The Wingnuttiest Era Ever?
By In re the Omaha shootings, it took exactly eleven comments at Little Green Footballs before question of “Sudden Jihad Syndrome” interrupted the nibbling of cucumber sandwiches and crumpets:
Fortunately for all, the question received swift and thoughtful attention.
And so on.
And so forth.
Until reasonable voices took over and floated alternative hypotheses.
All of this makes me wish that blogs had been around during the Cold War. Jumping Jesus, that would have been a good time….
All of which raises the unanswerable question of whether we are in fact living through the wingnuttiest period of American history. I’m inclined to argue that if we correct for certain factors like the per capita distribution of parents’ basement apartments, bagged snack foods and technology — assuming, for example, that blogs either didn’t exist today or, conversely, did exist “back then” — we are not yet living in the most purely wingnutty epoch of all time. If pressed, I’d have to argue that the period from about 1848-1856 would take the prize. Why?
Several reasons. First, I’m working from the assumption that wingnuttery thrives in the humid gap between perceived and actual peril; the greater the disparity between the two, the greater the magnitude of wingnuttiness.
Second, it’s obvious that during the two years prior to 1848, the US was in fact embroiled in a controversial war with Mexico, and from 1856 onward the Civil War was lurching toward inevitability — e.g., the revocation of the Missouri Compromise and the subsequent splattering of east Kansas, the Dred Scott ruling, the John Brown raids, etc. So while the general level of insanity was quite high during those years, the period between 1848-1856 was characterized by unprecedented national derangement — incoherent expressions of Southern paranoia; wasteful, fantastic plots to steal Cuba from Spanish control; and a wave of anti-Catholic zealotry that helped destroy both major parties while producing its own genre of pornography to boot.
With all due respect to the great wingnuts of today, they’ve a long way to go to match the accomplishments of their pre-civil war ancestors.