NationStates Jolt Archive


The Paranoid Style In American Politics

Sierra BTHP
30-10-2005, 00:26
I've made the comment before that Democrats are now wearing the same tinfoil hats that Republicans wore during the Clinton Administration.

And here's the explanation:

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald did not find evidence to prove that there was a "broad conspiracy to out a covert agent for political gain. He did not find evidence of wide-ranging criminal behavior. He did not even indict the media's ordained villain, Karl Rove," writes David Brooks in Sunday's NY TIMES.

"Leading Democratic politicians filled the air with grand conspiracy theories that would be at home in the John Birch Society."

"Why are these people so compulsively overheated?.. Why do they have to slather on wild, unsupported charges that do little more than make them look unhinged?

Brooks quotes from an essay written 40 years ago by Richard Hofstadter called "The Paranoid Style in American Politics."

Hofstadter argued 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 wrote, "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."

Brooks summarizes: "So some Democrats were not content with Libby's indictment, but had to stretch, distort and exaggerate. The tragic thing is that at the exact moment when the Republican Party is staggering under the weight of its own mistakes, the Democratic Party's loudest voices are in the grip of passions that render them untrustworthy."

Back during the Clinton Administration, the roles were reversed.
Sabbatis
30-10-2005, 01:33
It's true as well as expected. Our competitive national character doesn't help, either.

I lament the loss of civility that occurred during the second terms of both Bush and Clinton. I expect it of our various leaders -- though it wasn't always that way -- but the negativity and cynicism among normal folk gets tiresome on a daily basis.
Ashmoria
30-10-2005, 02:06
i dont find that thinking that whitehouse guys might want to out a cia agent in order to send a warning to other potential "defectors" to be a tinfoil hat notion at all. im not saying its TRUE, im saying that after nixon anything like that is a reasonable suspicion

thinking that bush engineered 9/11 is a tinfoil hat kinda notion.
Sierra BTHP
30-10-2005, 02:22
The thing I always look for as a motive is "the stupidity".

Instead of thinking that things are the result of some ruthless, secret cabal of hidden overlords who want to take away every right imaginable through the most diabolical means, I try the assumption that someone did something because they had some incredibly stupid idea.

1. Why did Clinton get blown by a 19 year old in his office? Because he could. Problem is, in the political environment of the time, it was stupid.
2. Why did Libby out Plame? Well, he might have gotten the stupid idea to do so on his own (or, equally likely, someone suggested the stupid idea to him). In either case, on the face of it, it's just a completely stupid thing to do (I personally don't see how outing someone can make someone else be intimidated - the damage is already done).
3. Why did we invade Iraq? Well, even though in hindsight we can come up with reasons, or since we're in the situation already, we have to worry about cleaning up, it might be said that anyone who trusts a government intelligence agency nowadays is just stupid.

You try the method on your historical political/military situation of your preference - one that you had a deep belief was a big conspiracy.