In the Manichaean mind of Hofstadter’s paranoiac, control over this world is vested in a pre-specified enemy who “is a perfect model of malice… sinister, ubiquitous, powerful, cruel, sensual, luxury-loving.” Juxtaposed with our constrained heroes, this Devil is “not caught in the toils of the vast mechanism of history, himself a victim of his past, his desires, his limitations.” Rather “he wills, indeed, he manufactures, the mechanism of history.” Dick Hofstadter wrote that the paranoid style in American politics is marked by "movements of suspicious discontent"-convictions that the natural or authentic unfolding of history is subverted by cultural or corporate or catholic conspiracies-that ancient committees or unholy novelties connive to ensure that Things Are Not As They Should Be.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |