Wow, Peter. You know you are in dire need of professional help when Glenn Beck is not paranoid enough for you.

I recall an exchange between Bill Maher and Keith Olbermann a while back in which Olbermann said something particularly insightful, that people like Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly are really more like businessmen than people who genuinely entertain the views they espouse.

A lot of right wing beliefs are of this nature- where belief imitates, but is not, conviction.

The holder believes that he is against X and will posture and argue incessantly against X. X proves acceptable or fades as a public issue, and life goes on fine. That’s when this person will decide that he was not convinced of not-X and shifts his beliefs around (since his beliefs are in fact instrumental, not actual principle). It’s all about psychological comfort, not realities. It’s not just the pundits doing this; they have to do it because their following is doing it.

Liberals have long known this. Even the likes of Russell Kirk have admitted that conservatism is “an attitude”. Aka a posture.

In SSM we see it demonstrated in the faux “martyrdom” and deep cowardice of the anti side: not one of their activists is willing to put their personal wealth, career, or significant relationships on the line to win. Let alone laying down their life. They are not actually convinced of the morality of their position, even though they purport to believe it.

I think Glenn Beck really is as crazy as he looks (he’s not well-educated, after all), but probably not nearly as bigoted in real life as he presents himself on TV.

He’s just been paying attention to the polls and realizes that the days of scaring the masses with horror stories about the powerful and dangerous gay agenda are numbered and quickly coming to an end. He sees Mexicans and Muslims as more reliable targets now. As with every generation past, bigots have to convince the masses that the most vulnerable are powerful and dangerous (like gays, immigrants and domestic Muslims) while the powerful and dangerous are vulnerable and victimized by the powerful dangerous hated minorities.

People are discovering that gays aren’t the monsters that they’ve been told they were so it’s time to move on to another minority about whom they can stir up the same hate and fear based in ignorance and shameless political calculation.

This is why it’s important that we stand up for immigrants and Muslims EVEN if they don’t stand up en mass for, and EVEN if they stand up en mass AGAINST, us.