Along with a bazillion other people, I’m sure, I watched the video of that rabid woman from New York spouting off at the rules committee meeting. It’s probably the case that every candidate who ever ran for any office has angry and vicious supporters like that.

What seems unprecedented to me, though, is the apparent willingness of Camp Clinton to let these people serve as their public face. If anything, rather than furthering the cause of women’s rights, it probably is a step backwards. I can just see the misogynists saying “See, it’s best to keep those women in the background because, if you let them speak up, all manner of ugliness comes out.”

Granted, men have hardly cornered the market on being sore losers, but trailblazers always have an outsized impact on how the rest of the group they represent is viewed.

I think, or worry, that this problem is part of a bigger issue, a tendency which Douglas Hofstadter named “The Paranoid Style in American Politics”; there has always been a tendency, both on the left and right, to exaggerate the stakes, to demonize the opponent, to invent resentments and imaginary cabals, to carry excessive chips on the shoulder… to revert, in short, to paranoid reasoning.

Hofstadter wrote:
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“Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish. Since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated—if not from the world, at least from the theatre of operations to which the paranoid directs his attention.

“This demand for total triumph leads to the formulation of hopelessly unrealistic goals, and since these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens the paranoid’s sense of frustration. Even partial success leaves him with the same feeling of powerlessness with which he began, and this in turn only strengthens his awareness of the vast and terrifying quality of the enemy he opposes.”
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Sounds familiar?

Look: I think that the American presidency is more than just the person in the Oval Office; it’s also made up by the organization around it and the laws and institutions that create a framework for it, and finally the public trust that legitimizes this entire system.

In other words, the President is a glorified office worker, a part (albeit an important part) of a larger society.

So what really matters is not that “my” candidate wins, but that the system works and is trusted. If the “other” candidate wins, a reasonable person will think: “OK, let’s see if we can work out a compromise with him/her.”

But in paranoid minds, the President (or any leader for that matter) becomes a sinister Master of the World, who secretly pulls the strings of reality.

In the short term, these loonies (like the ones screaming “You stole my vote!”) are ridiculous. In the long term, they — unwittingly — work to undermine the public trust that upholds a democratic system.

The most extreme expression of this paranoia is what has long plagued American politics: the crazed gunman. And that is why the paranoid style in American politics must be avoided by candidates and parties, never be encouraged: it is playing with fire.