"The Conservative Movement on display is not something new: it something old. Ancient.
It is the Mob, now finally being given a place at Democracy's table. A tribe of superstitious blood-drunk savages baffled and terrified and lost in a world of angels and demons, looking for a demagogue to give them succor, and a convenient devil on which they can heap the blame.
Bachmann is not simply a liar: she comes factory-equipped with that Conservative evangelical capacity to preach lies with eyes wide open and in the face of a firehose of facts that would upend mere reason. But reason just bounces off of Conservatism because is a cult -- a cult of enraged White Conservative victimhood jacketed in the language of the divine -- and its power is anchored a mile deep in the fanaticism of its saints and prophets.
Which is why their rage and incoherence always catches the corrupt humdrums of the Beltway by surprise -- why it appears so bizarrely out of proportion to whatever crisis their Brain Caste has them tweaked out of their skulls about this week.
Because they are not fighting on policy or economic grounds; they are fighting on holy ground. And Barack Obama is not just a President with whom they have disagreements (which, considering how much ground he pre-concedes to them before negotiations even begin, is objectively nuts): he (like Clinton...and anyone else with a [D] after their name) is a Satanic Usurper who has stolen the Mantle of Heaven from its Righteous Whiteous Conservative owners, and therefor against whom any measure whatsoever (up to and including impeachment or destroying the global economy) is permitted."
("Voice of Empire, Ctd", Driftglass, 8/14/2011)
