Thursday, October 9, 2014

Quote of the day

Fear has, in this moment, a respectability I’ve never seen in my life.
It should be no surprise that the Richard J. Hofstadter article about US Right Wing Politics was called The Paranoid Style in American Politics:
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 style” 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.

11 comments:

  1. More idiotology.

    orlin sellers

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  2. Extremism is a vice. Look what it has done to our politics and our inability to get helpful legislation passed.

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    1. “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And…
      moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!” Barry Goldwater

      os

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    2. Yep, and he was wrong.

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    3. Really? Sounds true no matter who says it. Of course if Obama said it then it would be hailed to be the truth from the all knowing one, right?

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    4. No idiot, as I explained above. You are just nuts enough to think today's extremism is healthy. Eisenhower is rolling in his grave at the thought of it. I know you don't understand, and that doesn't surprise me. Extremism is truth? Wow, have you been brainwashed. Better get back to Rush, you might miss something.

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    5. And just who are you to be able to call something extreme? What is today that is extreme from yesterdays normality to tomorrows moderation when the idea itself hasn't changed at all. You are the idiot, altho not the only idiot, to label or re-label one idea to extreme or moderate to centrist just to suit your needs. The raw truth to you is extreme, so you label it as such. Only an idiot thinks he can get away with this line of thinking, as you love to prove every in comment you make.

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    6. Check the dictionary idiot, educate yourself.

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    7. You should do the same, idiot. And this time READ what it says!

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    8. I read it jackass, you are the one who hasn't a clue what extremist means.

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    9. You are the classic example of extremism.

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