socialists" who love blacks and immigrants so much that they want nothing more than to destroy white America. The former is reality-based; the latter is pure paranoia based on nothing other than projected fear.
I'm not going to get into a "yes it is" "no it isn't" game. I'll just ask you to support your claim about domestic terrorism. Where is the data about the likelihood of being harmed by domestic terrorism compared to other causes? Do you have any?
I'm not a statistician and I agree that there are other things to worry about but I don't think that translates into "there's nothing to worry about" when it comes to domestic terrorism, especially if you're black, given the long history (and tolerance by the majority of white America) of severe, wide-spread violence against "others" - be they black, Japanese, Muslim or immigrant. You seem to be saying that the KKK, the John Birchers, Patriot groups, the tea-baggers and other assorted organizations of angry white guys should simply be ignored and written off as harmless people expressing justified outrage. Is that your point? A resurgence of hate-groups - no big deal? If that is your point, it's like I said, a luxury only a white man can afford.
So you have no data, just opinion.
In fact, we *don't* need to worry about the majority of "angry white guys" because, as I pointed out in another post and you can verify by a trivial amount of investigation, there's very little room between too cautious to act out their fantasies and too disordered to act them out successfully. The data confirms that very, very few people fall into that space; were it otherwise, there'd be bombings, mass poisonings, and general mass-mayhem every day.
As to "a luxury only a white man can afford", let me note that once again you've demonstrated how little research there is behind your so-confident assertions: I'm not a man (my given name should tell you that). (And my genetic heritage is not entirely "White", either.)
Never said we need to worry about the majority, I'm saying it's not paranoid to worry about a MINORITY of right-wing Americans with a historical propensity to kill large numbers of people i.e. lynching.
And yes, I'm guilty of assuming you are a white man. My bad. Maybe I should have said angry white guys and their significant others. But I knew you had to be white one way or the other for you to suggest that black folks don't need to worry about a resurgence of KKK types.
As many other have pointed out, included the apologist Hofstadter, it's amazing how much a small minority of people can accomplish together.
I agree fear of either domestic "extremist" or foreign Al-CIA-da terrorism is overblown and an easy way to distract the populace from investigating what the government is up to, we can't have *that* now can we, must be paranoid like that Joe Stack guy, never mind we have hundreds of thousands of murderous thug soldiers in the middle east right now as we speak. Empire and corporatism are the real atrocities "terror" is a sideshow to justify ramping up the police state. I was a "terrorist" when I trespassed onto timber company land to non violently block loggers from cutting old growth trees, are you afraid now that the t words has been invoked?
Sigh!
Sioux
MAIREAD: I'm more concerned with the historical implications of a government that more and more abandons its covenant (Constitution, Bill of Rights, Habeas Corpus) with "the people." The fact that our own "unitary executive/sans accountability/disabled checks and balances/unbalanced Supreme Court" government also has access to the largest set of military personnel (all well-armed and dangerous) in the world... yeah, that makes me a little (justifiably) paranoid.
Me, too, Sioux!
If we need to worry about anyone, I totally agree with you that it's the ones with their hands on the levers of State power, not the poor buggers sitting on their Glocks in a bar somewhere, rehearsing their real and imaginary grievances at each other while they pickle themselves in alcohol.
I'm more concerned about those with their hands on the lever of state too, except that the folks with their hands on the lever are the tea-baggers etc! Hence, the justified concern. Hence, 600 people show up for a tea bag convention and it gets around the clock serious coverage. Angry town meetings, same thing. But let a million or so anti-war protestors show up for an event. Or thousands of progressives meet and there's no coverage, except to ridicule them as anti-American. The tea party, Joe Stack et al come along and, stop the presses, we have to understand and empathize with them!
It's amazing to me that folks even here on CD spend time defending Joe Stack and company but when Rev. Wright says g-ddam America for far worse treatment of blacks than Stack could ever imagine, I don't recall anyone around these parts defending Rev. Wright. Did you "understand" his justifiable anger and write long screeds against anyone who dared call Rev. Wright a hateful, dangerous anti-American racist?
Correct, consider too that the government probably considers many of us on here to "domestic extremists" and potential terrorists. Suddenly tarring people with the domestic extrmist label doesn't seem so appealing when it might be you under the eyes of the imperialist state, does it?
Lets keep our eyes on elite oppression rather than falling for the elites distortionary, quick look over there eek scary terrorist tactics. :(
The only check remaining could well be the military commanders that honour their oath to the Constitution. Of course incrementalim and terminations can destroy this last remaining check.
