My favorite political columnist, David Brooks of the NY Times, offers some observations ($) about Washington politics that strike me as equally applicable to some of our traditionalist brethren in the Episcopal Church (extra paragraphing added):
The question is, why are these [Democrats] so compulsively overheated? One of the president's top advisers is indicted on serious charges. Why are they incapable of leaving it at that? Why do they have to slather on wild, unsupported charges that do little more than make them look unhinged?
The answer is found in an essay written about 40 years ago by Richard Hofstadter called "The Paranoid Style in American Politics."
Hofstadter argues that sometimes people who are dispossessed, who feel their country has been taken away from them and their kind, develop an angry, suspicious and conspiratorial frame of mind.
It is never enough to believe their opponents have committed honest mistakes or have legitimate purposes; they insist on believing in malicious conspiracies.
"The paranoid spokesman," Hofstadter writes, "sees the fate of conspiracy in apocalyptic terms - he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the barricades of civilization."
Because his opponents are so evil, the conspiracy monger is never content with anything but their total destruction. Failure to achieve this unattainable goal "constantly heightens the paranoid's sense of frustration."
Thus, "even partial success leaves him with the same feeling of powerlessness with which he began, and this in turn only strengthens his awareness of the vast and terrifying quality of the enemy he opposes."
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Quite so.
Posted by: Jacob | October 31, 2005 at 10:24 PM
Just like the Republicans frothing at the mouth over Clinton back in the 1990s. I think the Demos have good reason to feel that their country was stolen after the manner in which the 2000 election was finally settled (by the SCOTUS).
Posted by: Anon | November 15, 2005 at 01:55 AM
Anon, I agree that the right wing of the GOP did indeed overdo it where President Clinton was concerned.
But as to the 2000 election allegedly being "stolen," you really ought to read the Supreme Court opinion in Bush v. Gore. The Court's constitutional analysis was straightforward: The Florida Supreme Court's ad hoc meddling in the recount process was an unconstitutional denial of equal protection to Florida voters (not) to either of the candidates).
The "money quote" is the last substantive paragraph of the majority opinion:
(Extra paragraphing added.) The left-wing claim of election theft is simply unsupportable.
Posted by: D. C. | November 15, 2005 at 02:25 AM
This is breaking news about the 2004 election. I wouldn't put this type of deceit past the scoundrels occupying the WhiteHouse:
Powerful Government Accountability Office report confirms key 2004 stolen election findings
The latest critical confirmation of key indicators that the election of 2004 was stolen comes in an extremely powerful, penetrating report from the Government Accountability Office that has gotten virtually no mainstream media coverage.
The government's lead investigative agency is known for its general incorruptibility and its thorough, in-depth analyses. Its concurrence with assertions widely dismissed as "conspiracy theories" adds crucial new weight to the case that Team Bush has no legitimate business being in the White House.
Nearly a year ago, senior Judiciary Committee Democrat John Conyers (D-MI) asked the GAO to investigate electronic voting machines as they were used during the November 2, 2004 presidential election. The request came amidst widespread complaints in Ohio and elsewhere that often shocking irregularities defined their performance.
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2005/1529
Posted by: Anon | November 15, 2005 at 12:28 PM