Ideological dead-enders

In case you missed it, Glenn Greenwald has a good article posted at Salon.com about the crackpots hunkered down on the far-right.

Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity have crafted a lucrative cottage industry pandering to a group of irrational, anti-social Americans that fear their government, their neighbor, and just about everybody else--except their right-wing talker of choice.

Greenwald does a good job putting all of this rage into context, as well wondering why these dead-enders never mustered any concern about things like government secrecy and domestic spying when a Republican was in the White House:

But this Rush-Limbaugh/Fox-News/nationalistic movement isn't driven by anything noble or principled or even really anything political. If it were, they would have been extra angry and threatening and rebellious during the Bush years instead of complicit and meek and supportive to the point of cult-like adoration. Instead, they're just basically Republican dead-enders (at least what remains of the regional/extremist GOP), grounded in tribal allegiances that are fueled by their cultural, ethnic and religious identities and by perceived threats to past prerogatives -- now spiced with legitimate economic anxiety and an African-American President who, they were continuously warned for the last two years, is a Marxist, Terrorist-sympathizing black nationalist radical who wants to re-distribute their hard-earned money to welfare queens and illegal immigrants (and is now doing exactly that).

Greenwald does a really good job re-introducing us to our nation's "angry white males," apparently in hibernation during the Bush years.

I also appreciate any writer who can drop a Hofstadter reference on his readers, damn egghead!

I wonder if Beck owns stock in canned goods factories, or freeze-dried foods?