I used to think the Supreme Court held this position until they went out of their way to legislate, a function that used to reside with Congress.
BS (Bush Shadow)! People are just(ly) FED up with 4 decades of Bi-partisan BETRAYAL.
Yep, all of these new-Patriots have a lot more balls, guts and bravery now that Obama is prez. They were ignorantly paralyzed with Bush/Cheney in charge, but they have to fear the black man now, so they are free to be the terrorists they hate so much!
Yes, they're just like the liberals who cursed Bush for the same things that are okay now that it's Obummer doing them. Amazing how partisan hypocrisy works, isn't it?
I sometimes think we should have a small, very simple maturity test as a condition of voting. There'd be plenty Dems and GOP who wouldn't pass.
"Liberals" were flying planes into buildings and attacking the Pentagon b/c they were mad at Bush? Really? I must have missed that. There's a huge difference between expressing outrage/being mad at a politician and committing domestic terrorism, dontcha think?
Liberals" were flying planes into buildings and attacking the Pentagon b/c they were mad at Bush?
----------------------------------
No, nor are "Conservatives" (or whatever label you want to use) doing those things now, either. Two people each acting alone for personal reasons do not constitute "terrorism". They don't even constitute more than a technical plural.
One guy who was pushed over the edge by the intersection of circumstances and his own internal stresses committed suicide by airplane, saddeningly killing an innocent, worthy man in the process. That's not "terrorism". It'd maybe have been terrorism if he'd loaded the plane with dynamite or similar and had a political rather than personal motive.
The other guy, Bedell, evidently also slipped his gears. Had he blown himself up with a dynamite vest and had an uncountable number of other people in the shadows claiming responsibility and promising similar events, that would have been terrorism. But what he did wasn't terrorism, it was unhappy madness.
Thanks for clarifying the meaning of terrorism. Stupid me thought that terrorism described acts that did, or were designed to, induce terror.
Compare these "paranoids" to John Brown. None of his contemporaries on either side of the Mason-Dixon line considered him to be crazy, although modern interpretation invariably casts him in that light. His grasp of the geo-political weakness of the South was correct and so it was that the Union created the state of West Virginia from the Virginia territory during the course of the Civil War. Brown was certainly over-reaching, trying to do too much with only the members of his family in his campaign. Many regiments of the Union were mustered under the symbolic bust of John Brown. His cause was right and ultimately prevailed.
What is missing from these camps is cogent political theory, for which they substite rhetoric as opposed to reasoning, nostalgia as opposed to research, secrecy as opposed to privacy, and conspiracy as opposed to association.
Good point. And while it's not true of these Patriot groups, what makes the Joe Stack's and John Bedell's fools is not their very coherent views of ruling class oppression but the fact that they acted alone. There's a huge difference between a guerrilla struggle and some mad white guy, who owns a private plane, deciding to fly it into an IRS building b/c he doesn't like taxes. It's sad but funny how easily white guys lose their minds over taxes but let people of color go through a quantitative and qualitatively worse experience and if they so much as pull a Rev. Jeremiah Wright, they're written off as insane haters. Amazing.
Mairead & sheepherder -
Hofstadter's discourses on the recurring influence of a "paranoid style" in American politics is indeed inherently centrist in its perspective. But as the old joke goes, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there's nobody really out to get you.
I feel in this particular offering Sean Gonzalves himself falls into the trap of drawing an overbroad comparison. If John Patrick Biddell's motivation in traveling across the country from California to DC, and then trying to barge into the Pentagon armed to the teeth was part a concern over exposing "the truth of events such as the September 11th demolitions" as well as a reaction to "the coup regime of 1963 that maintains itself in power through the global drug trade, financial corruption and murder", I think there's a valid distinction with a difference here to draw. Professor Hofstadter drew that line where an "apocalyptic and absolutist framework" took over.
There are perfectly rational, non-crazy, non-"paranoid style" reasons to question both the 911 Commission's official narrative and/or the work product of the Warren Commission. Not everybody who wants to get to the truth about what really happened on 9/11/01, and/or the full story of what really took place surrounding the Kennedy assassination, should therefore be labeled and dismissed as conspiracy theorists, indistinguishable from most true believer adherents of McCarthyism, orthodox Marxist anti-capitalism, anti-Jesuit American nativism, or folks fixated in fear over a sinister, secret international plot orchestrated by Masons, or Mormons, or by the Illuminati.
