“Although American political life has rarely been touched by the most acute varieties of class conflict, it has served again and again as an arena for uncommonly angry minds.” Richard Hofstadter, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” 1964Written amidst the immediate tumult of the Kennedy Assassination, Richard Hofstadter’s “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” did not have a chance to fully digest the plethora of conspiracies that proliferated in its wake. His article, however, did outline the then-ongoing debate over water fluoridation, the lingering effects of McCarthyism, and a supposed government plot to take citizens’ guns. For Hofstadter, these modern-day Read more