It used to be that crazy people were more-or-less evenly divided between the (northern) Republican Party and the (southern) Democratic Party. Now they are concentrated in the Republican Party. This matters--and is a source of great terror and dismay for the non-crazy Republicans, and for us all.
But there has been no net increase in craziness.
I am not
so sure this is completely true. While
the observation that craziness has consolidated within the GOTP is indeed
correct, I am unsure if net craziness has remained constant. We can categorize craziness several different
ways. First is the Crazification Factor
which is tells us that within a given population, it is likely that 27% are
batshit crazy. This is accepted as an
established law of the internets.
However
one can also measure craziness by other factors such as by intensity,
frequency (or rate of reoccurrence of
craziness) and amplification.
As to
the intensity factor I believe, human nature being what it is, that Today's
Wingnuts are just as Crazy as wingnuts in the old days. However, I also believe that the
democratization of communication has increased the frequency of craziness. Since today's wingnuts have lower barriers to
communicating craziness to larger audiences, they able to do it with greater
frequency. Thus we experience the
craziness more often. And because the Wingnuts are now consolidated in the
GOTP, this frequency leads to an amplification factor. The Amplification factor uses the economy of
scale that GOTP consolidation provides to influence decision making of
non-crazy republicans. See example of
Orrin Hatch below.
To
summarize:
Today's
wingnuts are not more crazy that they used to be (intensity factor).
However today's wingnuts have more tools
and fewer barriers to project craziness (frequency factor) and more opportunity
to influence public opinion due to consolidation within the GOTP (amplification
factor). And of course, the
crazification factor of 27% is presumed to be accurate.
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