All the Rage

In 1964, the year after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, historian Richard Hofstadter published what is probably his most enduring essay, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” Hofstadter contends there has been an angry, suspicious, apocalyptic strain in American political life going back to the very beginning of the Republic. From anxieties about the Illuminati in the 18th century to concerns about the Masons in the 19th century to the John Birch Society’s assertion that President Dwight Eisenhower was an actual communist agent, Hofstadter suggests there has been a fear about hidden conspiracies that has animated those on the right and the left. He was very clear about that–the paranoid style was not the exclusive province of any party or persuasion.

In many ways, his key insight was not historical but psychological: each side projects its own worst attributes onto the other, demonizing the enemy as an exaggerated and negative version of itself. We see some of that in our culture today. It’s been a long and fraught summer in the political realm, and the hope for bipartisan harmony now seems like a naive fantasy. Each side, to quote Hofstadter, claims that what is at stake is “always a conflict about absolute good and absolute evil.”

What we’ve learned from psychology is that certainty is not an objective reality but an emotional one; our certainty has more to do with our own inner state than any outer one. And these toxic certainties of today–on the right and the left–exist in the age of 24-hour cable, the Internet and Twitter, where people on the edge of the national conversation can jostle their way to the center.

How much of the toxicity of the current conversation stems from the fact that we have the first African-American President is unknowable. That racism exists is indisputable. Two more things we know: First, there is a deep sense of discontent among many Americans and a distrust of government and authority, which Time’s recent poll showed. And second, a lack of respect and civility in our discourse undermines our ability as a nation to solve our problems–and we have quite a lot of them at the moment.

One of our jobs as journalists is to be the referee, the honest broker who sorts through the accusations and says, This is fact, and this is fantasy. To do that, we asked editor-at-large David Von Drehle, based in Kansas City, Mo., to shed light on the Glenn Beck phenomenon as well as the larger idea of the anger of American politics today. “Clearly, Glenn Beck is extremely talented, and the man has struck a chord,” Von Drehle says. “But the nature of politics right now rewards the people who play the least harmonious tunes.”

Let’s leave the final word to Professor Hofstadter: “It seems to me to be clear that a political society cannot hang together at all unless there is some kind of consensus running through it.” Let’s strive to find that.

Richard Stengel, MANAGING EDITOR