"Over the Cliff": How the Right went crazy

Anyone who's wondering why conservatives in the US seem to have gone insane in the past few years might want to check out a book recently published by the hosts of Crooks and Liars.

from the introduction:

"The Tea Partiers and their allies are tapping into the fear and anger that are washing over a country with over 10 percent unemployment on ongoing economic insecurity. And they are using the tried-and-true bogeymen and shibboleths of the paranoid strain in American politics to explain to their audiences who are and what is the cause of their angst: liberals, minorities and big government (not incidentally led by the first African-American president). "

Over the Cliff also focus on the schoizoid nature of the alleged hostility to government power:

"Just 8 years ago, drunk on vengeful bloodlust and convinced they had just ushered in a thousand-year reign, the right wing in America was united with their government as never before. Its members culturally enforced their peculiar form of chauvinistic patriotism and insisted that Americans unquestionably submit themselves to the president, a man their deified as a warrior god, and condemned anyone who questioned his decisions as a traitor."

And we all know what a sea change that went through.


From PoliPoint Press:

Over the Cliff examines the right wing’s eagerness, especially in the aftermath of President Obama’s election, to invent and propagate stories that are provably false. Noting that such stories are disseminated in large part by mainstream-media figures like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Lou Dobbs, the authors link that kookery to a wave of lethal violence and threatening behavior. They also explore the main drivers of this descent into nonsense, including a resurgence of extremist groups and the longtime Republican strategy of exploiting racial and cultural resentment. Finally, Over the Cliff details ways ordinary Americans can resist the madness.

Over the Cliff is already attracting attention.  The kudos include this remark from Rep. Alan Grayson:

At their hugely popular website ‘Crooks and Liars,’ John Amato and David Neiwert have helped to expose the fact that there is no conservative party in America any more. They show that the right wingers are not conservatives, they are anarchists.

The only law the right wing believes in is the Law of the Jungle. No schools, no hospitals, no job programs, no nothing. Their idea of nirvana is Mogadishu.

Available at Amazon and at PoliPoint Press.