Our wackos are better than your wackos:
The views of right-wing commentators in the grip of the paranoid style (Obama is a stealth radical, the Democrats are imposing socialism) are much closer to mainstream conservative and Republican belief than the views of their counterparts on the left (the levees in New Orleans were blown up by the government, the White House had something to do with 9/11) are to mainstream liberal and Democratic belief. The reasons are complex, but I would list these: the evangelical and occasionally messianic fervor that animates a part of the Republican base; the atmosphere of siege and the self-identification of conservatives as insurgents even when they monopolized political power; the influence of ideology over movement conservatives, and their deep hostility to compromise; the fact that modern conservatism has been a movement, which modern liberalism has not.
This is not to say that the more destructive forms of populism and outright paranoia can’t appear on the left. They have, they do, and they will, especially in times of extreme distress like these. It’s only to say that the infection has been more organic to the modern right.
Skippy, this is just a bit disingenuous. You lot have just as many whackjobs as my crowd does. It wasn’t a registered Republican that called out 9/11 as the first time that steel ever got melted by fire …
It’s just a lot more fashionable to point out the nutcases on the right, though, after the last eight years of asshattery.
Hm.
Belay my last. Perhaps I didn’t read closely enough. Or perhaps it was the two bottles of Syrah.
I don’t know.
I’m pretty sure whatever party/ideology in power uses eliminationist tactics to paint the opposition as cretins so they can secure their stranglehold on power. Remember when everyone who didn’t like Clinton was in cahoots with Timothy McVeigh? It’s Deja Vu all over again. Lame.