Crackpots

  1. Anthropogenic climate change denialists
  2. Market Magic libertarians
  3. Creationists and like-minded anti-Darwinians
  4. Holocaust deniers
  5. Birthers (Obama is not a US citizen)
  6. Black helicopter conspiracy theorists*

Most of these people are not in mental institutions. Instead, they are in the Republican Party or other Libertarian fringe groups. What exactly is it that attracts the nut jobs to right wing politics? A lot of these people are just the left behind, the people who couldn't or wouldn't understand history, science, or logic. Others are just incapable of stretching their world view to accomodate reality. Still others are clinical. A common thread is a sense of grievance, but Dems have people like that too. There are left wing nutjobs, to be sure, but they don't run the Democratic party, or even have a real voice in it.

The people who control the Republican Party and it's machinery (Grover Norquist, Fox News, most other news) are usually not that dumb, of course. Instead they seem to be cynical opportunists seeking to take advantage of the credulity of masses by spreading what they know to be lies. Here I have in mind the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post as well as the Hannitys and Rushes. They really only have one platform: low taxes for the ultra-rich.

*In order of increasing separation from reality.

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