Home » Bret Stephens and Paul Krugman of The NY Times give a double master class in how to admit to being wrong while remaining deeply, deeply wrong

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Bret Stephens and Paul Krugman of <i>The NY Times</i> give a double master class in how to admit to being wrong while remaining deeply, deeply wrong — 67 Comments

  1. For some reason, I’ve been getting lefty impositions on my FB page. Websites which seem to be pretty well put together. And they drip with insult and condescension.
    I don’t know from FB, so I have no idea why they come my way. It’s not as if I googled cures for toenail fungus or something.
    But they are insulting and self-congratulatory. At best, they’re trying to motivate lefties by making them seem really, really smart and wonderful compared to the conservatives. They don’t seem to be designed as a “You’re a……” kind of insult.
    Not sure what impact their originators think they’re supposed to have.
    I think a conservative, reading this stuff, would have less respect for the left in general than he had before reading this stuff.

  2. Regarding Stephens I am reminded of the scene from Forrest Gump when Jenny’s anti war boyfriend apologizes for hitting her by claiming ‘it’s just this damn war and that bastard Johnson’.

    For Stephens it’s all because of that bastard Trump.

  3. no krugman has been agreggate wrong, in a larger way, he pushed for a larger stimulus as far back as 2009, but scorpions you can’t be surprised by them

    stephens once upon a time, I thought have the capability to understand the underlying issues, but he is too ridden with bibi and orange man derangement,

  4. Krugman is an angry, insufferable dolt – a truly wretched little man. If he possessed even an ounce of self-awareness, he would look at all the ridiculous predictions he’s made over the years that were not just wrong, but absolutely dead wrong, and think about making a course correction. But not our Paulie.
    https://www.bizpacreview.com/2018/01/22/paul-krugman-lord-wrong-predictions-592049/
    As for Stephens, you can’t much help someone who holds himself in such obvious, unashamedly high self-regard while looking down his nose as his “lessers”. He’s a pathetic human being.
    I graciously award Neo bonus points in today’s “calling out clueless arrogance” sweepstakes for how she seamlessly worked the Grande Dame of Brain-Dead Conventional Wisdom Peggy Noonan’s name into this piece. I am convinced Noonan’s laptop has an “autopilot” key which she hits to crank out her nauseating column in the WSJ each week.
    Talk about a Trifecta of truly obnoxious elitist snobs.

  5. Both writers represent their audience quite well. People who read (and believe) the NY Times are so clueless that they elect people like Alvin Bragg for DA. Biden is the front man for a far left pack of ideologues who do not understand reality. Trump built things. Conrad Black wrote that he was suspicious of Trump when he hired him to develop the Sun Times building in Chicago. At the end, he says, everything came in as promised and on or under budget. We are being ruled by people who cannot understand how to get from wish to fact. For the Green Nude Eel enthusiasts, I have a book for them to read. It is called, “The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700 to 2100.”

    They are trying to take us in the opposite direction under the delusion that we can maintain civilization without fossil fuels. Boris Johnson even made an idiotic speech about how the steam engine was a terrible thing.

    That book even makes the point that, in 1875, the age gap between rich and poor was 17 years in England. Life expectancy was 41 years from birth for the lower classes in England in 1875 and for the rich, 58 years. Now the life expectancy gap is 4 years.

    If the climate hysterics had spent the last 40 years building nuclear power plants, I might pay attention.

  6. Admitting one is wrong and having “lessons in humility”…. hah! Obviously Krugman never spent a career as an experimental physicist. Add on to that, he obviously has never played golf either. Combine those two together and it’s no wonder I view myself as constantly wrong and never expect anything but the worst from myself. That one 5-iron shot that soars, hits the green and then stops dead then becomes a thing to wonder and behold. Or, after spending 4 months trying to find every bug in the wiring, leaks in the vacuum system, and why the optics isn’t focusing, and then that one bit of data finally comes through…same thing.

  7. Noonan went to Farleigh Dickinson, and just knew that her failure to attend a more prestigious school had all the Reagan white house gals looking down their noses at her. And ever since she’s been elitist upon elitist, and I really haven’t had time or interest to read her.

    I used to like reading Megan McArdle. She had a no-bullshit, wonky approach to writing that appealed to my autistic side. And then came Trump and she delivered anonymously-sourced gossip about how Trump didn’t’ read the briefing books. Plus, she went behind the WaPo paywall and I’m not going to pay to read that crap.

    And is there any conservative anywhere who doesn’t remember Bret Stephens’ worship of Obama’s pant creases? Did any one have any interest in him after that?

    And hell, it’s been years since I heard or read a Democrat quote Krugman about anything.

  8. no that david brooks, but michael gerson, george will and others were nearly as obsequious, in that first year equally as disdainful of the tea party,

  9. I believe it was David Brooks that was so enamored with Obama’s pants crease.

  10. There are tiers of NeverTrumpers. Some thought Obama and his group were so cool but just a little wrong on policy while others like Jonah Goldberg were critical of Obama and then went total TDS.

    Others like Jennifer Rubin and Tom Nichols are just pure grifters and will say whatever their masters pay them to say.

  11. I do not read either man regularly, but have the following impressions. Krugman is stupid, at least about political and social matters. I guess you can add economics to the list, as well, with this recent post. I recall that he won his Nobel as a result of some rather technical analysis. Generally, he makes no sense and is regularly and obviously wrong. Stephens is a different story. Firstly, he is a more talented writer. But I suspect he worries about not being one of the NYT team, so is careful about his criticism of the left and praise of the right. In other words, he has a weak spine. His writing can he somewhat useful, however, because it gives some insight as to what level of “right-thinking” is tolerated by the NYT and his colleagues.

