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I want to recommend a book I just started reading last night: "Suspicious Minds," by Rob Brotherton. As is usual, I read first the chapter that stuck out -- Chapter 5, The Paranoid Fringe. It takes a useful critical look at the seminal article by Richard Hofstadter -- "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" -- and also runs to ground a plausible origin of 'tinfoil hats.' The book is written in a wry conversational tone, and is not on the surface a ''scholarly" read thick with endless footnotes, but it also contains a very useful reference list by page number -- as well as a full index at the back. (My copy is from our local library, but I am going to order it from Amazon so I always have it on hand as a reference book.) Here is an excerpt from the first page that might whet OLer's appetite for more ... In a fit of recursion, I include this bit of commentary from earlier this month. It suggests that I am bound by ingrained prejudice/s, which may or may not be true ... yet leaves the door open to further friendly discussion. -- for those who like to check out reviews before purchasing or borrowing from a library, here's a selection -- which I thought remarkable. Remarkable in the sense of "how many reviews do not mention Donald Trump?" New York Times review by Adrian Chen Inside Higher Education review by Scott McLemee Brief Scientific American review by Maria Temming -- for the benefit of Dear Leader, I found the book is available at his local library too!

What I'm curious about is the parallels to current intelligentsia attempts at explaining Trump's victory. The explanation that the people who supported Trump are fed up with the way the country's been going doesn't seen to occur to the disappointed commenters. Instead, it has to be due to something nefarious like Russian hacking and/or something psychologically suspicious. The inclusion of Goldwater in the material I quoted from "The Paranoid Style in Almerica Politics" makes me wonder if the thrust of the essay and book is to form a diagnosis of political views frowned on by the intellectual elite. Ellen

Ellen, He would. I looked this guy up on Wikipedia and from the gist of what I read, we can call his style of writing one of the poles along the same gradient with the "paranoid style." I came up with a cute name. Let's call it the "academic smugness" style. And, just like with the "paranoid style," it is not only on one side of the political divide, albeit we most often see it on the liberal/progressive side. How's them apples? (And why do I keep remembering Daniel Barnes? ) btw - Life is too short for me to go into smug writers of the past unless they are masters so I, personally, don't expect to be reading this guy (although I might, depending). The thing that turned me off to him wasn't the smugness or the liberalism. It was something else in the Wikipedia article: Granted, this only refers to one work, so if some day I get interested in some other work by Hofstadter, I'll check this box on my pre-reading sheet to see if this is what he did before I devote any hours of my life to one of the products of his smug snark. I also didn't like it when Rand did what he did (like what she did with Rawls and Kant). There is nothing wrong with including analyses of other authors in a book or essay about a subject, but if your book or essay is nothing but a criticism of their analyses and purports to be about the topic itself, you are selling a misleading product. You are writing book reports on secondary authors. To wit, I am very interested in what Rand had to say about Kant. Not so much what she had to say about a biographer of Kant. And so on. And even as an author of secondary book reports, Rand still had a strikingly original perspective in general based on her other work. I don't detect anything like that level of original thought in Hofstadter on skimming. Michael

Ellen's note on the Paranoid Style in American Politics triggered a search through OL's archives. The paranoid style is not a captive of one 'side' or another, in my opinion. In an earlier thread I forked up an example of Naomi Wolf going right Dean Gores buggy with conspiracy ideation. Worth a re-up? Why not. I've trimmed out extraneous matter [---] to leave a plug and excerpt from Michael Shermer, the author of "Why People Believe Weird Things" ... Shermer is one of the few strong libertarians in the modern skeptic movement, which is generally "humanist" ... though I haven't sought out his current political bent. I'll also take the time to plug another favourite of mine, a book I first read a decade or so ago: "How We Know What Isn't So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life" What might explain this paranoiac, even manic 'connecting the dots' from Wolf? [---] I note that today on Facebook she is quoting from Global Research, an outlet definitely in the Nutterzone. That story was built on an article from Russia's RIANovosti site. It surely would have been easy for Wolf to find confirmation herself, as in this BBC story. It is so weird to me that she skims by details and entailments, in this small story and in her other delusional retellings. I think something has gone wrong in Wolf's reasoning. She seems to be zooming from one 'fake' to another, with a huge confirmation bias contributing to cognitive error. I think I will have to dig out my copy of The Paranoid Style in American Politics, as well as do a re-read of the Michael Shermer article, Why People Believe Conspiracy Theories: Why people who believe in one conspiracy are prone to believe others. Here's an interesting excerpt from the Shermer piece:

As William quotes in one of the excerpts he included above from the Columbia Journalism Review article, reference is made to "what Richard Hofstadter called 'the paranoid style in American politics.'" "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" was the title of an essay published in the November 1964 Harper's - link. The essay was adapted from the Herbert Spencer Lecture, delivered at Oxford University in November 1963, and was then used as the first chapter of a book titled Anti-intellectualism in American Life - Amazon link. The book was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1964. The essay begins: Note that the Goldwater movement is cited as an example. I've never read the book, but I've become curious to see what all is talked about in it and I've ordered a copy. Ellen

Korben, The way to get value from people like Alex Jones is to use them the way they are, not the way one would like them to be. There are a crapload of issues the mainstream media has been outright lying about for decades that Alex has been covering since the beginning. For example, not too long ago, if you said the word Bilderberg, the entire media and all your friends would mock you without mercy just like they did Alex. The word "Bilderberg"--the very claim of the existence of the Bilderberg group--had the same emotional load as the lizard people. It's hard to go back in time and feel that because, nowadays, the Bilderberg people themselves give press conferences and say of course they always existed. And by the way, globalism... So who needs to be mocked and avoided? People like Alex Jones or the mainstream media who lied on purpose about this for decades? Who does the most harm? In other words, why is the mainstream media treated with respect whereas Alex Jones is mocked? Because the mainstream is truthful? Heh... Check your premises and you will see more noise than signal on this issue. I think there is a style thing that people don't like with Alex. In today's world, someone who provides an aura of intelligence and civility in their message delivery (like the mainstream media) is considered as being intelligent and civilized in their intentions. And if someone has an over-the-top paranoid style (like Alex), they are treated as if their information is nonexistent. If style over substance is not a premise that needs checking for a person who prioritizes reason, I don't know what is. You claimed you wrote off Alex because one of his sources turned out to be awful--not even to exist. Yet how about all that nonstop mainstream mockery, experts and God knows what all about the surveillance state? Remember when the mainstream said massive government surveillance was nothing but a bad conspiracy theory made up by kooks? Then Ed Snowden happened... Kaboom! Tell me, did you stop watching the news? Did you write off those people? Did you stop Jonesing them, too? How about all those nonexistent and awful sources that the mainstream presented before Snowden? Will you ignore those and give them a pass, but damn Alex when he fucks up on one controversial issue? What makes you think the mainstream won't lie to you again? Because it says so in a civilized tone? In the mainstream, you find "intelligent and civilized" people who support--and get others to support--endless war for profit (while calling it "spreading freedom" and crap euphemisms like that). Go to a veterans hospital someday, or a cemetery where soldiers are buried, then think back to those "intelligent and civilized" people who put them there. How intelligent and civilized are they really? Why not ask the families of the dead and the wounded if they were lied to? You will never find Alex Jones among those "intelligent and civilized" people. On the contrary, you will find him waging a nonstop propaganda war against those learned assholes. Believe it or not, he cares about innocent people. He proves it by putting his reputation on the line night after night as he tries to warn people in the best way he knows how. And sometimes he screws up. The mainstream media does not care about innocent people and the proof is in their constant selling out to the establishment. Listen to the glee of some of those pundits at times when they talk about "boots on the ground" (as they think about their backroom Department of Defense supply deals). At least they do it in an "intelligent and civilized" tone. But, I have to admit, Alex Jones is half-crazy. So there's that. I find it best to think about Alex like a bomber plane that softens the enemy up before the infantry can come in and do the details. And don't forget, bombers miss at times. But they hit the target, too. And they always make a big mess. Without them, the infantry could never be deployed without huge losses of soldiers. But when they fuck up, it's not pretty. That's Alex. It's not a perfect situation, but it is what it is for those who want to see what is. Without people like Alex, the mainstream would win. And that would mean we would be talking about the profundity of "peace is war" and crap like that as we send our kids to die for the privileges and bank accounts of powerful assholes who look down on us (and whose kids never join ours in the wars). The way I use Alex is the same way I use Wikipedia. He gives me an overview of a topic that I later look into. Especially anti-establishment stuff because, for the most part, the mainstream media will not talk about it, or will report it by lying about it. But Alex might be wrong or accuse some people (almost always crony elites) of more evil than is there. He's a mixed bag from being kinda nuts, so he has to be double-checked. Always. I don't mind because he is right more than he is wrong and, like I said, I use him as he is, not how I would like him to be. Also, he even likes to be double-checked. Who in the mainstream likes to be double-checked and questioned when they let loose with a Big Fat Hairy One? Not a single person from what I can tell. So why on earth should they be respected as opposed to Alex? Just because they talk purdy and Alex does not? What gives them the right to say they are credible? It can't possibly be commitment to facts over spin. That's not even plausible in today's media environment. Michael

That headline was from Politico's website, written by Rebecca Morin and Nick Gass. The main point the former mayor makes is that there are 'several signs of illness' and that the "media" ignores these signs, and that you have to go 'to the internet' to find out the Truth. I have watched Doktor Katrina Pierson on CNN, with two diagnoses. One was 'aphasia' -- Clinton was aphasic. Her other Dx was 'seizure disorder' non-specified. So, it could be argued that Clinton Mystery Illness has been in Press. The Trump campaign surrogates peddle this on the news nets.. Doktor Katrina is not alone. -- the thing I bear in mind is that there are epistemological questions that need answering. One could be 'is there a difference between rumour and fact, between speculation and sound rational arguments? Is it a fact that Mrs Clinton has a seizure disorder, an 'aphasia' or Parkinsons? Which of the many doktors who have 'examined' her should we take as truth-telling? The media "fails to point out several signs of illness by her; all you gotta do is go online," Giuliani said, before being interrupted by host Shannon Bream, who pointed out that Clinton's campaign has said there is no factual evidence to support those claims. I agree. True or not, it is a 'meme' ... we do not always bother ourselves to seek truth when we remark upon a meme, especially in a campaign this dirty. One can have a 'feeling' for dirt stickiness, I suppose. I think Mr Trump has been more careful than his surrogates in commenting on Mrs Clinton's seeming health. He hints. He suggests she is tired and old and needs a lot of naps and time off. The contrast he hopes to make is between his potency and her level of energy. He doesn't himself make the ridiculous claim that Clinton has Parkinsons. Of course, it could be argued