Rhetorical momentum is a massive force for stupidity in our world. Diminishing returns set in rapidly on any policy, but the natural psychology is instead to Double Dumb Down on here-to-fore successful demagogic gambits.

For example, from the Los Angeles Times:

What’s the Alt-Right?

Thomas J. Main

Thomas J. Main [Email him]  is Professor at the School of Public and International Affairs, Baruch College, CUNY. He is writing a book on the Alt-Right and American politics.

Hillary Clinton attacked Donald Trump on Thursday for his cozy relationship with a new political movement, the Alternative Right, or Alt-Right. The Alt-Right rejects American democracy as did the American communists of the 1930s and the New Left of the 1960s. The main challenge to our way of life today now comes not from the radical left, but the Alt-Right. …

But it is the underlying ideology of the Alt-Right, rather than its controversial policy positions, that is truly sinister.

Those evil bastards don’t believe in the Zeroth Amendment to the Bill of Rights, as Founding Father Emma Lazarus carved on Statue of Liberty in 1787.

Alt-Right thought is based on white nationalism and anti-Americanism.

It’s almost as if the American Revolution had been about Americans demanding “the rights of Englishmen.”

The Alt-Right holds, in essence, that all men are not created equal, and that as racial equality has displaced white dominance, America has declined and no longer merits the allegiance of its white citizens.

Alt-Right leaders, unlike Neo-Nazis or KKK supporters, are intellectually and rhetorically sophisticated. Jared Taylor, editor of the American Renaissance website, holds degrees from Yale and the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris. …

In the letter, Taylor denies the notion that “the things you love about America…are rooted in certain principles.” Rather, “they are rooted in certain people.” That is, white people: “Germans, Swedes, Irishmen, and Hungarians could come and contribute to the America you love,” Taylor says. “Do you really believe that a future Afro-Hispanic-Caribbean-Asiatic America will be anything like the America your ancestors built?”

That’s pretty much the argument of Federalist Paper #2, but then you can’t get more anti-American than Federalist Paper #2.

White nationalism is more important than inalienable rights because “Even when they violate your principles, white people build good societies. Even when they abide by your principles, non-whites usually don’t.”

It’s almost as if Norway is a better place to live than Zimbabwe.

But to notice that would be wrong.

… The Alt-Right represents the first new philosophical competitor to liberalism, broadly defined, since the fall of Communism.

Is anyone listening to the Alt-Right? Yes: Key Alt-Right websites the American Renaissance and VDARE — named after Virginia Dare, “the first white child of English parentage born in America” — both received more web visits last November than Dissent and Ms. The National Policy Institute and its Radix Journal together had many more visits than the neoconservative policy journal National Affairs.

So the Alt-Right has an audience — and in Trump, it has a candidate. Trump’s rants about Mexican rapists charging across the southern border, his attacks on an American-born judge of Mexican descent, and his calls to ban Muslims from entering the country, are all in line with Alt-Right ideology. Accordingly, Alt-Right organizations made robocalls for Trump in the Iowa, New Hampshire and Utah primaries.

VDARE declared in July: “We are all Donald Trump Now.” And the website’s editor, Peter Brimelow, wrote on Wednesday: “Trump is the best presidential candidate on immigration that we’ve ever had. That’s not saying a lot, goodness knows — but it’s a YUGE advance.”[Links added, there are no links in this piece.]

… All schools of American political thought — and especially mainstream conservatives — must reject this dangerous ideology.

One of the patterns you notice more and more these days is the descendants of Ellis Island huddled masses reasoning, “Boy those stupid WASPs shouldn’t have let us in way back then because, even though they are too stupid to have figured it out yet, we’ve taken over. But eventually they might figure it out … so we’d better punish them now so they can’t ever do anything about it in case they ultimately wake up. Hmmhhhmm … I know let’s rub their noses in diversity by letting in a hundred million or so Muslims! Yeah, then those idiot WASPs will finally notice they are being insulted and humiliated like they deserve. If that’s not enough to finally get their attention, we could let in two hundred million Muslims. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?”

[Comment at Unz.com]