The last time I saw Hunter S. Thompson speak before he died, he threw out a good line about how in the post-AIDS world, the New Right began to flourish because people were afraid to touch each other. And how Thompson mused, can we ever expect people to stand together in any other way when they are afraid to do that?
Now, years later, what seemed like a bit of insightful hyperbole appears to be backed up by social research. [Read more…]