07.27.11
Cults and Extremism
The Tea Party and GOP exhibit all the traits of an extremist cult. This isn’t much of a surprise if you’ve read DD blog, or even the old Crypt Newsletter.
One perfect example has been the mainstreaming of Ted Nugent.
There’s nothing reasonable or sane about him but he was perfectly fit just to be hard rock guitarist. However, he’s totally unfit for public discourse or informing about what might be good government and national policy in a reasonable society.
However, the latter is now one of his regular money gigs. Nugent is more famous as an irrational extremist portrayed as a normal, if slightly more colorful than usual, pundit.
[There] is no penalty for extremism; no way for most voters, who get their information on the fly rather than doing careful study of the issues, to understand what’s really going on.
You have to ask, what would it take for these news organizations and pundits to actually break with the convention that both sides are equally at fault? This is the clearest, starkest situation one can imagine short of civil war. If this won’t do it, nothing will …
And yes, I think this is a moral issue.
Yesterday, Krugman called John Boehner’s counter-Obama speech “vile.”
That’s a word one can usually use to describe all cults as well as their principals.