"Paranoid Politics" (1967) Summary and Analysis

Political paranoia is as American as apple pie, and probably pre-dates it with the arrival of fundamentalist Protestants in the 1600s, Vidal says. That residue of native paranoia was aggravated when "secular-minded 18th Century skeptics" arrived in North America and organized the United States along freethinking lines. Ever since, homegrown paranoia has shown itself in "western farmers denouncing eastern banks, Jews trying to censor the film of Oliver Twist, uneasy heterosexuals fearful of a homosexual takeover."

Because there is no single tribe to which all Americans belong, the great majority have never had any sense of national identity other than "the American way of life," which is nothing more than an economic system that involves "purchase of consumer goods on credit to maintain a high standard of living," Vidal observes. Thus, paranoids on the political left and...