that beyond the dirtiness of a campaign: throwing stuff at the wall to see if it sticks is just politics. Doesn't matter the truth -- doesn't matter if we avoid questions answerable by rational inquiry. In other words, "Does Clinton Really Have Parkinsons?" is besides the point in politics. In this case, those who make the claim are much like Doktor Katrina with her diagnosis. If we do not accept (from specious grounds) that Trump has a mental illness or disorder or Narcissism, then why would we accept a more speciously-grounded neurological claim? If psychiatrists and psychologists have been warned by their august bodies against diagnosing Mr Trump -- if such diagnoses-at-a-distance are wholly unethical -- why would Doktor Katrina's Dxes be anything other than unprofessional? Because she is a surrogate. She is not bound by any journalistic or medical ethics. Better for objective and rational inquiry that we put the Parkinsons meme where the Narcissist meme goes: either in the slot Test or the slot It doesn't make sense. Ultimately this issue will be put to bed. In my opinion no credible evidence shows that Mrs Clinton has Parkinsons, or an aphasia. This "Clinton has Illness X" business is a pit of fudge. It is unmoored from careful thinking. It doesn't survive close examination. I think it would be easier to just say Clinton Is Old. Old, old, old. That is fact enough, I should think, without having to fudge and freak-out over a non-existent mystery. A. It is discouraging that we draw uncritically from deeply flawed sources of information. B. good mental housekeeping allows for spurious sources and stupid claims Those points can't be answered if we are in the grip of a partisan enthusiasm, or a cult of disbelief. "Everyone except Giuliani and the Biggs fuckhead is lying to you. You cannot trust any organ of media. You cannot trust the polls. You cannot trust Google. You can only trust Infowars, Breitbart, FoxNews. And even Fox polls are fixed." That is the paranoid style. It is news that Giuliani urged his Fox viewers to ignore the 'other' media, the Clinton media as he put it. On FoxNews, of course, we are entering the second week of Hillary Is Ill sweeps. So, consider the source (a Trump surrogate), consider the context (the polls, which the former mayor dismissed as as a function of bad media). So, yeah, it is news. Giuliani is asking folks to 'go on the internet' for the truth. That in itself is sad/funny/peculiar. It is a full-on dive into the fever swamps. Rudy Giuliani Told People To Ignore The Media And Google Conspiracy Theories “Go online and put down, ‘Hillary Clinton illness,’ and take a look at the videos yourself.” They sure can. They can fix everything. It is all gonna be fixed -- the polls, Google, Yahoo, the looming November vote, the counting, the machines, everything. And you know what else? Dr. Drew Pinsky is concerned. Clinton leans against stools. She sleeps. She doesn't ride horses or play tennis or volleyball. Only the Fittest Candidate ever can handle the job at the White House.

Dean's first post in this thread mentioned Sandy Hook, 9/11, the Boston Marathon bombing ... and the beheading by ISIS of journalists ... emphasis added. All were, in Dean's conclusion, hoaxes, false-flag. I note especially his insistence that some unnamed faction of some unnamed power performed the ISIS 'beheddings' ... Here's something just coming out: Naomi Wolf has topped Dean's conclusion that the ISIS beheadings were 'staged' ... and topped his list of hoaxes by accusing the US government of importing Ebola into the USA for nefarious purposes, under cover of humanitarian assistance. (she even manages to finger the Scots independence vote as fraudulent) Wolf's arguments for these conclusions is examined at Vox.com: The Vox article includes a screenshot of a since-deleted Facebook post. What might explain this paranoiac, even manic 'connecting the dots' from Wolf? I have been boning up on WTC7 controversies in order to offer Dean (and other conspiracy believers) some counter-evidence to his conclusions on that issue. I thought I would put up Wolf's unusual beliefs for comment ... I note that today on Facebook she is quoting from Global Research, an outlet definitely in the Nutterzone. That story was built on an article from Russia's RIANovosti site. It surely would have been easy for Wolf to find confirmation herself, as in this BBC story. It is so weird to me that she skims by details and entailments, in this small story and in her other delusional retellings. I think something has gone wrong in Wolf's reasoning. She seems to be zooming from one 'fake' to another, with a huge confirmation bias contributing to cognitive error. I think I will have to dig out my copy of The Paranoid Style in American Politics, as well as do a re-read of the Michael Shermer article, Why People Believe Conspiracy Theories: Why people who believe in one conspiracy are prone to believe others. Here's an interesting excerpt from the Shermer piece: ___________________ ** full, creepy, fascinating paper here: Dead and Alive: Beliefs in Contradictory Conspiracy Theories

The issue of secession or independence or sovereignty is alive in the world. If the Texans who hope for a separate nation can convince a thumping majority of their people that this is the way to go, the object lessons in how to do it are many (and the lessons of how awfully wrong secession movements can go are also many). I mention Texas because it is apparently the sole state able to muster five times the numbers necessary for a White House written response. One object lesson in successful and rapid secession is Lithuania. When the chance to depart the Soviet Union was upon the Lithuanians, they voted in a straightforward In/Out independence referendum, and the winning majority was 93%. Another example is Slovenia. Another is Timor Este, another is South Sudan. There are more examples throughout the 20th century. In the next couple of years, a couple of important independence referendums are likely to be carried out, one in Scotland, and one in Catalonia. In Canada, there have been only two Quebec referendums related to independence. The first asked voters to approve something called 'Sovereignty-Association.' It failed. The second referendum was based on 'sovereignty' with an optional 'partnership' with Canada. It too failed (but by a narrow margin). The problem with both referendums in Quebec was the question and the percentage of the vote that should lead to independence (or sovereignty murk mumble**). The Supreme Court later ruled on both issues. A future referendum could certainly deliver a vote that must be respected by the rest of Canada (and lead to a negotiated Quebec secession), but in the Supreme's ruling, the question must be unequivocal, and the process subject to stringent democratic rules. An act of the