Politics

The paranoid-style of politics

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The paranoid-style of politics …

I have always been very fascinated by the now quite old Richard Hofsteader essay. While his decades-old essay is mostly about the right-wing movements of the earlier centuries, paranoia is a central part of “fringe” politics. Sometimes it’s distrust of monied interests, sometimes it’s Hollywood or big business, sometimes it’s a distrust of a religious group, race or political party.

The Mayo Clinic defines paranoia as a “An unrealistic distrust of others or a feeling of being persecuted”.Β 

If you look hard enough at any community, you are bound to find some people aren’t completely honest. There is a lot incentive to cut corners and we all develop cliques and have close connections that sometimes blind our objectivity. Sometimes there is outright corruption or criminal activity, but they tend to be a lot less frequent then the paranoid imagination would imagine. Most people don’t engage in criminal conspiracy, simply because of the risk to their own reputation and the fact that most institutions are built in ways to actively discourage criminal behavior by having audits and positive reinforcement for good behavior.

Out groups often don’t see that. People who believe the politicians are ignoring their wishes are likely to believe that the reason that representatives aren’t representing them is because they are somehow corrupt or evil. That’s ignoring the fact that politicians often have very active feelers on public opinion — elected officials read and study the newspapers and regularly conduct public opinion polling to ensure that they are acting in ways that the public wants. After all, if a politicians isn’t representing the public will, they are likely to get voted out of office, which means fired from their jobs. And most elected officials want to be loved, not hated by the public if only to stroke their egos.

Sometimes people just have ideas that are different then the majority’s view in their community. The farther you go out and up — the county, the state, the national level — the more diverse the electorate and the more likely to have a majority opinion different then your own in-group. Seeing one’s own political ideals ignored and snuffed out can be alienating, and lead people to search into the depths, looking for evidence that they have been defrauded and that their opponents are not playing honestly, using deceit and other illicit means to achieve their power and prominence.

Often I see paranoia being emphasized as a right-wing phenomenon, but if you look at many of environmental, labor, housing, and anti-war movement activists, you will see many of the same paranoid trends on the left. Some of it might just be rhetoric – often political rhetoric is more paranoid-sounding then actual belief. But you can’t look at the far-left activist and not hear many of the same conspiracy theories you hear on the right.

Are the fracking companies really working to poison your drinking water?

Joseph McCarthy condemns George Marshall (1951)

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Joseph McCarthy condemns George Marshall (1951)

“How can we account for our present situation unless we believe that men high in this government are concerting to deliver us to disaster? This must be the product of a great conspiracy, a conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man. A conspiracy of infamy so black that, when it is finally exposed, its principals shall be forever deserving of the maledictions of all honest men.

Who constitutes the highest circles of this conspiracy? About that, we cannot be sure. We are convinced that ean Acheson, who steadfastly serves the interests of nations other than his own, the friend of Alger Hiss, who supported him in his hour of retribution, who contributed to his defence fund, must be high on the roster.

The President? He is their captive… I do not believe that Mister Truman is a conscious party to the great conspiracy, although it is being conducted in his name. I believe that if Mister Truman had the ability to associate good Americans around him, be would have behaved as a good American in this most dire of all our crises…

[Article] The Paranoid Style in American Politics, By Richard Hofstadter | Harper’s Magazine

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[Article] The Paranoid Style in American Politics, By Richard Hofstadter | Harper’s Magazine

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. I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind. In using the expression “paranoid styleȁ I am not speaking in a clinical sense, but borrowing a clinical term for other purposes. I have neither the competence nor the desire to classify any figures of the past or present as certifiable lunatics. In fact, 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.

Trump is obnoxious and he will be gone in 9 days (* or less)

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While Congress may be in the process of starting impeachment proceedings, the truth is regardless of what happens, the troubled president will be gone in a little over a week, a memory that most people will want to put behind us. The system worked, the election was held in a fair and reasonable way under our existing laws, a result was decided and Joe Biden will be our president. You can quibble about how we draw districts, count votes, or under what conditions voting exists, but we have to accept what is on the books now — at least until it changes, state by state. But if anything, voting has gotten fairer, as witnessed by the record participation in voting in 2020.

Trump has largely been silenced now he has been retired from Twitter. While I enjoyed read his asinine tweets, most of them were pure trash. It’s unlikely he’s going to be welcomed back to Washington or anywhere else for mass rallies, and they will be a lot harder to organize now that he’s gotten the boot from major social media sites. While he can certainly create his own alternative media services, it’s unlikely that he’ll gain much attraction with his power and clout diminishing. Even the crazy neighbor down the street, with his shrine to all things Donald Trump has dimmed the lights and taken down his Trump banners and flags.

I am glad Trump will be gone. For all of his rhetoric about being a successful business leader, his list of accomplishments in politics are small except for his one-shot election and appointment of three Supreme Court Justices, mostly a result of chance and Mitch McConnell. Trump has shown time and time again, he’s not much of a leader when it comes to a legislative or policy agenda for his country. While some of his people have implemented significant policy shifts in the execution of law, others were poorly thought out and have already been rejected by the courts or will go away with the appointment of new leaders by Biden.

Will Trump be impeached in the next nine days? Probably, it’s a good vote for the Democrats in the house to get the Republicans on. You know it’s a fantastic slogan for campaign mailers and television commercials — the GOP defended the riotous actions of President Trump’s speech. It’s not like Congress is expected to get much work done in the next week, with control in the Senate just waiting for the final certification of the Georgia Senate race. Maybe Trump will resign, if it seems certain that he would lose an impeachment vote in the Senate, but I think it’s more likely that Mitch McConnell will find ways to run out the clock.

I am ready for the nation to move on. Whether or not you have quibbles about Trump’s policies, you have to admit he’s not been good for the image of conservatism. Nothing is all that conservative about a man who has divorced multiple wives, hung out with porn stars and tweets the most vile of things. His policies have been inconsistent at best, more racist, more pro-fascist police state then pro-limited government. And his rejection of reality — on climate change, the election result, the COVID or what is happening on the ground in a thousand different cities — hurts us all. I think the GOP wants to move beyond him. And certainly the Democrats do with all the awful things he’s done to cities and blue states.Β I think we all want some tranquility, some normalcy after the panademic. I think Joe Biden will be an excellent caretaker of the country over the next four years, at which point future presidential candidates will debate and millions of voters will decide what’s the next chapter for that country — at least for those glued to color televisions.