This isn't the reader blog I was planning on writing this weekend.

I had planned to use the Democracy Corps/Greenberg Quinlan Rosner focus group report that we're all nattering about this weekend as the jumping off point for another discussion of racism and its many subtle modern faces. I had planned to discuss the role modern racism plays in the hard right's opposition to Obama and to those of us who are, to some degree, supporting him--whether self-described as "liberals," annoyed and frustrated "progressives" or annoying and frustrating "moderates." Problem was, I had only read about the report. I hadn't read it. Now that I have, I have to agree that Carville and Greenberg are right: racism is, in fact, quite beside the point.

They're right for the wrong reasons. I disagree with their conclusion that race doesn't have anything to do with the overly-emotive and irrational nature of the hardcore opposition. It is absolutely clear from the quoted comments of many of the people interviewed (Georgians all, of course) that a thoroughly sublimated racial prejudice, combined with a repressed guilt about the racism, is contributing to the mounting, unbearable anxiety that's been driving these people around the bend for years now. If nothing else, it is clear from their inability to concede that any of their fellows are motivated by racism and their conspiratorial touchiness about the allegation.

That racism is what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to start a conversation about how different it is from the racism of my grandfathers, and, subtly different even from the 1960s-style southern racial "moderation" of my father. I planned to go into detail about how we need to understand that difference and talk about it differently, among ourselves and with them, if we're ever going to root it out. I still believe that the contemporary form of racism would be a great thing to blog about if not for the fact that it is, at this point, the least of our worries. Would that that kind of racism was the biggest problem these people presented to the nation.  (And yeah, that's what I'm going to keep calling them:"these people." If it be condescension, make the most of it) .

Let me state it plainly: these people represent a serious threat to the continuation of democracy itself in this country. Indeed, in my darker moments, and this would be one of them, I worry that this time period--the 90s and the first decade of this century--is where future historians will draw the line and say "this is when democracy finally failed in America."  And all, directly and indirectly, because of what the modern hard right has become over the last couple of decades.

The Democracy Corps report didn't tell us anything we didn't already know at some level. For a long time now, we've been saying that about a quarter of the people in this country are simply mad. In the later Bush years, we called them the "thirty-percenters" but the reality check presented by hard times has distilled them down to their seemingly irreducible solid core, representing about 25-26% of the electorate and perhaps a similar percentage of the population as a whole. At first, our observations were couched in terms of exasperation at what we thought was mere mule-headedness and half in jest. The echos of that jesting phase still dominate our terminology: "batshit crazy," "the dittoheads," "loons." But the jest drained away, drop by drop, as we've watched them become ever more agitated and disassociated from reality. We saw the rising tide of violent rhetoric and behavior at the Palin rallies during the election and in the growing faction of people who are clearly similarly detached from reality who are in Congress: Inhofe, Coburn, DeMint, Bachman, Steve King, Virginia Foxx, Paul Broun, Joe Wilson, Sue Myrick, John Shedagg . . . the list goes on. Indeed, someone really needs to do a head count among the Republicans in Congress and try to get some idea of what percentage of them are faking it and what percentage are, in fact, stark raving mad.

Reading the report in preparation for my planned blog on modern racism forced me to confront the fact that there's no joke left. The country is in the grip of what can only be described as pandemic mass psychosis. It is a psychosis nurtured, fed and, to some extent created, by certain large corporations that find in it a steady market for their media content. Now, however, the psychosis is self-sustaining. Through email and Internet sites, social networking media and mere word of mouth, they could keep it going indefinitely if Fox News and Rush Limbaugh disappeared tomorrow.

And that's not the scary part.

The scary part is that the ideology they are developing has strong overtones of religious, or quasi-religious, hysteria. They feel persecuted and alienated. They nurture a sense of grievance over being "mocked" (and that's reality based, at least--they are mocked.) They think of themselves as a rapidly coalescing "underground" movement confronting an existential threat to America and democracy and all that they think is good and true in America.

And therein lies the bitter irony enveloping the intractable dilemma these people present the nation: the only real threat to America and democracy is them. The threat is two pronged.