Canadian parliament laid out the actual means by which a province could vote to depart Canada (see the Clarity Act). The problem the Supremes reference case hoped to illuminate, of course, was between fifty-percent-plus-one advocates -- and those who believed this was much too narrow a margin of approval. Consistent with long-standing objections to the ambiguous nature of the two referendum questions, the new legal regime lays out reasonably democratic procedures for secession. Thus, should Quebecers ever vote over sixty percent for a clear call to secede from Canada, the way forward is laid out in law, and the federal government is bound to accede to the wishes of the majority -- and negotiate terms in good faith. I don't know how this would be accomplished in Texas. It seems an issue of long-standing, but not an issue that has yet even attracted a plurality of voter intent. If and when any US state votes unequivocally for secession in a free and fair referendum, wake me up from my realist slumbers .... Of more interest to USA-based OLers, I think, are the results from the two tied questions put to Puerto Ricans on the last ballot.† It looks like Statehood (which was the preferred alternative) is plausible if not probable. If the desire to become a state of the Union is made clear by a constituent assembly, and legislation enabling statehood in Congress is green-lighted by Obama, the US may welcome a fifty-first state, and its first state with a Spanish-speaking and non-Protestant majority. This is I believe a great advance over the odd arrangement currently in place for the 3.7 million US citizens of the Commonwealth. But you Americans will decide. What say you? ¿Quién va a ser el amo del estado? ¿Quién tendrá dominio del Estado? (who shall rule/take domination of/be the heart of the state/State) _____________ ** This was the background 'partnership' that the PQ government thought would be a winner for the separatist cause (from Wikipedia). customs union; free movement of goods; free movement of individuals; free movement of services; free movement of capital; monetary policy; labour mobility; and citizenship.[6] Of course, this smacks of the same deal that Scotland presently has with the UK (shared citizenship, customs union, etcetera). I wonder what kind of 'deal' the Texas (or other state) secessionists have in mind. It seems to me that the White House petition project is a stunt, or at best an indication that some folks would like sovereignty but have no concrete notion of how to accomplish it. When the number of Texan votes on the Texan secession petition reaches above ten million, I'd say it would be time to get excited. Otherwise this just seems a sideshow, with no hope of going anywhere. At the present time the electronic signatures have topped 110,000. Not one of the Texas sponsors of the petition has stepped forward for the fight. There is a long long road ahead. Consider: how many state representatives/congressional representatives from Texas have been elected on a plank of Texas independence? How many have even attempted? Compare/contrast to the Scottish National Party, the Parti Quebecois or the Bloc Quebecois at its height in Ottawa, when outright secessionists can command hours of the airwaves to weave their spells. If there is will to change a legal regime of sovereignty (the real goal), that will become evident at the highest tables. In my opinion, this is absent in the US. As for Alex Jones, he is a freak of the conspiracy fringes, to my eyes. Independence is a flavour of the day for his site Infowars. Next week, back to FEMA camps, 9/11 wahoo, UN overlords, Satan Speaks, and whatever seems attractive to the paranoid style of thinking. For those too worried about 'reprisals' from the powers that be, the White House records your IP address, your email address, whatever name you gave (there are 5 Krusty the Clowns signed up so far), and your claimed postal code. This could lead to such 'reprisals' as, well, I guess, surveillance, arrest, torture, detention and a midnight burial. Or a spot on Maury. Or at least a database for a future direct-mail assault: "Dear Texas Secessionist Jason P 90210, have you heard of the All-In-One Family Bunker BBQ and Spa? Follow these links to receive special offers ... " ++++++++++++++++++++ † (from Wikipedia) "In a 2012 status referendum a majority of voters supported statehood over two other non-status-quo options. There is currently an active Puerto Rico statehood movement."

I don't know why (or if) the surveillance tapes were "confiscated." However, at least one surveillance tape has been shown on TV. And, slowed-down, it clearly shows the fuselage of the plane impacting the Pentagon building. Now, of course, the tape could have been faked or otherwise altered. All sorts of barely implausible theories can be offered to "explain" past world events. For example, "The moon landing never occured. The U. S. government faked it." This is at least as plausible as the 9-1-1 conspiracies. Among other reasons that this sort of conjecture is irrational, is that the Soviet Union, if they had evidence of such duplicity, would have just loved to broadcast the evidence to the world that the landing was faked. And the supposition that they would not have known, is not plausible since (as has been revealed since the Soviet Union collapsed and the KGB files were opened) it is clear that they had quite successfully compromised U.S. security on our most secret defense technology. In any case, conspiracy theories are internally contradictory and self-defeating, if you work through the implications of what they are saying. An application of Occam's Razor (and Rand's Razor [Peikoff, OPAR, pp.139-141]) reduces this type of thinking to its baseless foundations. All of these theories require vast numbers of people in on the conspiracy, with absolute loyalty, and who never make a mistake, and these people never divulge anything. A highly unlikely scenario. Examples are "The Pentagon Papers" (from Daniel Ellsberg) and, most recently, and spectacularly, the recent Wiki-Leaks. Those revelations show how unlikely it is to be able to keep any state secret. By the way, though, if you like these sort of "explanations," try Jonathan Vankin's books. They are a virtual compendium of almost all of the major conspiracy theories, and discuss where you can find even more juicy stuff. (Hmmm,...by the way, if any of these conspiracies existed, and they are so powerful and impenetrable, why would they allow themselves to be exposed in such books?). On the other hand, the Objectivist in you might be interested in a more scholarly and reasonable discussion of this mindset, try Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes From, by Daniel Pipes. The book was published in 1997 and should be in your local library (if they have not removed it, that is).

