When I started working Security almost a decade ago I did a few midnight shifts with a follower of Art Bell’s old radio show Late Night from Coast to Coast. Remember him:
…in its 1990s prime, the late-night radio show “Coast To Coast AM” was an unscripted audio mix of “Twin Peaks” and “The X-Files.” It was corny, uncomfortable, laughable, utterly paranoid, completely of its time, and occasionally terrifying… A parade of crazies appeared every night, people with no apparent sense of humor, explaining the most obscure and ridiculous theories and conspiracies…Behind it all was exactly the kind of person you would avoid in real life: Art Bell, a chain-smoking hermit and deejay with a creepy knowing laugh who worked from a mobile home compound in the high desert near Area 51
And Alec Jones:
A shadowy group of elites—mainly international bankers but also George W. Bush, Barack Obama, the Clintons, most of the mainstream media, the Saudi royal family, and Google—is trying to enslave the Earth’s population through orchestrated terror attacks and revolutions, vast economic manipulation, vaccines and fluoride, and an ever-widening system of surveillance that includes Facebook. That’s the truth—at least, the truth according to Alex Jones, a popular talk-radio host who is today’s leading proponent and marketer of political paranoia.
Guy I worked with believed this crap from the show, but that was okay. He was a single, harmless middle age man with at most a High school education. He worked 40 hours a week at 10 bucks an hour with no benefits and no future and blamed it all on mysterious forces designed to keep him down (but never the 1%). All his raving paranoia would never amount to a hill of beans because he would never be elected to a position of authority over others. Well I was dead wrong about that last sentence.
Senator Ron Johnson and The Electro-Magnetic Pulse Weapons he Read About on the Internets
Rand Paul: The Most Interesting Conspiracy Theorist in Washington
In 2010, before winning his Senate seat, Paul sat for an interview with Luke Rudkowski, a libertarian YouTube personality who specializes in quizzing political leaders about the plot to establish a "one-world socialist government."* Rudkowski asked what Paul knew of the Bilderberg Group, a collection of government and business leaders whose annual conference is a favorite target of conspiracy-mongers. Paul replied, "Only what I've learned from Alex Jones."
REP Louie Gohmert and the terror babies
...Recently, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) has been sounding the alarm about a new and insidious plot involving so called "terror babies."...this diabolical plan involves terrorists sending pregnant women into the US to birth their America-hating spawns. The mothers and their kids then return home where, the congressman says, the children "could be raised and coddled as future terrorists"— and later, "twenty, thirty years down the road, they can be sent in to help destroy our way of life."
Okay, enough examples. My point is that with Republican takeover in 2014 complete, we now have a Congress of Conspiracy Kooks with the Paranoia of my former coworker and the actual ability to effect the lives of the citizens of these divided states. In my 35+ years as a voter who majored in PoliSci I have never, ever seen this happen. I can find no historical precedent, even during the so called Red Scare of the 1950´s. Yes the John Birch Society, the closest analogue to our modern day TEA Party existed, but even the vast majority of Conservatives believed they were crazy. Not so in the 2nd Decade of the 21st Century. The extreme is now mainstream. Update: In response to G2Geeks comment I added a link to each of the quotes describing Bell and Jones. I found the NY Magazine article very informative.