Politics and paranoia agree as well as bacon and eggs. This has always been, will always be, true. This agreement seems especially intense these days. A September 7 NBC article entitled “Trump’s….conspiracy theory could help him with these 2020 voters,” supports this. The network gives a cultural theorist space to explain Trump’s support. “There are an awful lot of white dudes in this club,” Lynn Stuart Parramore explains,” [It] looks a bit like white bread dipped in testosterone.”
Thinking deeply and generalizing boldly in the familiar style of cultural theorists, Parramore explains that Republicans stick with Trump because he is a conspiracy pusher and rightists agree. “[F]or men,” she explains, “the magic of conspiracy theories could be their way to restore a lost sense of power, status and solidarity. These narratives, after all, provide appealing consolations. They offer clarity in a time of economic and social confusion. They boost sagging self-esteem with a feeling of being in the know…”
You see how it is. When you are a “cultural theorist who studies the intersection of culture and economics.” You are free to classify and characterize a big bunch of white “dudes,” of all men especially Republican men, and of the whole crowd of confused, anxious, unhappy Trump supporters. Any loyal liberal could say the same, but only a cultural theorist can get such sweeping opinions published. It is possible that Lynn Parramore never spent two minutes talking with a Republican, and never saw a Trump supporter except through a telescope. Doesn’t matter, When you are a professional cultural theorist you are not expected to have personal experience with anything you write and talk about. Your job is to theorize.
Our Parramore is Senior Research Analyst at the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) and a Contributing Editor at AlterNet. INET is an economics think tank, founded in 2010 under the sponsorship of George Soros. Its stated objective is to promote a search for new a new economic policy consensus. Soros argued that the 2008 financial upsets were due to an excess of de-regulation in previous years. His specific allegations about financial regulation are open to criticism, but that’s hardly relevant. George’s devotion to an ever-growing government is not a matter of debate. Like all other members of my department I received a free copy of a Soros’ book years before 2008. His conviction that the government, the economy, the culture, and all of life should be run by enlightened intellectuals modeled on George Soros was clear even then.
Look for AlterNet.org on the internet and you will find an essay entitled “The GOP is staging chaos on the way to a coup” and another entitled “Expert on the radical right warns that vigilantes are preparing to launch a coup.” Does it seem odd for NBC to choose an AlterNet scribbler as a guide to political paranoia. You might also hunt up rawstory.com and read La Parramore’s review of “Meet the Hidden Architect Behind America’s Racist Economic System.”
This covert architect turns out to be James McGill Buchanan. (See. “Hidden” Bet you never heard of this guy.). Neither reviewer nor author argue that the Nobel Prize Committee that awarded Buchanan their famous prize were motivated by a desire to promote racist attacks on working conditions, consumer rights and public services but its award surely implies that.
NBC’s choice of Lynn Parramore to expose right-wing paranoia seems even odder when we consider that both AlterNet and Raw Story are dedicated to exposing hidden truths wickedly concealed by “corporate media” (e.g., NBC).
Let’s not lose sight of that dread name Soros. That obnoxious megalomaniac is the current focus of a right-wing paranoid speculations. As a bona fide right-wing extremist, I’ve received repeated teaparty.org /deport-george-soros-sign-petition messages. These are accompanied by donation requests. I’ve spoken to six or eight tea party rallies, but I don’t know this org or the people associated with it. I’m not sending money.
Go to https://petitions.whitehouse.gov if you wish to exercise your constitutional right to petition your government for the following ends:
“Whereas George Soros has willfully and on an ongoing basis attempted to destabilize and otherwise commit acts of sedition against the United States and its citizens, has created and funded dozens (and probably hundreds) of discrete organizations whose sole purpose is to apply Alinsky model terrorist tactics to facilitate the collapse of the systems and Constitutional government of the United State, and has developed unhealthy and undue influence over the entire Democrat Party and a large portion of the US Federal government, the DOJ should immediately declare George Soros and all of his organizations and staff members to be domestic terrorists, and have all of his personal and organizational wealth and assets seized under Civil Asset Forfeiture law.“
A petition is much more civilized than a lynch mob, but condemn a man to deportation, denounce his associates for their association, and seize his assets by petition? That does not accord with any notion of the rule of law I’ve ever heard of.
Americans have to decide whether they favor an ever-expanding government and ever diminishing sphere of personal liberty or believe in maintaining their diminished traditions of personal liberty and responsibility. We trivialized these questions when we personalize them, when we think we solved any problems by removing Soros from our national life. He’s an old man destined to die shortly. When that happens, his ideas will persist.
John Frary of Farmington, the GOP candidate for U.S. Congress in 2008, is a retired history professor, an emeritus Board Member of Maine Taxpayers United, a Maine Citizen’s Coalition Board member, and publisher of FraryHomeCompanion.com. He can be reached at jfrary8070@aol.com.
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