Mr. Taibbi, writing for Rolling Stone, is not easily frightened. He has faced down such Christian soldiers as John Hagee and emerged without a scratch! But Michele Bachmann scares him! More so than does Sarah Palin! Taibbi believes we dismiss Bachmann at our peril.
How can that be?
"Bachmann," says Taibbi, "is a religious zealot whose brain is a raging electrical storm of divine visions and paranoid delusions. She believes that the Chinese are plotting to replace the dollar bill, that light bulbs are killing our dogs and cats, and that God personally chose her to become both an IRS attorney who would spend years hounding taxpayers and a raging anti-tax Tea Party crusader against big government."
When you listen to Bachmann and you watch Bachmann, you may be tempted to laugh. Taibbi says, "Don't do it. ... You will want to laugh, but don't, because the secret of Bachmann's success is that every time you laugh at her, she gets stronger."
Here's the problem, says Taibbi: American politics is kinda crazy and so the crazy's have some potential. It's "like having a big right hand in boxing; you've always got a puncher's chance. And Bachmann is exactly the right kind of completely batshit crazy. Not medically crazy, not talking-to-herself-on-the-subway crazy, late-stage Kim Jon-II crazy -- crazy in the sense that she's living completely inside her own mind, frenetically pacing the hallways of a vast sand castle she's built in there, unable to meaningfully communicate with the human beings on the other side of the moat, who are all presumed to be enemies."
Taibbi does not, however, expect us to take his word as gospel truth, so he provides a plethora of evidence. He details Bachmann's background, from her finding Jesus at age 16 to her attending "one of the most ridiculous learning institutions in the Western Hemisphere, a sort of highway rest area with legal accreditation called the O.W. Coburn School of Law; Michele was a member of its inaugural class in 1979."
Today, this joke of a school is known as the Regent University School of Law, a special pet project of one of the worst of religious hucksters, Pat Robertson, and it's producing lawyers filled with biblical legalisms. They may not know much law, but they believe every detail of that hoary old book of nonsense known as the Bible!
Backmann, says Taibbi, was "educated in an extremist Christian tradition that rejects the notion of a separate, secular legal authority and views earthly law as an instrument for interpreting biblical values."
In other words, in spite of Bachmann's claim to revere the Constitution of the United States, she undermines its secular nature at every opportunity. And she is a danger, claims Taibbi, because she represents millions of Americans who believe the same things she does and who are just as crazy as she is!
But, you have to read the entire article to get the full picture as to just how batshit crazy she really is and what that might mean for the 2012 presidential election.
Matt's entire article is here.
