What's the Matter with Wingnuts?

First it was Richard J. Hofstadter with paranoid style theory.

Next it was Thomas Franks with his distract-'em-with-abortion-'n-gays theory.

Then it was Bob Altemeyer with his Authoritarian theory.

Now comes HTML Mencken with the next step: the fellating-the-powerful theory.

Some wingnuts have principles enough to object to all welfare in the abstract sense. But the wild fluctuations in their blargometers is the giveaway to the fact that what they might find objectionable when given to rich people (for whom, by the way, it is never a necessity) is outright intolerable and deeply offensive when given to poor people (for whom it almost always is a necessity). The truth is that despite their constant denials, wingnuts very much approve of class warfare. I think wingnuts naturally side with the predatory class — the rich — because wingnuts worship the powerful even more than they worship power itself.

The average wingnut pundit is a shut-in, doughy sack of shit who probably resembles (socially, mentally, physically) John Hawkins and Jonah Goldberg. Although these idiots get paid for farting and fapping, they aren’t exactly winners at anything in life. Hence their worship of the powerful, especially those who have accrued power ruthlessly. Hence their worship of bullies in whatever form: a country, a person, an entire class.

They want a hero but only a certain kind will suit them; or perhaps it’s better to say, they want a heroic mirror. This is why they feel the greatest loyalty to powerful fuck-ups (because they identify with the latter but long for the former): Presidents who steal elections, CEOs of bankrupt companies who pay themselves obscenely out of bailout money, clerics who molest their own followers, military leadership that promises cakewalk operations only to be greeted with an insurgency, interrogators who torture people to get misinformation, a wealthy criminal class that stole the poor blind but went broke in the process.

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