The Paranoid Style
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 Paranoid Style in American Politics by Richard Hofstadter
Harper’s Magazine, November 1964, pp. 77-86.
Just for the record, I do not consider myself to be a last bastion of any particular values or even common sense… Worth noting, however: society has been plagued by the recurring problems of war, corrupt leadership, and inadequate planning for countless generations.
There remains a lesson to be learned here, no?
