His career path took a familiar course: first the gathering of a small band of followers, then the usual dismissal by the authorities as an unimportant crackpot, followed by violent and in this case successful action.
"It's just going to be seen as a crackpot idea by a bunch of crackpot commissioners, some of whom are term limited," Steve Mazurana, a longtime Greeley resident and former political science professor at the University of Northern Colorado, told The Denver Post.
And not by some crackpot reality show; by PBS.
I have become skeptical of the idea of working within the system for change, because I think the system itself is corrupted -- by money in politics, by crackpot governance (the filibuster, gerrymandering) and by apathy.
I have to say, however, that I am tempted by such crackpot notions when confronted by the heart-breaking headlines these days.
If groups such as the John Birch Society weren't isolated, Mr. Buckley warned, potential conservative voters "will pass by crackpot alley" and align with the other side politically.
The guest's chortling condescension and eager cynicism suggest he's unimpressed with the raft of crackpot bullcrap suggested by "ordinary" members of the public, but not because they're obviously wrong.
Over the past few years, conspiracy theories have gone from crackpot ideas peddled by crazy uncles and desert dwellers to even crazier crackpot ideas peddled by prominent politicians, cable news hosts, and tons of old people on Facebook.
Such rhetoric then was hardly less corrosive, or less supported by scholarly reasoning, than the crackpot vitriol now spewed by Beck and his ilk.
In fact, though, the late-twentieth-century crackpot is characterized not by outlandish ambition but by a weird banality.
