There are always lunatics among us. But at a time of political excess, when a political Thesis has exceeded its reach in time, those who are batshit crazy can gain enormous imfluence.
I’m talking here of people whose lunacy leans in the direction of the Thesis. Their craziness is only seen in retrospect because they seem, at the time, only to be extending existing trends.
It’s easy to see, now, that 1960s icons like Abbie Hoffman, Timothy Leary, or H. Rap Brown were, an historical context, beyond the fringe. Liberalism had passed its sell-by date, but they sought to go further, to make a world in which only they might feel comfortable.
That’s a good sign of batshit craziness. If you feel that all those who disagree with you should die, that the world is only meant for those who are like you, then you too are, in a democratic sense, batshit crazy.
Remember however that today’s Thesis, the one which has gone past its time, is the Nixonian Thesis . It’s a thesis of conflict, of paranoia, of authority pressed toward absolute power, in the name of defending religious, and capitalist values.
Men whose careers were born of that thesis, like Dick Cheney and Donald
Rumsfeld, are still in power. They cannot see any reality outside that
thesis, and so we remain trapped in their 1970s world. Everything is
seen through that prism, despite the fact that Islam is not Communism,
and the enemy of my enemy may in fact be my enemy, not my friend.
But I am not accusing Cheney or Rumsfeld of being batshit crazy.
They believe in the thesis as it was in their time. They are like New Deal liberals trying to deal with the problems of the 1960s.
Instead, look at the people to their right, especially those with some
measure of cultural, ethical or financial power. Look to those
preaching religious war, race war, or absolute war against those of us
who disagree.
Look for them, and report their names back to me.
