The AM radio screamers and FOX news loudmouths are as relevant to the average American as the condescending progressives.

Hofstadters "Paranoid Style of American Politics" is even more relevant now, but if he wrote it today he would have to expand on his small part on the left.

Emulating the Enemy

The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of conspiracy in apocalyptic terms—he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the barricades of civilization. He constantly lives at a turning point. Like religious millenialists he expresses the anxiety of those who are living through the last days and he is sometimes disposed to set a date fort the apocalypse. (“Time is running out,” said Welch in 1951. “Evidence is piling up on many sides and from many sources that October 1952 is the fatal month when Stalin will attack.”)
As a member of the avant-garde who is capable of perceiving the conspiracy before it is fully obvious to an as yet unaroused public, the paranoid is a militant leader. He does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised, in the manner of the working politician. Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish. Since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated—if not from the world, at least from the theatre of operations to which the paranoid directs his attention. This demand for total triumph leads to the formulation of hopelessly unrealistic goals, and since these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens the paranoid’s sense of frustration. Even partial success leaves him with the same feeling of powerlessness with which he began, and this in turn only strengthens his awareness of the vast and terrifying quality of the enemy he opposes.
The enemy is clearly delineated: he is a perfect model of malice, a kind of amoral superman—sinister, ubiquitous, powerful, cruel, sensual, luxury-loving. Unlike the rest of us, the enemy is not caught in the toils of the vast mechanism of history, himself a victim of his past, his desires, his limitations. He wills, indeed he manufactures, the mechanism of history, or tries to deflect the normal course of history in an evil way. He makes crises, starts runs on banks, causes depressions, manufactures disasters, and then enjoys and profits from the misery he has produced. The paranoid’s interpretation of history is distinctly personal: decisive events are not taken as part of the stream of history, but as the consequences of someone’s will. Very often the enemy is held to possess some especially effective source of power: he controls the press; he has unlimited funds; he has a new secret for influencing the mind (brainwashing); he has a special technique for seduction (the Catholic confessional).
It is hard to resist the conclusion that this enemy is on many counts the projection of the self; both the ideal and the unacceptable aspects of the self are attributed to him. The enemy may be the cosmopolitan intellectual, but the paranoid will outdo him in the apparatus of scholarship, even of pedantry. Secret organizations set up to combat secret organizations give the same flattery. The Ku Klux Klan imitated Catholicism to the point of donning priestly vestments, developing an elaborate ritual and an equally elaborate hierarchy. The John Birch Society emulates Communist cells and quasi-secret operation through “front” groups, and preaches a ruthless prosecution of the ideological war along lines very similar to those it finds in the Communist enemy.* Spokesmen of the various fundamentalist anti-Communist “crusades” openly express their admiration for the dedication and discipline the Communist cause calls forth.
On the other hand, the sexual freedom often attributed to the enemy, his lack of moral inhibition, his possession of especially effective techniques for fulfilling his desires, give exponents of the paranoid style an opportunity to project and express unacknowledgeable aspects of their own psychological concerns. Catholics and Mormons—later, Negroes and Jews—have lent themselves to a preoccupation with illicit sex. Very often the fantasies of true believers reveal strong sadomasochistic outlets, vividly expressed, for example, in the delight of anti-Masons with the cruelty of Masonic punishments.

The AM radio gasbags and Faux News gasbags are as relevant to the average person here in the States as the condescending, know-nothing (rabid) regressives who never let facts get in their way. The regressives usually make up their own facts and arrogantly stick to them regardless.

I am sorry to see the Guardian even mention/print the name GB. I refuse to type that guy's name because any mention of his name is free publicity and promotion for him. Every so-called "progressive" website I go on has something on their website about these rabid trash who park at microphones and think their opinion is more important than anyone else's. There are these little contrived feuds almost daily between so-called "left" talk show gasbags and the rabid regressive talk show gasbags. And their audiences write what they think are little funnies and sillies about the other in their attempt to score points for their D or R "team." It's pathetic and immature. Some of these so-called "progressive" websites have saturation coverage of this tabloid garbage. I suspect the regressive sites do too, but I don't know that for a fact because I don't go to those sites. Martha Stewart recently said about one of these useless pieces of trash who is being obsessed over and fixated over daily by so-called "progressives" in particular, Ms Stewart said about this person, "she is a very dangerous woman and you couldn't pay me to listen to her." I couldn't be paid to listen to any of them. And I don't listen to the so-called "left" gasbags either. I used to but no longer. I don't need to be told what to think.

As for "progressives," GB doesn't really need to worry about progressives because the number of true progressives on the planet is probably less than 1%. People can call themselves anything these days---such as "progressive"---whether it has any basis in reality or not. From my experience, to most people the word "progressive" means nothing more than doing a little bit of recycling on occasion, being critical of Republicans only (even when your Dem "team" has worked for and been employees of the Republicans since 2000) and voting for anyone with a D behind their name (even when the D politician is really a Republican based on his/her voting record, which most people could care less about). Both of these D and R "team" believers put their brainwashed "my team is better than your team" mentality above the US Constitution. The US Constitution should take the priority.

Progressives love to denigrate the conservatives and call them racists, fascists, fear-mongers, etc....

Hitler and his gestapo did the same exact thing, except to the 'liberals' of the day. That is, those that believed in personal freedoms. Are you too ignorant and blinded by hate (of what?) to see whose side you are on now?

I could care less about Glenn Beck, Rush or anyone else on tv or radio. I do know history though, and how it tends to repeat itself. The question this time will be - will we stand together as one nation united, or will we attack our own people from within and become the evil that we once fought against.

Whose side will you be on?