A Victim Of His Own Paranoia

[kentuck]

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/09/a_victim_of_his_own_paranoia.php#more?ref=fpblg


<snip>
But I think it's worth contemplating that for a moment. What led Wilson to allow his "emotions get the best of" him and break with centuries of protocol to declare the president a liar? Innumerable presidential speeches have made selective claims or been parsimonious with the truth. And in this case, the claim actually bears up under scrutiny. So why this particular claim, and why now?

<snip>
Wilson's outburst reflects something deeper. One recurrent theme of extremist assaults on the president has been the deep, visceral conviction that he's hiding an extremist agenda. The more moderate his rhetoric, the more reasonable his tone, the more detailed and specific his claims, the deeper this conviction grows. If you start with the presumption that the president is trying to foist his socialist agenda on an unsuspecting nation, then his apparent moderation and civility is actually further evidence of his duplicity. When nonpartisan groups substantiate his claims, it's because they're swallowing his transparent lies instead of revealing his real, hidden agenda. Every bit of apparent evidence that the president is reasonable only makes the situation more desperate - how to break through the illusion and reveal him for what he is?

We saw this dynamic recur again and again throughout the month of August, as anger boiled over at town hall meetings. Right wing activists insisted that they knew, to a moral certainty, what the plan was actually about, and demanded that their representatives acknowledge the truth. Such arguments are immune from rebuttal; at their very heart lies the esoteric contention that the real agenda is only implicit, hidden within the bill's provisions, and that seemingly benign clauses actually contain loopholes that will be nefariously exploited following its passage.

So when the president stood up and declared that the bills means what they say, Wilson simply couldn't contain himself any longer.

....more

[troubledamerican]

1. Wilson raised $600K today. Maybe not paranoia but cold calculation?

[Shallah Kali]

2. He has been using his anti-healthcare stance and 'libs are out to get me waaa' for fundraising alrea

see his blog http://joewilsonforcongress.com/home/category/blog/

[dbt]

3. Twenty-One YEARS of Talk Radio Have Given Us This.

The format should never have been allowed to exist without the checks and balances of the Fairness Doctrine. Two decades of mega-dittoes have given rise to the Lemming Class, who stand ready at a moment's notice to take up teabags and charge over any cliff that their opinion leaders ("Here's what you think today") point them at.

"Republicans good, Democrats baaaa-aad," has reverberated through tinny little speakers into tinny little minds for twenty-one years now. For all practical purposes, it has gone unchallenged. It has morphed into Talk TV, which passes itself off as "news." You'll be hard-pressed to find portrayal of anything "Liberal" in the Media Borg which is not cartoonishly stereotyped. Conversely, try to find anything derogatory about "Conservatives."

If Hitler had had Talk Radio, we'd all be building Volkswagens today. (See also: Pogues, The, "The Band Played Waltzing Matilda")