[Josh] Marshall and [Keith] Olbermann — like conspiracy nuts — attempt to impose meaning on reality by reading a coherent narrative into random and unrelated events.
“Yeah, man, this guy believed some of the same things that those other guys believe, and then he went out and killed some people! So their entire belief system must be the same, and he must be listening to their dog-whistle! The truth is OUT THERE, man!”
That reasoning process, by the way, is exactly the same one used by Birchers to prove that anyone who talks about socialism is “really a communist.” This or that word “really means” whatever the Communist Manifesto says, so by putting together different people’s use of different words in concatenation with selected quotes from the Manifesto, one can syllogistically deduce a hidden agenda the size of Texas. It’s the same reasoning process that sends Glenn Beck, based on some particular word somebody uses, to feverishly scrawling dotted lines between people’s names on his chalkboard. The possibility that a wide range of movements might use similar language in different ways, without it functioning as a secret Masonic handshake, is apparently too nuanced for such people.
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