An Introduction to Paranoid Politics (symposium article)

Partisanship and some paranoia flourish during the height of presidential campaigns. The following articles were written mostly shortly after the 2020 contest between then-President Donald J. Trump and now current President Joseph R. Biden. Normally, the election is followed by a cooling of emotions and an acceptance by the losing political party who plan to weaken the winning candidate and party in the midterm elections and the next presidential contest. Thus, when the Supreme Court decided in favor of accepting a Republican win in Florida, Vice President Al Gore accepted defeat for the good of the country despite having about 540,000 more popular votes. Again in 2016, Hillary Clinton acknowledged Trump’s surprise Electoral College victory even though she had almost 2.9 million more popular votes. In a break with American tradition and as a continuation of his assault on truth, former President Trump insists on ignoring the approximately seven million more popular votes his opponent received and claims that the 2020 election was stolen. Trump’s insistence of this being so willingly received by a majority of polled Republicans is indicative of his playing to the paranoid style and characteristic of our recent political rhetoric.

What is most dangerous to our democracy is not Trump’s claims but that a majority of the Republican leadership is, for a variety of reasons, going along with the ex-president’s assertion that the assault on democracy occurred not on January 6^th when his supporters stormed the Capitol after he whipped them up into a partisan frenzy but on November 3^rd (Election Day). In Peril (Simon & Schuster, 2021), Bob Woodward and Robert Costa spell out this and other dangers, including voter suppression laws being enacted and the decline of local newspapers keeping tabs on the political machinations threatening our democracy. Given the assault on the democratic process following the election, there is good reason for vigilance and the protection of our democracy. If this borders on more than normal paranoia, which I wrote about last year in “Degrees of Suspicion and Paranoia: The Need for More In-Depth Psychohistorical Analysis,” then so be it! We are living in a time when we all need to be alert to threats to our precious democracy.

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