Myself, I take pictures. But some people don't like their picture being taken. I figure that you give up your privacy when you leave the house. I also understand that a virtual reality is still a reality: you leave your home, walk down the street, stop at the deli, get a haircut, meet a friend ... You turn on your computer, click the browser, pick a favorite, goto a website, read a post, post your reply ... The private sector is different from the public in very many ways. Never in the business world have I met an agent provocateur: no one is specially empowered to test other peoples' loyalities by making disloyal statements to see who goes along. In a business, anyone who does not like it, leaves. (Sometimes you get buy-outs and reorganizations, but usually, people just leave.) In politics, "we the people" each think that we ought to be in charge and are far less likely to "vote with our feet." On both the political right and left you get extremism that is truly physically dangerous to other people. (You do not normally get that in business: We will block this restroom until the accounting department adds a line item for the depreciation of ink erasers!) But in politics, you also have agents who are specially empowered to test the loyalities of citizens. We had this about a month ago when Congresswoman Giffords was shot. Someone wanted to know the Objectivist position on assassination. Don't even reply. In fact, if this were my board, I would have closed that account and blocked that IP address. Richard Hofstadter's The Paranoid Style in American Politics(1964) shows that this is classic, but I say, not limited to us. Despite the Alien and Sedition Acts, the Know-Nothing Party, and all that, right up to now, in truth ancient history shows that this can be found in Athens and Rome also. Still, the facts remain as they are. During the George W. Bush administration years, the Earth Liberation Front was labeled America's worst domestic terrorist threat. But at that same time, extreme conservatives were engaged in firefights against law enforcement officers, which the greenies never were. Now the pendulum swings. The Missouri State Police were not alone in being told that libertarians were potential terrorists, to be wary when stopping cars with Ron Paul bumper stickers. Gratefully, after the Giffords shooting, President Obama made the same kinds of ameliorating statements that President Bush did after 9/11. So, the USA is not as politically stressed as other nations are showing themselves to be. Still, the undercurrent continues. Those in power have broad and deep validations for doing whatever is necessary to maintain the status quo. That they have a strong faith in their righteousness is problematic on many levels. Thus, reality-based egocentric ethics looks to the bourgeois virtue of Benjamin Franklin whose designs for money included the motto "Mind your business."

From long personal experience I'm pretty cynical about the Middle East and Africa, where one man's 'freedom' equals another man's repression. Yep. Sit back and watch the rise of the Islamists in Tunisia. It's a predominantly muslim country that's just had the checks on Islam taken away, much like Iraq, and Iraq is hardly moving towards freedom. It is hard for some folks to resist cynicism about Tunisia given the history of the north African states in the Maghreb. It is not only Tony and Richard who are pessimistic about the prospects of freedom -- many analysts fear a kind of political freedom that would replace one well-organized repressive regime with another. If one sees the Arab states as an undifferentiated mass of Muslims, as a horde, as tightly bound by religion, then an easy parallel can be made with the Islamic Revolution in Iran. For those who view Islam itself as evil, then full political freedoms signal a slippery slope to religious autocracy. For those who loathe and fear political Islam, all signs lead to doom, whether Turkish-style doom or Indonesian-style doom or Pakistani-style doom or Lebanese-style doom. And for someone who thinks in the paranoid style, Islam is poison, and will destroy Tunisia as it has destroyed every other country within its embrace. So, put yourself in Richard Wiig's shoes, in his one-eyed paranoid mind, and imagine how he will interpret news items over the next weeks, months and years. If the exiled leader of the formerly-banned Islamist party returns to Tunisia, Richard can imagine only one outcome, an Islamist romp and inevitable Iranian-style theocracy. If government controls over mosques and clergy are relaxed, Islamic doom. If secular parties emerge triumphant, simply a pause on the journey to Islamic doom. If women resist any return to the veil and sharia, Islamic doom. If a newly freed press makes room for Islamist voices, doom. If secular opinion seems to prevail, still doom remains just a few kilometres further down the road, lurking, menacing, ready to usher in doom. As Richard puts it, he will "it back and watch the rise of the Islamists in Tunisia." Confirming instances will be cited and cataloqued, discomfirming instances ignored. Fears of Islamist revival as Tunisian PM falters How Tunisia's Once-Suppressed Islamists Are Re-Emerging Tunisia's Islamists eye place in politics Tunisian women fear Islamist return Relatives of Tunisian Islamists call for prisoners' release Tunisian Islamists Emerging Tunisia's Islamists arise Tunisian Islamists plan comeback after revolt Doom. Doom. Doom doom doom doom. Hopeful signs . . . ? Tunisia: the alliance of progressive and moderate Islamist forces points to an optimistic outcome Why Tunisia's Revolution Is Islamist-Free Where Were the Tunisian Islamists? DOOM!

Thursday, Sep. 17, 2009 Mad Man: Is Glenn Beck Bad for America? By David Von Drehle On Sept. 12, a large crowd gathered in Washington to protest ... what? The goals of Congress and the Obama Administration, mainly — the cost, the scale, the perceived leftist intent. The crowd's agenda was wide-ranging, so it's hard to be more specific. "End the Fed," a sign read. A schoolboy's placard denounced "Obama's Nazi Youth Militia." Another poster declared, "We the People for Capitalism Not Socialism." If you get your information from liberal sources, the crowd numbered about 70,000, many of them greedy racists. If you get your information from conservative sources, the crowd was hundreds of thousands strong, perhaps as many as a million, and the tenor was peaceful and patriotic. Either way, you may not be inclined to believe what we say about numbers, according to a recent poll that found record-low levels of public trust of the mainstream media. (See pictures from the protest.) At any rate, what we can say with confidence is that Deanna Frankowski was there. A cheery woman of 49 from Leeds, Ala., Frankowski said she had come to Washington as part of a group of 100 or more protesters. They filled two buses. And they were motivated by a concern about runaway government spending — that, plus an outraged feeling that their views as citizens are not being heard. "We are sick and tired of being ignored," she said. "There is too much money being spent." Frankowski has been hit hard by the economic turmoil of the past year. Short of funds to make the trip, she painted an American flag on a pane of glass and