The Teabagger demagogues represent the latest manifestation of the paranoid style in American two-party politics, at the conservative end of today's partisan spectrum. Who benefits if mainstream middle punditry equates these birther nutcakes with citizens who strongly suspect the US intelligence community and the Bush/Cheney White House have been less than completely forthright with the American public about how the WTC attack took place, and how that horrific event links up with a global war on terror? Who benefits? Who is marginalized as paranoid?
Just because I may still harbor doubts about who was behind the murder of JFK long ago in Dallas doesn't mean I think the killers have been consistently calling all the shots from behind closed doors in Washington DC for the last 45 years. Let us not paint with too broad a brush. Neither Mr. Stack nor Mr. Bedell are the equivalent of Timothy McVeigh in my book, nor in Hofstadter's nomenclature.
Bill from Saginaw
Excellent! Very perceptive.
One reason Gonzalves sometimes comes off sounding like he's defending government on some level, I think, reflects the complicated relationship and history black folks in America have with big government, issues that white folks NEVER have to think about; namely the fact that if it wasn't for Big Government there might still be slavery or at the very least we'd still have Jim Crow. Desegregation, voting rights, anti-lynching laws etc. were not established by the "will of the people." They were not popular causes but causes in which Big Government sided with minorities, more or less. So if you're a person of color, as Gonzalves is, I can understand the ambivalence.
Still, I think the writer acknowledges that Stack and Bedell were not necessarily crazy or tied to a specific hate group, though it is telling how many people, including CD posters, are willing to defend their nuttery, while often going bananas about a Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Wright says G-ddamn america over far worse oppression than Stack and Bedell have ever experienced and he's a pariah. Stack and Bedell commit terrorism and their heros, or people we can empathize with?
if it wasn't for Big Government there might still be slavery or at the very least we'd still have Jim Crow.
----------------------------
Surely you're aware that it was the *creation* of big government that preserved slavery in the first place?
Slavery was on its way out before the 1787 Convention gave it a new lease on life. As the price of their support for imposing a federal government "to protect the minority of the opulent from the majority", the wealthy plantation owners in the southern countries of the confederation demanded, and got, not only the ratification of slavery but the infamous 3/5 rule. It's not possible to calculate how much suffering that has caused in the past 220 years.
"Desegregation, voting rights, anti-lynching laws etc. were not established by the "will of the people." They were not popular causes but causes in which Big Government sided with minorities"
I beg to differ.
All of the issues you list, and more like women's suffrage and reproductive rights. et cetera, were indeed established by the Will of the People. They were not bestowed gratuitously from above, they were fought for first at ground level and then through the Courts and through Legislatures. Eventually, all of these expansions of human rights involved getting the Federal Government to side with the Minority.
Look, I'm not saying that government established these minority protections and expansions of political freedoms out of the kindness of their hearts. Yes, movements compelled them to do it. But don't confuse that with popular will. If any of the civil rights for blacks were up for popular vote at the time they were established they would have been voted down i.e. busing and school integration.
Sioux Rose
BILL: Excellent post. I would add that it's also neither paranoid, nor the product of a vivid imagination to PRESUME that our conversations are being tapped. Many activists find their names on the no-fly lists or come to realize after the fact, that aspects of their private lives (as in RIGHT TO PRIVACY) have been viciously violated. We have heard of pre-emptive arrests of those seeking to organize protests, and Elliot Spitzer's exposure is rather convenient for those who wish to keep the Wall St moneychangers INSIDE the "temple." Meanwhile, even down to things as important as climate change/global warming, those not on the side of big profit risk seeing their names and reputations sullied. It's the art of the good prosecutor to get the "jury's" mind off the crime and instead focused on some imperfection in a person tangential to the matter. In that way evil is free to remain on course.
In sum, these are a few examples of the ample evidence that the times have caught up with the paranoids.
I call myself liberal, but must say some of what I've read here on CD lately sounds pretty paranoid as well: pretty much dancing on the fence of violence. I believe that the forces of the right absolutely are spoiling for such a violent confrontation. They are personally armed to the teeth for it, they control many of the branches of the military and America's security apparatus in preparation for it, and entire news networks (Faux in particular) broadcast the justification for their violence daily (Obama's socialism, etc).
But the forces that seek control of America, the moneyed forces, also want a violent confrontation with the left, because they just see it as the easiest way to take over the government. These forces are neither right or left (which require an ideology, some 'moral' sense), but seek power for its own sake. The power elite, as they've been called, are amoral, except to profit and personal power.
I believe that the left, to be effective in its advocacy, has to identify the real enemy (which isn't money, btw, but those who want to degrade our democracy with money, and take over), and avoid confrontation with the right. This is difficult, because corporate-owned outlets like Faux are lying to the right 24-7 that We are the enemy.