The first prong is the very real danger they represent to the continued existence of the Republican Party and, hence, to the continuation of two-party democracy. The Democracy Corp report is primarily focused on this problem. To put it plainly, these people have undermined the ability of the Republican Party to function as a political party in a two-party system. Many of us, myself included, have noted that the Republicans are no longer good faith participants in the project of governance. Instead, we've observed that they have been reduced to unconcealed nihilism, a marginalized special interest group whose interest is obstruction for its own sake. And yet, despite the GOP's wholehearted endorsement of the agenda of what they still think of as their base, that base is directing nothing but apoplectic fury at the GOP. They are furious with, and feel utterly alienated from, the GOP's elites because they (rightly) perceive that at least some of the GOP's politicians are only pretending to be as crazy like they are.

For all the talk of 2010 being another 1994, the dissociation of the hard right from reality, and the consequent alienation and fury directed to the GOP elite, has created a completely untenable, and possibly terminal, situation for the GOP going into the next midterms. If you study the numbers closely and factor in the Republican Party's complete lack of anything that can plausibly be portrayed as a positive agenda, a good case can be made that their optimism about their prospects next year is apiece with the delusional thinking that has gripped the party's base. It is a continuation of the kind of delusion that made them think that the selection of Sarah Palin was a huge game changer.

"Believing your own bullshit" is one of the classic fatal mistakes of politics. Yet, in every public pronouncement these days, Republican politicians invariably say things like "Americans have overwhelmingly turned against" this or that part of Obama's agenda when, in fact, the polling shows the exact opposite. Logically, the purpose of this rhetorical device is to create an MSM meme and convince the public they've caught a wave, yet, listening to them, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that they believe it themselves. This is where the subtle racism I was going to write about comes into play: for most Republicans in Congress, "American" is synonymous with "white conservatives." If you're them and you see a lot of white people waving teabags, it's impossible not to conclude that "Americans" have "overwhelmingly" turned against Obama and the Democrat Congress. They see only their own numbers, the "real Americans" as they so often call them. All others, particularly brown others, are invisible to them. Indeed, there has long been a sense of grievance bubbling among many Republicans, sane and insane alike, that black and Hispanic votes count just as much as those of Real Americans.

Possibly I judge them too harshly. It could be that the GOP's elites are simply assuming that the anger of what they still think of as their base will prevail over a weakly motivated and dispirited left and assume that the indies will forget that the GOP caused the recession that's killing them. That may not be a bad bet for 2010. But that's beside the real point which is that, win or lose, the Republican base's disassociation from reality and alienation from the party elites creates a strong likelihood that 2010 will, in the long run, be catastrophic for the GOP.

If the the GOP loses seats in 2010, it will be in the competitive districts where Democratic or independent votes are needed, not the packed, deep-red ones that elect people like Bachmann and Broun. Such a loss will increase the pressure from the non-office holding party elites to abandon the base-crazies who will, rightly, be blamed for the loss. Among the base crazies, there will be retrenchment backed by their greater share of the elective offices than before the defeat. Given the GOP's already robust penchant for schismatic witch hunts and purging thought criminals, a loss in 2010 is a recipe for a civil war that could shatter the party.

However, if I'm wrong and the Republicans do win back Congress in 2010, they will be damned if they govern and damned if they don't. If they control Congress, the institutional imperative to cooperate with Obama in governing, even if only to the extremely limited and bitterly acrimonious extent that they cooperated with Clinton after the budget showdowns of 1995, will be powerful. The corporate interests need governance--their kind of governance, of course--to occur if they are to prosper. At a minimum, as we saw in the 90s, Congress has to pass a budget and the president has the veto. If they resist the imperative to govern, the resulting gridlock will result in rage and alienation among the indepentents, non-base Republicans and corporate interests who provide the campaign funds and the votes that are the party's only path back to power.

It is possible that such a win will also relieve the fear-fueling the insanity in the base, that the relief of having something to block the feared degeneration into dictatorship will defuse their anger and paranoia. (2006 had something like that effect on me, I must admit.) However, I expect that the palliation will be partial at best. Some millions will calm down and begin to see things in a less irrational light. Millions of others, however, will double down on the crazy. There are powerful forces with a vested interest in forestalling any cooling of the anger or re-association with conventional reality among the base. Fox News, talk radio, the NRA, the Dominionist project headed by Jim Dobson, and the right wing blogosphere do not prosper if these people calm down and start thinking clearly. And let's face it squarely, if they had tip-top critical thinking skills, they wouldn't idolize Beck, would they? Given that, I fear that after they get over the thrill of victory, the sight of Republicans in Congress even minimally engaging in governing, or doing anything other than rapidly achieving the destruction of Barack Obama and the evil Democrat Party, will likely cause the base's rage and alienation to explode and, once again, you have civil war within the party.

