This article serves to remind us that politics goes through cycles, and while things seem particularly bad now, the ascendancy of the idiotocracy will end. I gotta say, too, that it's encouraging to see that Joe McCarthy, the man who gave "witch hunt" a bad name, made the cover of Time Magazine. It makes this year's "Person of the Year" cover easier to take.
The Paranoid Style in American Politics By Richard Hofstadter, Harper’s Magazine, November 1964, pp. 77-86.
"How can we account for our present situation unless we believe that men high in this government are concerting to deliver us to disaster? This must be the product of a great conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man. A conspiracy of infamy so black that, which it is finally exposed, its principals shall be forever deserving of the maledictions of all honest men.…What can be made of this unbroken series of decisions and acts contributing to the strategy of defeat? They cannot be attributed to incompetence.…The laws of probability would dictate that part of…[the] decisions would serve the country’s interest."
Senator [Joseph] McCarthy, speaking in June 1951 about the parlous [sic] situation of the United States.
Via Dave Does The Blog
