Judith from Texas
When I was 17, I interned at a Congressman’s office just a few minutes from my house in Sugar Land, Texas. It was my first job, at a point in my life where I was still forming my political views about the world. I could chuck the “don’t talk politics at work” notion right out of the window, because that was the entire point — I manned the phone lines every day as part of standard constituent correspondence.
Living in traditionally red state like Texas, this means I had plenty of interesting chats with passionate conservatives, something I welcomed then and continue to welcome now. However, to add some important context, think about who would call the Congressman’s office in the middle of a work week (as opposed to an email or scheduled appointment). It shouldn’t surprise you that only a small portion of these conversations were citizens voicing informed concerns or stances. As I came to learn, the overwhelming majority of these conversations were generally erratic and unfounded in nature.
Twice a week for an entire summer, an elderly lady called to voice concerns about anything and everything. The Congressman should make sure those Honduran kids at the border are immediately deported. The Congressman should strike down the plans to build a mosque 15 minutes from her home. The Congressman should lead an effort to reveal President Obama’s birth certificate.
We had countless conversations, and sometimes it all blurs together. What remains crystal clear, however, is our first encounter:
“Congressman’s office, this is Ziyaad.”
“Who — who am I speaking to?
“Hi! This is Ziyaad. Can you hear me well?”
“What — where are you from?”
“Here in Sugar Land.”
“No where are you really from?”
“I was born and raised in Texas my whole life ma’am.”
“ — No but where are you parents from. Where are you from. You know what I’m talking about.”
“Mauritius. Do you know where that is?”
There was silence for a moment. She clearly didn’t have a clue.
“Could the Congressman have picked someone from anywhere farther? I mean seriously?”
Sure, it was uncalled for — but certainly not my first rodeo so it didn’t bother me. However, to her credit, she raised a great question that I had never thought of before. I wish I got to tell her the answer was no, there is no farther place from Texas. My parents came to this country from Mauritius, an island off the coast of Madagascar, over 10,000 miles away.
So thank you, Judith. I learned something new that day that genuinely gave me context I never precisely had before. But jeez, you were perhaps the most paranoid person I have ever spoken directly to in my life.
Revisiting the Paranoid Style of American Politics
Fast forward a couple years to the Fall of 2016. I took a course with Dr. William Winslade at the University of Texas on Law, Neuroethics and Brain Policy— which isn’t remotely my coverage area academically or even now professionally. We covered the complexities of comatose, assisted suicide, euthanasia, determination of brain death, the minimally conscious state, brain illnesses etc. It was a brilliant course taught by a brilliant professor.
Since it was an election year, we snuck in politics too, which was more of my comfort area. Dr. Winslade introduced me to the work of Richard Hofstadter, an American historian and public intellectual from 1940’s through the 1960’s, who examined paranoia in politics. While discussing the piece with Dr. Winslade, he remarked,
“When I was about ten years old in 1951 I had to visit my friend because his family had a TV. I recall watching what I later learned were the McCarthy hearings. I didn’t really understand what was going on. Nevertheless I do remember that even as a child McCarthy gave me the creeps. I share many views of Nixon, Trump and others that ooze paranoia. During the recent presidential campaigns I said to a colleague ‘what do you think of Trump?’ and he replied, ‘McCarthy’. We are talking about some real paranoids here.”
As I sit here the night before election day, it feels right to remind myself and others that the best of American leadership comes in the absence of disturbed minds.
Richard Hofstadter’s “The Paranoid Style”
We’ve gotten used to it by now, but American politics has long been a ruckus arena for angry and unpredictable minds. The irrational, persistent fear of differences and the unknown was studied meticulously by Hofstadter throughout his life. Perplexed by ideas and political culture, he examined episodes in history fueled by an erratic, excessive, and emotionally charged way of seeing the world. He called this phenomenon the Paranoid Style in American Politics.
Shortly after the Second World War, one of the most well-known displays of American paranoia was with McCarthyism during the Second Red Scare, an era characterized by heightened political repression against the perceived and assumed communists of Soviet Russia.
Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy’s first exhibit of subversive behavior came during a speech in West Virginia before the Ohio County Women’s Republican Club. Waving a piece of paper in the air, McCarthy said,
“I have here in my hand a list of 205 [State Department employees] that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping the policy of the State Department”
McCarthy would waver back and forth with his facts and figures, sometimes saying he had found 57 indisputable communist figures within the department. A few days later, he said 81. Then 10. Of course, there was no evidence to confirm even one communist in the department, let alone 205. Yet his words resonated with a large portion of Americans during a tough 1950’s climate — the United States was in the midst of structuring Cold War policies, the Chinese had fallen to a communist revolution, and the Soviets began to build and detonate atomic weapons. It was the perfect paranoia at the right time.
Following the footsteps of McCarthy, Senator Richard Nixon embodied the Paranoid Style. In 2008, the Nixon Library released over 198 hours of recordings dating back to his re-election of 1972, which revealed the Nixon’s disdain for practically anyone. Unlike McCarthy, who really just expressed suspicion towards one main group of people, Nixon’s conspiracy theories concentrated on three — those of Jewish faith, intellectuals and Ivy Leaguers.
Rooted in his anxieties about social class, Nixon often issued the same comments towards all three groups — that they were arrogant and put themselves above the law (Hughes, 2016). Hofstadter writes,
“A fundamental paradox of the Paranoid Style is the imitation of the enemy”
From Watergate to Operation Menu, you don’t have to look too hard to find both domestic and foreign abuses of law under Nixon’s direction.
While “McCarthyism” was originally coined and designed to poke at the sensational, anti-communist platforms of Senator McCarthy and other like-minded Republican counterparts like Nixon, the term began to organically develop a seemingly clinical frame and denotation as the practice of “investigating and accusing persons in positions of power or influence of disloyalty, subversion (working secretly to undermine or overthrow the government), or treason…without proper regard for evidence” (Barnes, 2013).
People used the term to describe foreign policy stances, genres of literature, and it even resurfaced in 2016 under a brand new and improved neo- McCarthyism.
The rhetoric draws parallels to the actual clinical definition of paranoia, which according to Harvard Medical School and the American Psychiatric Association involves “intense anxious or fearful feelings and thoughts often related to persecution, threat, or conspiracy” (2005). Symptoms of paranoia included “intense and irrational mistrust or suspicion [and a] defensive attitude in response to imagined criticism.”
It’s hard not to connect the dots. One could argue that iconic political figures — such as McCarthy, Nixon and most recently our current president — fall well within the parameters of a clinical diagnosis.
It would be remiss, however, if I didn’t mention that Hofstadter never had a desire to dabble with clinical classifications. He had to be careful about his commentaries while talking about paranoia, hoping to perhaps draw a thin line between political paranoia versus personal paranoia.
“In using the expression ‘Paranoid Style’ I am not speaking in a clinical sense, but borrowing a clinical term for other purposes. I have neither the competence nor the desire to classify any figures of the past or present as certifiable lunatics. In fact, the idea of the Paranoid Style as a force in politics would have little contemporary relevance or historical value if it were applied only to men with profoundly disturbed minds”
Conclusion
Every year there are numerous issues on the ballot. But frankly, a large portion of voters are single-issue voters — who will lower my taxes the most? Who is pro-choice? Who will offer to forgive my student loans? Heck, I have a close friend whose agenda is to vote for whoever protects the space program the most.
Whether it’s on one issue or ten, I hope you found a reason to vote. But let’s be pretty clear about this one — paranoia is on the ballot this year. And that very well might be my single issue in 2020.
