Teh Crazy: Now in Variety Packs!
Jesse Walker’s Five Laws of the Crazy Tree is good stuff, reminding us that no one has a monopoly on insanity in our political discourse, although I agree with Peter Suderman that at least in recent years the crazy coming from the Right has been scarier than the crazy coming from the Left, if only because the crazy on the Right is usually packing some heat. Still, the best and most important point is one that ought to be posted on every bulletin board in the country:
While I share Perlstein’s antipathy to the he-said/she-said style of reporting (“Is Gordon Brown an extraterrestrial? Tonight we bring you two views…”) I have no nostalgia for the days when the center could write off civic outrage as “extremist” and keep it out of bounds entirely. That was the way the centrist consensus protected itself not just against that bizarre (and partly Scientology-fueled) theory about concentration camps in Alaska but against legitimate criticisms of disastrous programs ranging from urban renewal to the Vietnam War. Such critics weren’t just marginalized: They were demonized, in a process that itself resembles the paranoia that Perlstein is decrying.
Focusing on only the crazies who support a particular position is a magnificent way of marginalizing any opposition to the centrist consensus. In placing all opponents in the same boat as the crazies, this method of argument relies on precisely the sort of conspiratorial thinking that it claims to denounce. Indeed, some of the nastiest and most extreme rhetoric against the anti-war movement during the Bush years came from self-proclaimed “moderate” Republicans, centrists, and proud “RINOs.”
It is true that many policy ideas worth discussing are out of the centrist consensus and therefore cannot be discussed. Stopping the drug war and imprisoning a lot less people come to mind. But I still think it is a fair point that right wing crazy is much more acceptable in this country. Pat Buchanan said he thought Jim Crow was better then now because race relations were simpler. The birthers get plenty of mainstream airtime, etc.Report
You’re probably right, at least for the moment. The big point here, though, is the way in which anyone opposed to the centrist consensus is so often painted as one of the crazies such that their arguments just get dismissed. There’s also another effect here, which is that by pushing the crazies as representative of all opponents, those crazies actually become the only arguments in opposition that can get heard, which gives them more credibility than they deserve amongst opponents in general.Report
I also think that the crazier-because-packing-heat point is not to be glossed over. On a narrow reading of the term crazy, by all means asserting a government-executed demolition of WTC on 9/11/01 is certainly crazier than thinking a public option might lead to Medicare for all. But then getting from your particular political craziness-point-of-departure, whatever it is, to toting AR-15s to presidential events is really a qualitatively different, and I would say by design much more significant development — certainly it asserts itself on one’s attention conversely to the way that 9/11 Truthers could be dismissed as amusingly harmless — than is the question of what particular loony beliefs get you there.
Guns are excellent subject-changers. The folks who make them part of the discussion are aware of this.Report
In other words, comparing those who hold a clearly crazy belief but do so peacefully to those who hold actually relatively reasonable beliefs by comparison but who choose to bear arms over that belief — when the issue is one we hope we could have a consensus should be should be part of vigorous (maybe even to the point of shouting down Congressmen) but peaceful democratic debate (ie part of politics) is like comparing apples to crossbows.Report