asked people at her church to chip in toward her expenses, with one of them taking home the flag. She would like to share a house with her soon-to-be husband, but first she must figure out how to get free of the house she has — the one with the underwater mortgage. Some left-leaning writers argue that people in her boat must be deluded to oppose Barack Obama, but Frankowski is skeptical that her interests are being served by trillions in new government interventions. So she said, "I've paid my mortgage every month. And I'm getting no help. I'm just saying, Let capitalism work." Then she added, "We just want people to listen to us and care." (See pictures from a day in the life of Glenn Beck.) One person listens, Frankowski believes, and that's why back home in Alabama she arranged to have 10 large signs made on white foam board, nine of them marked with a big letter and the tenth with we and a heart. Raised aloft, the signs spelled out "We ♥ G-l-e-n-n B-e-c-k." Glenn Beck: the pudgy, buzz-cut, weeping phenomenon of radio, TV and books. Our hot summer of political combat is turning toward an autumn of showdowns over some of the biggest public-policy initiatives in decades. The creamy notions of postpartisan cooperation — poured abundantly over Obama's presidential campaign a year ago — have curdled into suspicion and feelings of helplessness. Trust is a toxic asset, sitting valueless on the national books. Good faith is trading at pennies on the dollar. The old American mind-set that Richard Hofstadter famously called "the paranoid style" — the sense that Masons or the railroads or the Pope or the guys in black helicopters are in league to destroy the country — is aflame again, fanned from both right and left. Between the liberal fantasies about Brownshirts at town halls and the conservative concoctions of brainwashed children goose-stepping to school, you'd think the Palm in Washington had been replaced with a Munich beer hall. See TIME's Pictures of the Week. See the Cartoons of the Week. No one has a better feeling for this mood, and no one exploits it as well, as Beck. He is the hottest thing in the political-rant racket, left or right. A gifted entrepreneur of angst in a white-hot market. A man with his ear uniquely tuned to the precise frequency at which anger, suspicion and the fear that no one's listening all converge. On that frequency, Frankowski explained, "the thing I hear most is, People are scared." Fears of a Clown Beck is 45, tireless, funny, self-deprecating, a recovering alcoholic, a convert to Mormonism, a libertarian and living with ADHD. He is a gifted storyteller with a knack for stitching seemingly unrelated data points into possible conspiracies — if he believed in conspiracies, which he doesn't, necessarily; he's just asking questions. He's just sayin'. In cheerful days of yore, he was a terrific host of a morning-zoo show on an FM Top 40 station. But these aren't cheerful times. For conservatives, these are times of economic uncertainty and political weakness, and Beck has emerged as a virtuoso on the strings of their discontent. Rush Limbaugh, with his supreme self-confidence, holding forth with "half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair," found his place as the triumphant champion of the Age of Reagan. Macho Sean Hannity captured the cocky vibe of the early Bush years, dunking the feckless liberal Alan Colmes for nightly swirlies on the Fox News Channel. Both men remain media dynamos, but it is Beck — nervous, beset, desperate — who now channels the mood of many on the right. "I'm afraid," he has said more than once in recent months. "You should be afraid too." (Read Glenn Beck's tribute to Rush Limbaugh in the 2009 TIME 100.) His fears are many — which is lucky for him, because Beck is responsible for filling multiple hours each day on radio and TV and webcast, plus hundreds of pages each year in his books, his online magazine and his newsletter. What's this rich and talented man afraid of? He is afraid of one-world government, which will turn once proud America into another France. He is afraid that Obama "has a deep-seated hatred for white people" — which doesn't mean, he hastens to add, that he actually thinks "Obama doesn't like white people." He is afraid that both Democrats and Republicans in Washington are deeply corrupt and that their corruption is spreading like a plague. He used to be afraid that hypocritical Republicans in the Bush Administration were killing capitalism and gutting liberty, but now he is afraid that all-too-sincere leftists in the Obama Administration are plotting the same. On a slow news day, Beck fears that the Rockefeller family installed communist and fascist symbols in the public artwork of Rockefeller Center. One of his Fox News Channel colleagues, Shepard Smith, has jokingly called Beck's studio the "fear chamber." Beck countered that he preferred "doom room." On the recent anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Beck grew afraid that Americans may no longer be the sort of people who cross mountain ranges in covered wagons and toss hot rivets around in bold bursts of skyscraper-building. Tears came to his eyes (they often do) as he voiced this last fear. But then he remembered that the fiber of ordinary Americans is the one thing Glenn Beck need never fear. So he squared his quivering chin to the camera and held up a snapshot of ground zero, still empty eight long years after the World Trade Center was destroyed. And he said, "Let me tell you something. I believe that if it were up to you or me, just regular schmoes in America, the Freedom Tower would have been done years ago. And it wouldn't have been the Freedom Tower; it would have been the Freedom Towers — because we would've built both of these towers back the way they were before! Except we would've built them stronger! We would've built them in a way that they would've resisted attack. And you know what? My guess is they would've been 25 stories taller, with a big, fat 'Come and Try That Again' sign on top. We would've built it with our bare hands if we had to, because that's what Americans do. When we fail, when we face a crisis, we pull ourselves up and make things better. I believe the only reason we haven't built it isn't because of Americans. It's because we're being held back. And who is holding us back? Politicians. Special-interest groups. Political correctness. You name it — everybody but you." See TIME's Pictures of the Week. See the Cartoons of the Week. Beck describes his performances as "the fusion of entertainment and enlightenment" — and the entertainment comes first. "Like Limbaugh, Glenn Beck is a former Top 40 DJ," radio historian Marc Fisher explains, "first and foremost an entertainer, who happens to have stumbled into a position of political prominence." Unlike Limbaugh, however, Beck is a "radio nostalgic," in love with the storytelling power of a man with a microphone. He started in radio at age 13, inspired by a recording of golden-age broadcasts given to him by his mother — who later committed suicide, leaving the young Beck deeply traumatized. "He loves radio," says his longtime producer and on-air sidekick Stu Burguiere. "The way the mind becomes its own theater and the listener engages in the medium with you, drawing their own