Just an ironic historical footnote.

No longer believe “they’d cancel the convention before they’d nominate him”?

This is a good article by Fareed Zakaria about the GOP’s chickens coming home to roost from late January: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-the-gops-dishonesty-led-to-the-rise-of-donald-trump-and-ted-cruz/2016/01/28/d0bfdf8c-c5fb-11e5-a4aa-f25866ba0dc6_story.html

I get quite annoyed by the idea of banning Syrian refugees from the US. All refugees from Syria entering the US are doing so via the UNHCR programme. Many of them have been in refugee camps since before DAESH even existed. All have been vetted extensively over an average of eighteen months. The idea that these are terrorist plants is paranoia. They are people just like us trying to escape a war zone.

There is some of that on the authoritarian/regressive left. However, Authoritarianism, and what causes it, are genuine areas of academic study. The article focuses on the authoritarianism on the right, but you can see from the article that in some cases the supposedly least authoritarian become authoritarian in certain circumstances. This wasn’t discussed in the article, but I suspect that that’s my fellow liberals who, for example, want to ban speech they don’t like.

Most people do feel more comfortable within a structured environment – the world just works better if we all follow a basic set of rules that we all agree on. Even the most anarchic agree that road rules are necessary for example. That is not a mental defect, it’s how we evolved. With everything there will always be some people who go to extremes. Being opposed to same-sex marriage in not a mental defect or disorder or ignorance or malice or prejudice. However, expecting same-sex couples not to marry because you are opposed to it, depending on the person, is one or more of those. That’s because there is no negative societal impact to same-sex marriage – in fact, more married couples is positive for society as a whole. On the other hand, child marriage does have a negative impact so it’s something we shouldn’t just let others do because that’s their custom or religion.

That is my understanding too j.a.m. Yesterday the person who worked for Clinton and arranged the installation of the server and who had previously refused to testify (pleaded the Fifth) was given immunity from prosecution and is to be questioned. There was also an interesting interview of Loretta Lynch by Bret Baier on Fox News’s Special Report earlier this week: http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/special-report-bret-baier/blog/2016/02/29/exclusive-interview-attorney-general-loretta-lynch

The language is that it’s the use of the server being investigated, but given that it was Clinton who was doing it, she is being investigated by extension. I’m not sure that anything will come of it, but I consider the investigation a genuine one (unlike the ridiculous series of investigations into Planned Parenthood by Congress).

Who declared that Clinton not a target? The FBI says it’s “working on matters related to former Secretary Clinton’s use of a private email server,” but will not publicly disclose “the specific focus, scope or potential targets of any such proceedings.”

It defies common sense that the principal at whose direction and for whose sole benefit the illegal scheme was carried out would not be a target, but presumably no one outside the investigation knows one way or the other.

Yeah, it is a very old meme, at least as far back as Hofstadter through Lakoff and thousands of lazy hidebound imitators: Leftist pseudo-intellectuals who know nobody who thinks differently, and who therefore pathologize contrary viewpoints as the product of mental defect or disorder or ignorance or malice or prejudice. Talk about paranoid othering.

The Vox article by Amanda Taub was also very insightful. She makes a good case for authoritarianism being at the heart of the Trump phenomenon and that authoritarianism, even in no-authoritarian people, can be triggered by fear.

Fearmongering has become the staple of the Republican party. Richard Hofstadter, in his classic article “the Paranoid Style in American Politics”, described the role of unjustified fear, or “paranoia” in the selection of Barry Goldwater as the Republican nominee in 1964. George W. Bush used the fear generated by the 9/11 attacks to justify his disastrous invasions. Not just Trump, but all of the Republican nominees, portray America as sitting on the edge of a precipice, vulnerable to destruction if ISIS is not destroyed, Latinos and Muslims are not barred from entry, if gay marriage and abortion are not stopped, if government spending (except on “defense”) is not drastically reduced, if Obama is allowed to confiscate your guns, if government is allowed to infringe on religious liberty by requiring religious organizations to abide by the law.

In fact all of these fears are unfounded. No Muslim entity has anything near the military power to threaten the US. Terrorist killings by Muslims are far less than those by right wing Americans. Net illegal immigration has been zero or negative since Obama took office.

Republicans have sown the wind and reaped the whirlwind. They have spread fear, invoked paranoia, and found themselves outdone by a master of paranoid fearmongering. Here is an good article on the effects of Trump’s (and others”) anti-Muslim fearmongering in the US. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-anti-muslim-rhetoric-plays-well-with-fans-but-horrifies-others/2016/02/29/477f73dc-de37-11e5-846c-10191d1fc4ec_story.html

Sam Harris, and others who engage in anti-Islamic rhetoric must be aware of how such apocalyptic terms as “sleepwalking towards Armageddon” lends credence to the Trump bombast, just as Christopher Hitchens’ flamboyant statements lent credence to Bush’s Iraq invasion. Harris claims that he is working with people like Majiid Nawaz to reform Islam, but he surely knows that his criticism will have as much influence on Muslims as Mitt Romney’s denunciation of Trump will have on Trump supporters. In both cases, the speakers represent everything their intended audience reviles. It is with paranoid Americans, not with Muslims, that Harris’ words resonate.

One small quibble with your essay, Heather. Since Hillary Clinton has been expressly declared not to be a target of an FBI criminal investigation over her emails, talk of an indictment is unwarranted speculation.