Democrats have institutionalized coping mechanisms for managing internal tension and factional strife. As the "big tent" party, they have had to do so and it's been that way for, quite literally, a couple of centuries now. Joining the victor on the platform is part of the Democratic Party's culture and tradition and it is built into the party's operating structure. Superdelegates were conceived as one such mechanism, for example. And even so, internal strife and factional infighting have often cost us dearly. That was the case in 1972 and 1980. It was almost the case in 1992. Depending on how you define "Democrat," one could argue that it also cost us the election in 2000. (Yes, this history is why I can sometimes degenerate into a unity troll.)

Republicans have no such mechanisms or structures. They've relied upon the quick selection process dictated by winner take all primaries and the streak of authoritarianism that has long marked its voters to paper over any little instances of discord. They are ideologically dedicated to homogeneity and they not equipped as a party to deal with serious factional disunity. Win or lose in 2010, the fault line between those who are associated with reality and those who are disassociated bears all the indicia of, to borrow William Seward's phrase, an irrepressible conflict.

So I continue to believe that the Republican Party is on the road to extinction. The forces are not aligned quite the way I foretold a year ago, but it's close enough. It is a house divided against itself. It may cease to exist altogether, or it may "become all one thing or all the other," but it cannot continue as it is now. Regardless of which side prevails in 2010, in the next few years the Republican Party stands a good chance of ceasing to be a meaningful political entity, perhaps for a few years, possibly forever. If that happens, we will, for some period of time, effectively become a one-party state and a one-party state is not really a democracy. Imagine a Democratic Party without meaningful electoral competition. Imagine the acceleration of corporate cooption and internal factional strife, the lethargy and self-satisfied moral and intellectual stagnation. Take a look at Mexico during the long period of Partido Revolucionario Institucional dominance and the Liberal Democrats in Japan between 1958 and 1990 if you want some idea of how it could look. Can we afford that now?

So that's the first threat that these people present to democracy. And, like I said, it's not the scary one.

The scary one derives from the fact that their "movement"--and increasingly, that's how they think of themselves--embraces tens of millions of people whose thinking is militaristic, hyper-nationalistic and, in many cases, dominated by a strain of apocalyptic authoritarian theocratic fundamentalism. They worship at the alter of the NRA and the fantasy of sturdy, self-reliant rugged individualists using their private arsenals to resist an oppressive government (ignoring, of course, the fact that their definition of "oppressive," is a government that's not oppressing the people that the hard right wants oppressed). They already feel persecuted and alienated. Whether they are ultimately the purgers or the purged, those feelings can only intensify.

Ten, twenty or thirty million people feeling extreme alienation from the political system, feelings of oppression and ridicule, militancy, apocalyptic fundamentalist theocratic religious beliefs. Economic, social and cultural location and consequent extreme anxiety. A certain level of actual military experience sprinkled among that population. And guns. Lots and lots of guns.

That's the recipe for terrorism. Don't think it can't happen here.

Do the math. Assume the group I'm talking about now gets boiled down to a hard core of ten million really crazy people as the rhetoric becomes ever more inflammatory. Assume one tenth of one percent of that ten million decides it is compelled to take up arms against an oppressive government that is hellbent on destroying liberty. That's ten thousand people. Assume five percent of the ten million are impressed enough with them to lend them active support in the form of money, shelter and supplies. That's a support network of half a million. And remember all the gnashing of teeth and disgust at the failure of "moderate" Muslims to condemn Osama Bin Laden?  How hard is it to imagine a similar kind of acquiesence by silence setting in here?

The training infrastructure already exists. There's already growing alarm at the increasing degree of networking among militia groups, anti-abortion extremists and Fourth Reich nuts. It could happen here. It already has. 

Note: I retitled this at the suggestion of Cville Dem.  The Halloween reference was a bad idea.  I think I was trying to lighten up my own mood after writing an unusually heavy, brooding post.  Hopefully, someday I'll look back on the content of this blog and laugh at my own alarmism, but for now, it isn't funny.