Armando posed an excellent and subtle analysis of American politics based on points made by Eco and Hofsteadter.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/8/20/232228/849
He used the term "Paranoid" to describe the processes we are seeing going on in the halls of power.
At the risk of being more concrete than Armando ever intended, I think that there is another psychological concept that's extremely germaine to the topic. It's that of a relative of the Paranoid Personality, the Borderline Personality. The following is largely taken from a comment I made on the Armando piece.
The Borderline Personality
http://www.bpdcentral.com/resources/basics/main.shtml
The Hallmark of the Borderline it the tendency towards emotional 'all-or-nothing' stances. A given person will be seen as all good or all bad, and which one it is today is subject to capricious change.
This is a basic perceptual problem. The borderline simply cannot discern anything in between the extremes of 'all-good' and 'all-bad,' so they must
split all "objects" (other individuals) into one of the two categories.
"
You're with me or you're again' me." Sound familiar? The defense of 'splitting' excludes the middle.
When stressed, the Borderline is prone to highly paranoid interpretations, and can even veer into psychosis for a period of time.
They can do well when subjected to clear and strong boundaries, but are prone to exceedingly bad judgment when relying in internal boundaries (largely because there are none). When the bad judgment chicken come home to roost, and things are going particularly poorly, the Borderline often becomes overtly and directly self-destructive. And all the time blaming the 'bad' object of the split.
While often extremely socially attractive on the surface, and can be extremely loving, borderlines are notorious for making the lives of other's chaotic and miserable.
It's my opinion that this problem is integral to American politics far more than with the large majority of representative democracies. Why? Call it FreedomAndDemocracy.1.0.exe
A little problem with the beta code. Our unique, winner-take-all electoral system allows stability for only a 2-party system. Parliamentary systems throughout the world (including the ones we set up for Japan and Germany) allow stability for more than 2 parties to share power, forcing compromise and moderation.
So, unless we hold a Constitutional Convention to change our electoral system (something I would never advocate due to the pernicious mischief that could happen), we may be stuck with this system.
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What makes this construct vexing is that there are many different nested levels that this could apply to, and it's easy to confuse one's self. That also happens socially around the Borderline...
are we talking about individual politicians who have their hand on the tiller of the ship of state? A borderline will always steer the ship into the rocks just to prove that they have control. I think that there are those who can find many examples of this behavior in contemporary American Politics.
If, as the loyal opposition, we see that this motivation is damaging, we, having a better sense of perspective, have an obligation to fight that and stop it NOW.
But pop the logical level up to the system perspective. At that level, the Left (for these purposes- a first approximation- AKA The Democrats) is simply a product of "The Split" in exactly the same way that the Right (approximated as The GOP) is. Because of this, we must be extremely suspicious of extreme solutions as an 'answer' to extreme provocations. How, after all do we really know we have a better lock on The Truth than they do? Perhaps paranoia begets paranoia and we are similarly deluded.
It's enough to give me a headache, but rather than resorting to Descartes to help me out of the bind, I find solace in Thomas Jefferson:
"The division into Whig and Tory is founded in the nature of man; the weakly and nerveless, the rich and the corrupt, seeing more safety and accessibility in a strong executive; the healthy, firm, and virtuous, feeling confidence in their physical and moral resources, and willing to part with only so much power as is necessary for their good government; and, therefore, to retain the rest in the hands of the many, the division will substantially be into Whig and Tory." --Thomas Jefferson to Joel Barlow, 1802. ME 10:310
My bottom line, we absolutely must be aware of the possibility that our perceptions are warped (that is exactly what make us different from the other side). However we must not allow that to become a weakness- a genuine neurotic fault, or otherwise something to be exploited, which, I'm afraid has been a problem for some time.
While I pride my Independent status, I will cast my lot with the neurotic over the personality disordered, any day. Now if we can just become fighting neurotics. At that moment we cease to be neurotic.