More disturbing still is the behavior of the Tea Partiers and their fellow-travelers. Their importance, and certainly their numbers, are absurdly exaggerated by the media. Why not? They make for a great story. But their capacity for mischief isn't dependent on the existence of vast hordes of like-minded comrades. Nor even on a coherent set of beliefs: one of the more disturbing things about the Tea Party movement is how ill-defined its credo actually is. Once you get past the slogans --- many of them drawn verbatim from Fox News talking points --- you look in vain for serious content. Yes, these people are mad as hell and they aren't going to take it anymore. No argument there. But they don't seem able to define with any precision what "it" is.

Those pictures of Obama with a Hitler mustache, or decorated with a hammer and sickle, or sporting a lipsticked Joker grin, do not exactly suggest a sophisticated understanding of either politics or history, nor a desire to engage in serious forensics. This very morning on NPR, I heard several interviews Ina Jaffe had conducted with people who had traveled to Searchlight, Nevada, to attend the big weekend Tea Party rally. One participant said of Harry Reid, "He's a traitor, really. He hates America, really." (Those "reallys" sure make his inanity more persuasive, don't they?) With someone like that, there isn't much point in sitting down for a frank exchange of views; reality itself is just a pesky inconvenience to such people. And if you factor in the recent death threats, and drawings of nooses sent to House and Senate members, and the spitting, and the shouts of "Nigger" and "Faggot," you begin to grasp that this inchoate anger is all the more dangerous precisely because it isn't wedded to a recognizable set of political principles. It's just rage, free-floating and ready to blow. Rage that's been cultivated, guided, and validated by some of more irresponsible media stars on the right. With the shameful assistance and connivance of some elected officials.

Why is this scary? Haven't there always been nuts among us? Has not the invocation of Richard Hofstadter's "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" become a trusty, rusty cliche of liberal journalism, especially by those who haven't read it? Well, yes. But for those of us who recall President Clinton's first term, there is nothing innocuous about this sort of thing. A similar taint of illegitimacy had been attached to the Clinton presidency in some circles, with all sorts of wild rumors (no, not those rumors, I'm talking about ones that weren't true) given much wider currency than they ever merited. The flames were similarly fanned by voices in the right-wing media (some of them the same people who are active and influential today), and given official imprimatur by the likes of the late Congressman (her preferred title) Helen Chenoweth, who affirmed the existence of black helicopters being flown over Western skies by secret government agents, and Congressman Dan Burton, who famously put a lethal bullet through a cantaloupe to prove Vince Foster had been murdered (unless the melon had in some way insulted his honor, but if that's the case, he kept it to himself), to President George H. W. Bush, to Pat Buchanan, to Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.