APOCALYPSE CONSTANTLY

It's been somewhat surprising top me that sites such as Fox Nation, the Drudge Report, and The Blaze have been playing up the frightening aspects of what's going on in Japan -- I might have expected that they'd want to downplay the nuclear fears, given the right's fondness for nuclear power (and for bashing dirty hippies who oppose it).

But I realize that the right-wing neo-tabloid impulse is always to scare people. The point is to convey a sense that the fate of the world is determined by strange, incomprehensible forces, whether Japanese nuclear power plant operators or George Soros or the New Black Panthers. Once you've stirred up enough fear, you can edit the narrative to indicate that our salvation lies in Jesus or more guns or an American GOP daddy on a white horse, or at least a movement of people in tricorn hats determined to rid the world of eggheads and socialists.