Clarence Page: Obama vs. the lunatic fringe

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-oped0817pageaug17,0,542913.column

Obama vs. the lunatic fringe

Clarence Page
August 17, 2008

snip//

What do the hate groups and attack books have in common? A running theme of paranoia—fears that go beyond a rational basis.

"American politics has often been an arena for angry minds," wrote historian Richard J. Hofstadter in the beginning of his now-classic 1964 essay, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics."

"I call it the paranoid style," he wrote, "simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind."

Forty-four years later, Hofstadter's political "arena" looks more than ever like a mud-wrestling pit.

News that the Bureau of the Census predicts non-Hispanic white Americans will become a minority in the nation's population by 2050, earlier than previously expected, adds fuel to those who fear diversity.

Yet, California's population, to cite one example, has been minority non-Hispanic white since the late 1990s and the state has hardly fallen into the sea. Despite occasional conflicts, Americans are remarkably versatile at assimilating newcomers who are willing to work hard.

The prospect that Obama might prove the durability of that American dream excites many Americans and irritates others. An Obama victory would show that America is not as racist as many black extremists believe it to be or as many white extremists wish it were.

Now there are only two states: rationally terrified and angry, or bovinely content.

more folks - like Page - were also critical of the crazyass books about Hillary Clinton.