Sunday, August 16, 2009
The Tree of Crazy is the New Kudzu
Growing everywhere and with its poisonous flowers polluting the land, it is choking out natural American growth. Rick Perlstein looks at the madness, organized and abetted by evil narrow interests that attack America whenever it seeks to move this country beyond the abyss of Neanderthal thinking that comforts too many people.
So the birthers, the anti-tax tea-partiers, the town hall hecklers -- these are "either" the genuine grass roots or evil conspirators staging scenes for YouTube? The quiver on the lips of the man pushing the wheelchair, the crazed risk of carrying a pistol around a president -- too heartfelt to be an act. The lockstep strangeness of the mad lies on the protesters' signs -- too uniform to be spontaneous. They are both. If you don't understand that any moment of genuine political change always produces both, you can't understand America, where the crazy tree blooms in every moment of liberal ascendancy, and where elites exploit the crazy for their own narrow interests.This is really quite a depressing piece because, as Perlstein points out, we no longer have leaders with the courage to stand up to the bullshit nor journalists capable of calling it bullshit.
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