Politics in convenient thriller (or comic book) form

A recent posting by Mark Schmitt at the blog TPM Cafe, "Video Game Politics," very much echoes a couple of our course themes: the affinity between conspiracism and extremist politics, and the tendency of conspiratorial thinking to render history and politics in movie thriller terms. In recent years, this latter trend has been in particular notable on the right, with hated figures like Saddam Hussein and Hillary Clinton depicted as something close to supervillains in terms of their amazing abilities and evil plans.

Lest anyone think I am exaggerating this conservative tendency to think in cartoonish terms, check out the "World's 1st conservative comic book," Liberality for All, in which a cyborg Sean Hannity of the future leads a band of high-tech conservative revolutionaries against a despotic liberal government:

LIBERALITY FOR ALL #1 It is 2021, tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of 9/11 It is up to an underground group of bio-mechanically enhanced conservatives led by Sean Hannity, G. Gordon Liddy and Oliver North to thwart Ambassador Usama Bin Laden's plans to nuke New York City...And wake the world from an Orwellian nightmare of United Nations dominated ultra-liberalism.

I am not making this up, and it does not seem to be a joke. Read the preview.