There's a really thoughtful piece over by Kim Messick over at Salon concerning the "paranoid aesthetic" of the Tea Party and its archetypal freak, Glenn "Boo Hoo" Beck. It's worth the read. Here's a small fragment:
The Tea Party’s paranoid narcissism helps us explain another important feature of its politics: an intransigent dismissal of the necessity, even the morality, of compromise. In 2011, Democrats and many Republicans looked on in horror as the Tea Party caucus in the House of Representatives pushed the country to the brink of its first ever default; only when it had exacted punishing concessions from President Obama did it agree, sullenly, to accede to an increase in the debt limit. A similar debacle may play itself out in connection with immigration reform.The piece is a detailed analysis of the movement and it's historical (hysterical?) underpinnings, tracing the "aesthetic" of victimization and umbrage through all it's manifestations. That this noisy faction of a minority is driving the agenda in so many respects is just appalling.
