American Psychosis Quotes

“The problem was Republicans---the voters, the people. Not just those few thousand in the January 6 rage-driven mob, but the millions who accepted trump's reality free and irrational assertions, who looked to this dissembling power-mad egotist for the truth... His prejudices, his lies, his resentments were theirs. Millions love trump for that. Their fervor was the real threat to the nation.”
― David Corn, American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy

“Gingrich’s goal was to tar the Democrats as the party of corruption. In 1984, one of his advisers wrote a strategy memo saying that Gingrich and his allies should view themselves as the Viet Cong fighting the South Vietnamese government (the Democrats) while accepting support from the North Vietnamese (the Republican establishment). Both, he stated, were the “enemies.” The Democrats, he noted, “we must destroy” and the Republicans “we must take advantage of, lie to, sidetrack, confound, and possess by recruitment and propaganda.” The goal was to cast Democrats as “the oppressor,” a tyrannical enemy warranting the utmost despisal. This memo, as Gingrich’s biographer Julian Zelizer later said, was his “road map.” When”
― David Corn, American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy

“We can have an American president who does not govern with negativism and fear of the future.”
― David Corn, American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy

“But the fundamental construct of the John Birch Society was fact-free paranoid extremism. The whole thing—commies everywhere!—was lunatic. Yet Goldwater and other conservative Republicans treated the society as a respectable outfit. They desired these voters and volunteers, no matter how batty the group was. Goldwater was looking to protect these extremists and preserve their standing within the conservative world. In”
― David Corn, American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy

“He and the men in the room would form a “monolithic” organization to engage in a titanic struggle against subversion. It would be controlled from the top because a democratically operated outfit would be too vulnerable to infiltration and disruption from the wily and pernicious enemy. Consequently, Welch would be in charge. He would set policy and issue directives. This would not be a debating society. Welch shared his dream: a force of one million “dedicated supporters” and “sufficient resources.” With that, he could conquer the Reds. He would organize his followers into chapters to fight communism at the local level—within schools, libraries, and church groups. This new patriotic legion would be called the John Birch Society,”
― David Corn, American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy

“Nine of the men in the room—including Koch, Bunker, Oliver, and Andrews—signed up and agreed to join an advisory council for Welch’s operation.”
― David Corn, American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy

“For two days, Welch outlined the danger at hand. Communist Party membership in the United States had expanded eightfold in the past two decades. (That was unlikely.) The Reds had a secret plan to devalue the dollar to cause economic collapse and societal chaos. The communists were sneaky bastards, he noted. They tended not to use force. They subverted their targets, creeping into political parties, churches, schools, labor unions, other institutions, and governments and”
― David Corn, American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy

“The real function of the Great Inquisition of the 1950s was not anything so simply rational as to turn up spies or prevent espionage or even to expose actual Communists, but to discharge resentments and frustrations, to punish, to satisfy enmities whose roots lay elsewhere than in the Communist issue itself.” Communism, he pointed out, “was not the target but the weapon” in a tribalistic and unprincipled war against liberals, internationalists, and assorted elites that resonated with millions.”
― David Corn, American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy