jenk

Why do evangelical Christians proclaim they are under attack when they control the White House and Congress? Why do pundits and parties lean toward the extremes while the majority of Americans are moderates? David Brooks, writing in the New York Times, references

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.''

Unfortunately this is a habit I see all around me.

Edit: soeursansmerci tracked down the essay here. :)