As a simple measure, we need to join with the forces of the right, and deny moneyed forces the unique access to our governments power structure that has made a mockery of our democracy: we need publicly financed elections (fixcongressfirst.org). I believe this will create more legislators, both on the left and the right, who speak from their moral core, rather than the corporate mouthpiece they need for reelection campaign cash. I personally would welcome more legislators who speak from core conservative values, rather than core Halliburton values, which aren't the same thing. Halliburton has to make a profit: that is its ONLY core value. It will sacrifice conservative values to do so, if push comes to shove. Hence, to the degree that our representatives are owned by corporations, they aren't free to say what they think, much less what WE think.
fixcongressfirst.org who knows, it could just prevent a civil war
When I moved to Indiana from Florida, my new Father-in-Law was a Farmer. He felt that if his younger son moved to Indianapolis, where he was working, that "He will be corrupted". He distrusted anyone that had not lived in Owen County for the past 200 years. He hated all other races. (he still does)But there is one exception, the one black family that he personally knows. When I returned to school at IU, I became friends with another older woman who was from Malaysia. We discovered that both of our Father-in-Laws shared not only farming but a distrust of people that they did not know and a distrust of uppity women who went to the University. I come from the South and have plenty of relatives that distrust anyone who lives North of the Mason Dixon Line. They will defend the origins of the KKK.
Point being, with the Globalization of information and the TV that imparts that information,perhaps this will all change. FEAR is the root of all Evil...heard that somewhere.
I've often been struck by the essays by Chris Hedges, a frequent contributor to CD who wrote the excellent, inflamatory, 'Calling all Rebels' in yesterdays CD. At the bottom, it includes books he's written and one of them is 'War is a force that gives us meaning'. Now, I've never read Hedges books, but that title just blows me away, that's how forceful and truthful it is. Prejudice is, I believe, a call to war. It's a call to war by painfully slow, subterranian means. But, as a call to war, it STILL is a force that gives us meaning... a powerful force. I have farming inlaws, from Oregon, that were never prejudicial in my younger days. And, as such, their lives lacked a certain focus, a certain directedness. That changed. The farmers in Oregon received newsletters from other farmers that are, shall we say generously, right of center. Those newsletters have memes in them, about 'brown race' invasion, about ethnic pride, about independence and 'freedom', that would concern anyone who read them. Faux News did the rest. My beloved inlaws are now screaming, foaming, white-pride KKK riders. Fear is indeed the root of all evil. And fear is fed by ignorance. The hardest thing is to not give in to the fear. And that requires understanding, of all things, why someone would give in to fear.
paranoia? we live in the Age of the Drone...
is it paranoid to imagine hundreds or thousands of them flying overhead 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in coordinated surveillance patterns controlled by computers?
not to me...
to me, that's a good bet...
what event might make a drone's program break such a pattern and cause it to descend for closer investigation or violent engagement?
Guess we better hope Toyota doesn't get into the drone biz.
What!!?? "...the coup regime of 1963 that maintains itself in power through the global drug trade, financial corruption and murder." This is paranoia? More like truth.
We are in far greater danger from the power elite than we could ever be from "militias". Are people really pissed? When a critical mass of people are pissed, does violence erupt? Will demagogues try to use that anger? You bet, but focus your fear, anger and fighting instincts in the right direction--the top.
Two responses to this essay:
1. First and most important the biggest danger to American citizens now is corporatism and imperialism, every second we worry about some turkey skinhead loon who may or may be reading Mein Kemph and having a sawed off shotgun, the U.S. government is slaughtering dozens of people in Afghanistan and Pakistan with "predator" drone missiles Yes the pathetic schlup with Mein Kemph is deluded and sad but his potential to do great harm is nill compared to the government or Monsanto. Stay focused people!
2. Conspiracies do happen there really is a CFR and Trilateral commission and a meeting of world leaders at Davos and they aren't meeting to discuss tiddly winks but discussing things like global trade, and coordinating war strategies, things that impact quite literally billions of people. Not everyone who understands this is on the regressive right either, read Holly Skylar and learn something:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Trilateralism/Trilateralism_overview.html
I think half the purpose of the conspiracy and "paranoid" memes is to discourage people from investigating what the powers that be are up to. Is Noam Chomsky "paranoid" to think the media manufactures consent for U.S. imperialism? No! Are all conspiracies true? No of course not, it wasn't hologram on 911 for example, from that it doesn't follow we should just look down and shut up every time someone from the establishment cries paranoid conspiracy theorist.
