One of the more "interesting" things to happen over the past six years is the mainstreaming of kookiness and paranoia. You might argue that we experienced the same thing during the Clinton years, but I think it was much more limited. The only place I heard it was the G. Gordon Liddy show, hardly the equivalent of say a Helen Thomas, dean of the White House press corps. This feels like a new thing. Whether it is I have no idea. There was lots of misinformation and ignorance in the generation that followed the founding fathers, for example.
Jonah Goldberg puts it well, as usual:
The waves of paranoia currently sweeping through America could be seen as the democratization of intellectual dementia. Criticisms of President Bush, Christians, the right wing, the Patriot Act, whatever: These are all fine. But presumably, such large claims against America should come with ample evidence to back them up. Instead, we get the opposite.The smaller the example, the greater its significance. And that trick is the intellectual class's gift to America.Mark Steyn writes in National Review:
The phantom terrors of allegedly rational “progressives” are amazing in their resilience. Go into the local Barnes & Noble in the Twin Cities. Even as their airport is now operating to Sharia Lite, the display tables are groaning under a weight of new books about the Christian-theocrat takeover of America. There’s something very bizarre about a world that rouses itself from its Nelsonian stupor only to obsess about any crisis — non-existent gay-bashers, mythical Christian tormentors, ludicrously hypothetical climate meltdowns — other than the ones that are here and happening right now.Mostly AWOL during the fight against Communism, it seems likely the Left will sit out the fight against jihadism. It's surely condescending to say this, but perhaps the only thing that will help the Democrat party is to give them a taste of power in order that they might become engaged. God does that with us, I think. Gives us little tasks that we might become more enthusiastic about His kingdom. It's a risky strategy, as I'm sure God can attest, and will just as likely make things worse as make things better.
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