Over at Balloon-Juice, the hosts are having a debate amongst themselves as to whether we have reached “Peak Wingnut” — a right wing blogospheric analog to Peak Oil. John Cole thinks that wingnuts have peaked and are in decline as a blowout of historic proportions seems to be shaping up for the conservative movement in the upcoming elections. Meanwhile, TimF suggests, instead, that the online right is about to experience a resurgence and that it’s the online left that has likely peaked.
John’s probably correct short term and Tim is probably correct long term. The right wing bloggers have probably peaked through the election. However, Tim suggests that even if there is a crushing rejection of conservative candidates in 2008, this will only invigorate right wing bloggers. Being in the wilderness will energize and unite them. Instead, if Democrats are in control of all three branches of the federal government, left wing bloggers will become disillusioned and fractured. On the right, you’ll see the return of the black helicopter crowd and Vince Foster conspiracy freaks.
After Obama is elected, I have no doubt we will see a resurgence of the “militiasâ€, just like during the 90s.
I dated a girl in high school whose father was in one of the anti-Clinton militias. He had grenades and all sorts of illegal weapons buried on his farm for the time “when the black helicopters come to get usâ€. He even had locally produced videos showing the places in Louisville, KY where the New World Order (the United Nations NWO, not the World Championship Wrestling NWO) would keep their prisoners.
Based on all the recent radicalism coming from McCain campaign supporters, President Obama should probably have Homeland Security keep an eye on the resurgence of domestic terrorists. We must all remember that, prior to 9/11, the greatest threat of terrorism didn’t come from radical Muslims in the middle-east, it came from crazy-ass white boys from the countryside.
This is just my opinion ,but I think the glue of conservatism has become social issues but with economics and the mantra of small government as its enabler.Conservatism,currently discredited,if allowed, will re-morph someway to protect free market capitalism from the poor and minorities,who drag it down.
The epiphany moment for me in this economic crisis is the dialogue that capitalism cannot function if it has to deal with the poor.The dialogue goes that banks were forced to grant high risk mortages to the poor,which percipitated an economic collapse. So then, the poor have to be left out of the money circulation process so the economic wheels can turn unemcombered.
In the measure that poor people are also minority there’s also a racial issue to be exploited.This is the essence of wingnuttian conservatism.
The way American capitalism has had to work under the current brand of conservatism is for the poor to accept their plight stoically ,work at minimum wage,no health insurance and no government bailouts. This is freedom defined. It’s the celebration of the noble savage all over again.
Capitalism is the best economic system,but under a representative form of government, as we have, we have the chance to formulate appropriate regulations to ensure the transparency which will lead to fair play under those rules. Carte blanche (as in ‘free market’) results in a ‘survival of the fittest’ way of doing things with cut-throat tactics all around.
I like to think of it as an extinction burst.