The way it usually goes when I write about politics and psychology/cognitive science is that I cite something or other in the news and then I draw a connection with authoritarianism, or levels of cognitive complexity or whatever.
This time, though, someone else has done it all for me:
I must admit that Bachmann always struck me primarily as (a) paranoid, (b) all over the map, and (c) in full-time projection mode. You just really had to wonder when Obama was more-or-less joined at the hip with BP, and she said, "The other thing we have to remember is that Obama loves to make evil whatever company it is that he wants to get more power from." Me, I got the immediate image of Bachmann as some sort of power-sucking Lovecraftian creature whose response to any sort of failure was intense envy, leading her to project her innermost desires onto others. How else to explain her typically totally whacko take expressing itself in precisely that form?
In short, I was just too taken in by the surface phantasmagoria of the Cougars and Dark-style Michelle Bachmann show. But as soon as I sasaw this short piece, it really clicked for me. Here's the rest of the really brief text:
