Blowing Smoke - Michael Wolraich [37]
Don’t Blame the Stupids
In the face of such insights from luminaries like Coulter and Wildmon, one might be forgiven for concluding that the combined brainpower of the people who did tune in to Speechless: Silencing the Christians was roughly equivalent to the average intelligence of a flaccid carrot. But while it might be comforting for liberals to imagine that right-wing voters have the mental capacity of a limp root vegetable, there is no reliable evidence to make the case and some evidence suggesting the contrary. For instance, a New York Times-CBS poll indicated that Tea Party supporters tend to be better educated than the average American. Thirty-seven percent are college graduates, as opposed to the national average of 25 percent.an4
Moreover, you don’t have to be stupid to be paranoid. It’s fun to point out that neither Glenn Beck nor Rush Limbaugh graduated from college, but Pat Robertson, who is a zanier conspiracist than either one of them, has a law degree from Yale. One of America’s most influential conspiracists was Samuel Morse, coinventor of the telegraph and author of Conspiracy Against the Liberties of the United States, which detailed the secret Jesuit plot to hand the country over to the Austrian empire. Henry Ford, the brilliant industrial innovator, blamed World War I on a conspiracy of Jewish bankers. And Kurt Gödel, perhaps the greatest logician in history, became convinced that secret enemies intended to poison him. He eventually stopped eating and died of starvation. So much for logic.
Most important for our purposes, calling conservatives stupid does no more to explain the success of right-wing persecution politics than calling conservatives crazy. On the contrary, such accusations shrug off the possibility of explanation. The primary benefit of calling one’s political opponents stupid and/or crazy is the pleasant feeling of smugness that it accords the accuser, which probably explains the popularity of the charges in the liberal blogosphere.
The Angry Right
If paranoid conservatives aren’t universally stupid or clinically insane, how do we explain their affinity for ideas that are both stupid and insane? Let’s now consider one of the most popular explanations for the current rash of right-wing paranoia: rage. According to the rage hypothesis, paranoid conservatives are extraordinarily angry, and they embrace crazy conspiracy ideas in order to discharge their fury onto convenient targets; for example, health care reform, illegal immigrants, or Barack Hussein Obama.
The rage hypothesis seems to be the media’s default explanation for the recent growth of right-wing paranoia. The headlines of 2009 and 2010 have been full of references to “populist rage” and “the angry right.” A Newsweek cover depicted a mob of mustachioed fedora-clad men bearing pitchforks and looking slightly constipated—headline, “Populist Rage.”5 Time magazine edified the nation with Glenn Beck’s protruding tongue on its cover—headline, “Mad Man.”6 Former Labor secretary Robert Reich evoked lurid horror-film imagery in an article for Salon.com:
Angry right-wing populism lurks just below the surface of the terrible American economy, ready to be launched not only at Obama but also at liberals, intellectuals, gays, blacks, Jews, the mainstream media, coastal elites, crypto socialists, and any other potential target of paranoid opportunity.7
(Angry Populists II: Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the country ...)
The rage thesis seems to get recycled every decade or two. Richard Hofstadter opened his essay “The Paranoid Style of American Politics” with the statement, “American politics has often been an arena for angry minds.” In the 1990s, the “angry white male” was a popular character in the narratives of Clinton-era political pundits. According to the media, packs of angry white males roamed the countryside, terrorizing