Then again, we have come so far on gay rights. And even people in my parents generation who never would have been okay with gay rights have changed their minds. When this happens, it is about a lot of hard work and I think ending up close to the “other”— if gay people come out then so many people discover how many gay people they know (and love) and find it harder to hate and to other.

But the paranoia around the globe isn’t only or even primarily connected to this. Fear of the other in a world where the other is getting closer and closer, seems to me to be a primary concern (whether the other are Muslims. blacks, women, Jews or gays or some other group who are frighteningly close). Certainly deep economic crises may activate this, as Michael emphasizes, and as Scott also addresses from a slightly different angle, but I think that the problem goes beyond the economic cycle. I also agree with Michael that the lack of transparency feeds paranoia. But the paranoid has such deep convictions in the face of complexity that the blindness conviction manifests probably can’t be addressed by transparency alone.

The paranoid responses to Obama, for example it seems to me, in the paranoid’s terms is more because he is a Muslim and not a citizen, than because he is a socialist. But as both Michael and Scott reveal the combination is what we now face. I thank them for illuminating comments.

It seems to me that political paranoia increases with the fragmentation of predictability and the decrease in transparency. Deep economic recessions disrupt lives and create chaos. Many people need to recreate themselves in order to survive, and numbers of them are not capable of coping when virtually everything they have known has been turned upside down.

We are certainly adrift in unsettled times, and as a society, we continue to avoid recognizing serious problems which need to be addressed, for instance, if we don’t face how we are going to address our bonded and unfunded liabilities, we will never be able to deal with other issues. Remaining solvent is fundamental for the existence of a nation.

Transparency has decreased over the past decades. Most deliberations are held behind closed doors, and frequently high-level rhetoric is the only thing that is aired during public deliberations and in many campaigns. Bills have become so large and complex that people without legal training have difficulty understanding them. Adding to the uncertainty is the way that laws are applied, mainly through regulations written and implemented by bureaucrats. Compounding the transparency issue is the reliance that contemporary presidents have on Executive Orders.

Some of the same elements of political paranoia surfaced before the adoption of the United States Constitution. The Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers helped deal with the controversies. They were a serious airing of alternative perspectives. These addressed major issues in a responsible manner, and were made available to the public.

Maybe we need the equivalent of these types of papers to deal with the issues underlying our current political paranoia. I’m sure that there is the intellectual ability to address issues in this way, but I’m not at all sure that there is the will to do so.

My guess is that as associating, responsible exploration of issues and contracting increase, and then political paranoia will decrease. Economic growth and consensus making on major policy issues would go a long way towards helping, in my opinion.

I’ve recently come across an article by a Finnish scholar who uses a graph of the “collectivity-individualism cycle” to investigate the degree of public support for welfare programs. (The graph is applied to both Europe and America.) A cycle of individualism, corresponds to less support for welfare. This is the stage of the cycle we are in now. (Though author does however explain that this is a somewhat simplistic assessment, but that’s a longer story.) It seems to me however, that paradoxically, stage is also accompanied by an “us-versus-them” mentality, like the McCarthyism of the 50’s, like the Islamophobia of today. And ultimately, for all the self-defining as individuals that goes on, what we are really dealing with is a collective phenomena. That is, these individuals, in their state of paranoia, are not nearly as “individualist” as they think. Just a thought.

This “us-versus-them” mentality creates a fear of democracy, lest their country be taken over by outsiders via the ballot. Maybe that’s why the Tea Party is so insistent on keeping their bullets. I wonder how applicable this is to Israel, where the same phenomenon seems to be occuring, only worse. Is Israel still really a democracy?