Paranoia Ascending, Part II – UPDATED

UPDATE: Dr. Sanity has posted Part II of her exposition. You’ll want to read it.

A while back, CBS’s Dick Meyer wrote a thoughtful piece on politics and paranoia, and this blog commented on it, and extended the line of thought into the effect of community on politics and paranoia, and vice versa.

Today Dr. Sanity has a long and noteworthy piece on The Political Paranoia of the Left that cites the same 1963 Richard Hofstadter essay which had also attracted Meyer. I think it’s a very interesting topic to keep revisiting and measuring.

Doc Sanity writes:

“…American history was littered with examples of both sides utilizing the paranoid style in order to cope with painful truths about errors in ideology; and the consequent loss of political power and influence.

I submit that at this point in history it is now the liberal left that has willingly passed through the world of reality and entered the twilight realm of paranoia. They made this transition in order to hold onto some cherished beliefs that they were convinced had become unchangeable historical “facts”; “facts” that had been and still are essential to their very identity as a political party; but which hide essential flaws in their thinking.

The hallmark of the paranoid individual and the paranoid style is constant anticipation or expectation of either attack or personal betrayal. Paranoia finds causal connections everywhere and in everything; for them, nothing is coincidental. They can develop complicated conspiracies about innocuous behaviors and seemingly irrelevant events. Their paranoia makes them constantly on guard, searching for hidden motives and meanings in everyone else’s behavior. (Just go check out the Democratic Underground, where these fantasies on every action or inaction on the part of the Bush administration are immediately converted into conspiracies and plots). The tragic death of a reporter — Bush et al had him killed because he knew too much. Osama’s most recent tape — a Rovian plot to show how frightened we should be. And so on.”

As Doc Sanity acknowledges, there are plenty on the Right who would – when Clinton was president – do pretty much the same thing. What’s becoming troubling to me is that some of these paranoids – like Jack Cafferty, for instance have the (admittedly waning) credibility of the mainstream press behind them, which one can say was not the case in earlier administrations.

Read away! When you’re done, you might want to head over to Neo-neocon’s place – she has two very thoughtful pieces on her journey from left to right, here and here and she seems quite in her wits and non-paranoid, to me.

On Siggy’s good recommendation, see Shrinkwrapped for more.