Frankly I expect better from Sean Gonsalves and have enjoyed his previous articles. And this one? Not so much...
From lefty Holy Skylar's book on Trilateralism:
"The U.S. standard of living is the tenth highest in the world-not first. The United States ranks fifteenth in infant mortality and literacy among the nations of the world and even lower on other measures of social welfare.' The U.S. imprisons people at a higher rate (per capita) than any other country in the West except South Africa! Private profit is the standard for a system which makes a mockery of democracy and a necessity of repression, condemning people to poverty and joblessness in the U.S. and throughout the free (for corporate profit) world...
Managing Third World Dependence: Revitalizing Imperialism
Trilateralists have always known that "issues related to economics are at the heart of modern politics" and they are determined to consolidate a world economy in which all national economies beat to the rhythm of transnational corporate capitalism (all hearts leaping at the sight of corporate products and all minds thinking in the language of technocrats). Trilateral elites hope to guarantee a stable supply of raw materials, cheap labor, and an expanding market place for global corporations by strengthening the bonds which keep Third World "development" (read "underdevelopment") defined by and dependent upon the expansion of the leading capitalist economies."
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Trilateralism/Trilateralism_overview.html
Of course everyone who is suspicious of what the Trilateral Commission is up to is a paranoid regressive right wing teabagger racist conspiracy theorist, right?
And again, I say, 1) Gonsalves would agree, as can be attested to by many, many articles he has written that the threat numero uno is corporatism and imperialism. 2) The "conspiracy" to which you refer is no conspiracy. It's how the system was designed and it operates in the open. It's called capitalism and most Americans uncritically support it wholeheartedly, even when they schizophrenically detest many aspects of its real-world applications. 3) Chomsky is not paranoid but he has written many times about the foolishness of conspiracy theories, especially the who shot JFK one. 4) The skinhead types are deep into the tea party and these folks have penentrated deep in the GOP who wield real power. Throw in the Great Recession, rampant xenophobia, the internet and other mass media amplifying the hate and ignorance and you never know. Interestingly, Gonsalves ends his piece making the same observation you are making - rage on the right? no big deal. The wave will recede. As for me, I'm sure it will recede. I'm just worried about who will get f-up in the process. Lastly, I'm truly surprised that so many posters at CD are basically arguing that hate groups are no big deal. Granted, there are lots of bigger issues to worry about but to make it sound like the tea baggers and Patriot movement is harmless is both foolish and dangerous.
Not so fast, talk of the Trilateral Commission, CFR, Davos, Bilderberg is often blown off as only believed by right wing paranoid conspiracy theorists. My point is we ought not to be so derisive as Gonvales is being here as Chomsky, Skylar and others who write about these subjects are often blown off with the paranoid conspiracy theorist label. Did we really want to encourage the idea that looking into hidden power relationships is paranoid thinking as Govales does? That cripples a lot of left anti capitalist analysis.
Your hand waving of oh *our* conspiracy theory is correct of course is a little quick IMO. I think this issue deserves a little more exploration like exploring the difference between institutional analysis (Chomsky's term) and conspiracy theory and where is the line exactly? For example is curiosity about the history of the Federal Reserve conspiracy theory? I would say no, that understanding why we pay private banks to mint our public currency is a legitimate area of inquiry, yet some would say oh that's just Ron Paul loons conspiracy theory, any thoughts?
I don't disagree with what you say here. Where I disagree is with the idea that Gonsales is trying to stifle left analysis by bringing attention to what the SPLC is reporting. Furthermore, he himself notes that the Hofstadter thing is cliche but acknowledges that it's hard to ignore, given that the essay does in fact describe a real historical phenenomon. I don't see the derision in the piece that you see, except where Gonzales derided birthers and death-panel conspiracy theorists. (Please don't tell me you think Obama is another Hitler). My other disagreement is with the argument that people, especially people of color, shouldn't concern themselves with a resurgent historical tendency of disgruntled white Americans deciding to vent their violent anger against "those" people. Finally, re: Chomsky. He has derided conspiracy theorists on numerous occassions, including those who think 9/11 was an inside job. Of course, to ask the questions that you raise is not foolishness. It's necessary. But if at the end of that analysis the only thing one can think to do is kill government workers or attack gov't buildings, then that person hasn't really done their homework. If Stack and Bedell were really trying to strike at the heart of the enemy on behalf of the toiling suffering masses they should have targeted MasterCard or Goldman Sachs. But nope. Just the government, which is exactly why mainstream politicians in the GOP have embraced Stack as a hero.