>CB: "Lunatic" is a psychological term, not political.
Can they be separated so neatly? What do you make of "war fever" or Hofstadter's "paranoid style" that comes up here now and again?
How is the following quote from Joe McCarthy not both political and paranoid?
http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/conspiracy_theory/the_paranoid_mentality/the_paranoid_style.html
>How can we account for our present situation
>unless we believe that men high in this
>government are concerting to deliver us to
>disaster? This must be the product of a great
>conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any
>previous such venture in the history of man. A
>conspiracy of infamy so black that, which it is
>finally exposed, its principals shall be forever
>deserving of the maledictions of all honest
>men.
What can be made of this unbroken series of
>decisions and acts contributing to the strategy
>of defeat? They cannot be attributed to
>incompetence.
The laws of probability would
>dictate that part of
[the] decisions would serve the country’s interest.