pictures in their heads." Beck once lovingly re-created the 1938 Orson Welles classic War of the Worlds for XM Satellite Radio, and he named his production company Mercury Radio Arts in homage to Welles' Mercury Theatre on the Air. (Read "Heeeere's Glenn! When the Lunatic Fringe Tries Comedy.") As melodrama, it's thumping good stuff. But as politics, it's sort of a train wreck — at once powerful, spellbinding and uncontrolled. Like William Jennings Bryan whipping up populist Democrats over moneyed interests or the John Birch Society brooding over fluoride, Beck mines the timeless theme of the corrupt Them thwarting a virtuous Us. This flexible narrative often contains genuinely uncomfortable truths. Some days "they" are the unconfirmed policy "czars" whom Beck fears Obama is using to subvert constitutional government — and he has some radical-sounding sound bites to back it up. Some days "they" are the network of leftist community organizers known as ACORN — and his indictment of the group is looking stronger every day. But he also spins yarns of less substance. He tells his viewers that Obama's volunteerism efforts are really an attempt to create a "civilian national-security force that is just as strong, just as powerful as the military." While scourging Obama and the Democratic Congress, Beck takes pains to say that the ranks of the nation's would-be oppressors know no party. In his recent instabook — Glenn Beck's Common Sense, a huge best seller, with more than 1 million copies moved in less than four months — he wrote, "Most Americans remain convinced that the country is on the wrong track. They know that SOMETHING JUST DOESN'T FEEL RIGHT but they don't know how to describe it or, more importantly, how to stop it." The book's pox-on-both-parties populism evokes the quixotic campaigns of Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot, but with an eerie sound track. He is having an impact. Along with St. Louis, Mo., blogger Jim Hoft, whose site is called Gateway Pundit, Beck pushed one of Obama's so-called czars, Van Jones, to resign during Labor Day weekend. Jones, whose task was to oversee a green-jobs initiative, turned out to be as enchanted by conspiracies as Beck — he once theorized that "white polluters and the white environmentalists" are "steering poison into the people-of-color's communities" and signed a petition demanding an investigation into whether the Bush Administration had a hand in the 9/11 attacks. On Sept. 14 the Senate overwhelmingly voted to cut off all federal funds to ACORN, and the U.S. Census Bureau severed its ties to the organization. This followed Beck's masterly promotion of a series of videos made by two guerrilla filmmakers who posed as a pimp and prostitute while visiting ACORN offices around the country. The helpful community organizers were taped offering advice on tax evasion and setting up brothels for underage girls. By affirming its suspicions and assuaging its sense of powerlessness, Beck bonds with his rapidly growing audience. "I continue to be amazed by the power of everyday Americans," Beck said after Jones resigned. What the Obama adviser called a "smear campaign" against him was, Beck said, simply "honest questioning." And there's more to come, he warned: "Judging by the other radicals in the Administration, I expect that questioning to continue for the foreseeable future." The Profit Motive We tell ourselves a tale in America, and you can read it in Latin on the back of a buck: E pluribus unum. Many people from many lands, made one in a patriotic forge. And there's truth in that story — it conjures powerful pictures in the theater of our national mind. But it can also be misleading. Lots of Americans can't stand one another, don't trust each other and are willing — even eager — to believe the worst about one another. This story is as old as the gun used by Vice President Aaron Burr to kill his political rival Alexander Hamilton. And it's as new as the $1 million–plus in fresh campaign contributions heaped on Republican Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina after he hollered "You lie!" at the President during a joint session of Congress. Anger and suspicion ebb and flow through our history, from the anti-Catholic musings of the 19th century Know-Nothing Party to the truthers and birthers of today. We're in a flood stage, and who's to blame? The answer is like the estimates of the size of the crowd in Washington: Whom do you trust? Either the corrupt, communist-loving traitors on the left are causing this, or it's the racist, greedy warmongers on the right, or maybe the dishonest, incompetent, conniving media, which refuse to tell the truth about whomever you personally happen to despise. But we can all agree that — no matter where it comes from — rubbing the sore has become a lucrative business. The mutual contempt of the American extremes draws crowds and fattens wallets at bookstores, cable-news departments, AM radio stations and documentary film fests. Wilson's campaign kitty is just one example, and a fairly modest one at that. (His opponent, Democrat Rob Miller, also raked in $1 million in new donations thanks to the outburst.) Michael Moore makes far more than that with his capitalist-bashing movies. The new Senator from Minnesota, Al Franken, cashed in handsomely with his conservative-taunting books. Or check out Beck Inc. to see how loudmouthing can earn you a river of cash. There are bigger one-voice enterprises in the world: Oprah, Rush, Dr. Phil. But few are more widely diversified. In June, estimators at Forbes magazine pegged Beck's earnings over the previous 12 months at $23 million, a ballpark figure confirmed by knowledgeable sources, and this year's revenues are on track to be higher. The largest share comes from his radio show, which is heard by more than 8 million listeners on nearly 400 stations — one of the five biggest radio audiences in the country. Beck is one of only a handful of blockbuster authors who have reached No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller lists with both nonfiction and fiction. (Among the others: John Grisham, Patricia Cornwell and William Styron. Unlike them, however, Beck gets a lot of help from his staff.) His latest book, Arguing with Idiots, will be published this month, and if things go as expected, it will be the third No. 1 with his name on the front published in the past 12 months. Taking a page from Stephen King — who once called Beck "Satan's mentally challenged younger brother" — Beck recently entered into a partnership with Simon & Schuster that pays him a share of profits rather than a traditional author's royalty, and he plans to create a range of books for every audience, from children to teens to adults. See TIME's Pictures of the Week. See the Cartoons of the Week. His website claims 5 million unique visitors per month; his weekly podcast is seen by 1.5 million people each week. Between them, he draws at least $3 million annually online. He has an online magazine, Fusion; a newsletter that touts Beck merchandise; and a tradition of live performances — a blend of stand-up comedy and political monologues — that have drawn more than 200,000 fans in recent years. The finale of his most recent tour was simulcast in some 450 movie theaters across the country. Lured by the Fox News Channel from CNN's Headline News channel last year, Beck has lit up the 5 p.m. slot in a way never thought possible by industry watchers, drawing upwards of 3 million viewers on some recent days. Indeed, despite his late-afternoon start, he sometimes beats even Bill O'Reilly, Fox's prime-time behemoth, in key ratings demographics. The value of his Fox contract is reliably said to be about $2 million per year. (Read a Q&A with Glenn Beck.) With a staff of about 25 employees at Mercury and 10 or so at Fox, Beck Inc. is doing its part to jump-start the economy. And there are ancillary industries feeding on the success of Beck and others like him. Both left- and right-wing not-for-profit groups operate as self-anointed media watchdogs, and one of the largest of these — the liberal group Media Matters for America — has a multimillion-dollar budget. Staff members monitor Beck's every public utterance, poised to cherry-pick the most inflammatory sentences. (Conservative outfits do the same for the likes of MSNBC's Keith Olbermann.) These nuggets are used in turn to rev up donations to political parties and drive ratings for the endless rounds of talking-head shows. The inevitable question is, How much of this industry is sincere? Last year, shortly after the election, Beck spoke with TIME's Kate Pickert, and he didn't sound very scared back then. Of Obama's early personnel decisions, he said, "I think so far he's chosen wisely." Of his feelings about the President: "I am not an Obama fan, but I am a fan of our country ... He is my President, and we must have him succeed. If he fails, we all fail." Of the Democratic Party: "I don't know personally a single Democrat who is a dope-smoking hippie that wants to turn us into Soviet Russia." Of the civic duty to trust: "We've got to pull together, because we are facing dark, dark times. I don't trust a single weasel in Washington. I don't care what party they're from. But unless we trust each other, we're not going to make it." How can we trust each other, though, when the integrated economy of ranters and their delighted-to-be-outraged critics are such a model of profitability? A microphone, a camera and a polarizing host are all it takes to get the money moving. Because audiences have been so widely fragmented by the new technology, ratings that would have gotten a talk-show host canceled in the late 1980s create a superstar today. (In 1987 comedian David Brenner bombed in syndication with about 2.5 million viewers at midnight — which is roughly what Fox, the leading network for political talk shows, averages in prime time.) Extreme talk, especially as practiced by a genuine talent like Beck, squeezes maximum profit from a relatively small, deeply invested audience, selling essentially the same product in multiple forms. The more the host is criticized, the more committed the original audience becomes. And the more committed the audience, the bigger target it presents to the rant industry on the other side of the spectrum. A liberal group called Color of Change has organized an advertiser boycott of Beck's TV show — great publicity for the group and a boon to Beck's ratings. If it's E pluribus unum you're looking for, try American Idol. Mad as HellStarting after the election and continuing into spring, pollster Frank Luntz conducted a survey of some 6,400 Americans, and the first question was whether they agreed with this statement: "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore." Nearly 3 out of 4 — 72% — said yes. Movie buffs might appreciate this, because when Beck gets rolling on a particularly emotional riff, when the tears glisten and the shoulders shudder, Paddy Chayefsky, the great leftist playwright, looks like a prophet. He's the man who coined the phrase that, according to Luntz, is the rare thing Americans can agree on. He gave the line to Howard Beale, the mad anchorman at the center of the dark satire Network. Chayefsky imagines cynical television executives who create a ratings sensation out of the nightly rants and ravings of Beale. The host energizes the nation with his cry, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" It's hard to find a film that better captures the rotten vibe of the early 1970s, when America found itself suffering through one downer after another: failing companies, tense foreign relations, high unemployment, rampant incivility, spiraling deficits, corruption in high places, a seemingly endless war. Sound familiar? Beck often cites Beale as an inspiration and a tribune for our own times. "I think that's the way people feel," he told an interviewer. "That's the way I feel" — like the fist-shaking, hair-pulling Beale. Whether channeled by a playwright on the left or a talk-show host on the right, anger and distrust can be dramatized and monetized. But do they ever really go anywhere? The trouble with this prophecy is that we never find out what happens to the people watching Beale. Do they stay mad forever? Does their screaming ever lead to something better? Does the rage merely migrate, sending new audiences with new enemies to scream from more windows? And if the time comes when every audience is screaming, who, in the end, is left to listen? — With reporting by Michael Scherer

Yes, integrating the area under the curve is pure bliss. Deriving the gas laws is an unequalled ecstasy. The proof that for any A and any B, (A &~A) > (B & ~ B) is sublime. But there is no higher enlightenment than learning a classical Indo-European language. If to know English is to be a child than to learn Latin or Greek is to know what it is to have a child. You <i>cannot</i> know what a language is if you speak only one. One must integrate at least two units to form a concept. Merely speaking English alone is like operating on the perceptual level. Once you have learned another language, especially Latin or Greek (also, to a lesser extent Russian or German, then French, Hebrew, Spanish or another non-Indo-European language) you will have gone a step beyond, like going from addition to integration. Learning calculus is wonderful. But we don't speak in calculus. We speak using language. and all forms of math are simply formal languages. All calculus can be transcribed in english words without special symbols. As for Chomsky, he's a buffoon and a one-trick pony, as well as a coward and a bigot. (To this day the sissy has nightmares of the Irish-Catholic boys who taunted him in the upscale Philly neighborhood where he went to grade school. Like Toohey he never learned to defend himself from bullies, just to get even with carefully crafted innuendo.) His critique of historical linguistics is that Germans did it. His transformational grammar is a mere expression of very simple truths in obfuscating jargon. Chomsky only thinks he has done something profound in "discovering" a language organ because he starts off with the premise that men are not conscious, that they do not have logic, and that they cannot induce rules. He has all the Humean/Kantian bullshit and the further handicap that he is a materialist marxist. Chomsky makes the obvious obscure, and a fashion of that obscurity. It's no wonder for the last 40 years he has done nothing whatsoever in linguistics, and has switched over to politics in the paranoid style.