General "my-God-is-bigger-than-your-God" Boykin came to mind when I came across this passage in historian Richard Hofstadter's 1965 book The Paranoid Style in American Politics. Hofstadter was looking at the (politically but not necessarily clinically) paranoid worldview behind conspiracy theories of history.
As a member of the avant-garde who is capable of perceiving the conspiracy before it is fully obvious to an as yet unaroused public, the paranoid is a militant leader. He does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised, in the manner of the working politician. Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, the quality needed is not a willingness to compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish. Nothing but complete victory will do. Since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated - if not from the world, at least from the theater of operations to which the paranoid directs his attention. This demand for unqualified victories leads to the formulation of hopelessly demanding and unrealistic goals, and since these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens the paranoid's frustration. Even partial success leaves him with the same sense of powerlessness with which he bagan, and this in turn only strengthens his awareness of the vast and terrifying quality of the enemy he opposes.
Since General Boykin claims that the real enemy in the "war on terrorism" is Satan, and claims that God has revealed the forces of Satanic darkness to him in a photograph (just like in the supermarket tabloids!), this description probably fits him pretty well. How did somebody with ideas that koo-koo get into such a responsbile position. Oh, well, then there's John Ashcroft ...
Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal-Consitution has some thoughts about the Christian General.
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