Reply #234: I agree. Every time I hear "LIHOP/MIHOP" I'm reminded of... [View All]

[T Town Jake]

an essay I studied in college. Here's an excerpt:

"The paranoid spokesman 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. He constantly lives at a turning point. Like religious millenialists he expresses the anxiety of those who are living through the last days and he is sometimes disposed to set a date for the apocalypse...."

"....The enemy is clearly delineated: he is a perfect model of malice, a kind of amoral superman—sinister, ubiquitous, powerful, cruel, sensual, luxury-loving. Unlike the rest of us, the enemy is not caught in the toils of the vast mechanism of history, himself a victim of his past, his desires, his limitations. He wills, indeed he manufactures, the mechanism of history, or tries to deflect the normal course of history in an evil way. He makes crises, starts runs on banks, causes depressions, manufactures disasters, and then enjoys and profits from the misery he has produced. The paranoid’s interpretation of history is distinctly personal: decisive events are not taken as part of the stream of history, but as the consequences of someone’s will." (emphasis added)
-Richard Hofstadter, Harpers Magazine, November 1964.

Oddly, I think this administration's galling incompetence actually fuels much conspiracy theory: people just can't believe that such stupidity can reign in such high places without a little conspiratorial "help."