  12. I’m pretty sure Krugman won his prize for being anti-GOP.
    Others like Stephens, Brooks and Rubin are classed as right-side of the aisle but no Repub seems to like them.

    Victor Davis Hansen had a good quip after the 2016 election. In effect he said “Getting the nomination was hard. Winning the election against Hillary was hard. But now Trump’s job is easy. Get up every morning, read Bret Stephens’ editorial, then do the opposite.”

  13. Harvard econ prof. Robert Barro, many years ago aired his complaints about Krugman. In a WSJ letter to the ed., I think. He had three points.

    He said Krugman’s expertise is in the area of micro economic trading transactions. So why is he always opining on macroeconomic issues? Two, many of the things he writes in the NYTimes directly contradict things Krugman has published in books or in journals. You know, “peer reviewed” journals.

    I’ve forgotten the third point. Drat.
    ______

    In Neo’s telling, Krugman does mention supply issues slightly. He doesn’t mention labor force participation rate which is connected to supply issues.

    https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm

  14. These are the types of ‘explanations’ (I wouldn’t call them apologies, and I suspect in their own minds, they don’t either) that are issued through gritted teeth when the tsunami of evidence-to-the-contrary becomes insurmountable and they are no longer able to ignore it without appearing ridiculous. It’s a calculated appeal in both cases, in my view, for the sake of salvaging the credibility of the ‘expert’. There’s quite a lot of this going around right now; declaring oneself ‘wrong’ or ‘misguided’ while steadfastly remaining unreformed.

    And that’s the key. None of these examples show learning or changes to methodology, or any kind of grasp of what it was they got wrong. Nice try, you dopes.

    One of the unrelenting themes about Trump, who they apparently cannot let go of nearly 2 years after the election, is that he appeals to the unwashed, Walmart-smellin’, blue collar ignoramuses. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen / heard this claimed, against the number of times I witness it directly refuted by the evidence to the contrary, almost immediately. Doctors, lawyers, professionals, educators, workers and people of every stripe.

    So it turns out that Obama’s pejorative term for the Pennsylvanians is really better directed at the Deep Blue Progressives: When it comes to Trump, they are the dyed-in-the-wool Bitter Clingers.

  15. TommyJay:

    My impression of Krugman’s long downhill slide is that it’s a mixture of arrogance – he got very full of himself – and marriage to wife number two (both wives named “Robin,” by the way). I got information on the latter from this New Yorker profile of Krugman, which I read back in 2010. An excerpt:

    When he has a draft, he gives it to Wells to edit. Early on, she edited a lot—she had, they felt, a better sense than he did of how to communicate economics to the layperson. (She is also an economist—they met when she was a postdoc at M.I.T. and he was teaching there.) But he’s much better at that now, and these days she focusses on making him less dry, less abstract, angrier. Recently, he gave her a draft of an article he’d done for Rolling Stone. He had written, “As Obama tries to deal with the crisis, he will get no help from Republican leaders,” and after this she inserted the sentence “Worse yet, he’ll get obstruction and lies.” Where he had written that the stimulus bill would at best “mitigate the slump, not cure it,” she crossed out that phrase and substituted “somewhat soften the economic hardship that we face for the next few years.” Here and there, she suggested things for him to add. “This would be a good place to flesh out the vehement objections from the G.O.P. and bankers to nationalization,” she wrote on page 9. “Show us all their huffing and puffing before you dismiss it as nonsense in the following graf.”

    Etc, etc,

  16. both wives named “Robin,”

    What are the odds?

    Nationalization of the banks? There was an econ guy who’s name I can’t remember, who was an adjunct or assistant prof. at MIT, formerly an econ analyst at the IMF, and he was screeching about nationalization during the credit bust of 2008. Can you imagine the disaster? Although banks are so highly regulated, it’s possible the difference would not be all that great.

    The minute Obama nationalized student lending I knew there would calls to forgive debt in short order. It took moderately longer than I expected. Now apply that to almost all loans. “Playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot.”

  17. Gordon Scott-

    One of Trumps real talents was removing the mask from people trying to convince us their sane, or, one of us. Trump drives lefty’s, even lefty’s with their cloaking devices activated, like McArdle absolutely insane. They reveal themselves.

    Johnson’s piece sounds like the epitome of one of those “east coaster amoung the midwest yokels” reports. “I misjudged them”.

  18. Griffin: You are right. Creases Boy was David Brooks.

    Richard Cook: “east coaster among the midwest yokels” Oh, yeah, Gorillas in the Mist. It’s funny. You can take a European to a midwest county fair and they’ll soak in the knowledge and culture. It does not work with coastal elites.

    They’d be shocked if I took them to my legislative district meeting last Thursday. They censured the state house speaker (from our district) not for failing to uncertify 2020; instead for blocking election security measures. Also the Republican mayor of Mesa for endorsing a Democrat.

    I got to meet:
    3 US Senate candidates
    2 US House candidates
    2 State Treasurer candidates
    3 Corporation Commissioner candidates
    1 County Commission candidate
    1 State Senate candidate
    2 State House candidates
    1 Justice of the Peace candidate

    There was a raffle for three semi-auto pistols. Sadly I did not win.

  19. Joseph stiglitz certified venezuelan central bank and the subprime market

  20. I once thought Brett Stephens was a reasonable conservative. I knew Jonah Goldberg’s in-laws and liked his book |Liberal Fascism.” Both caught TDS. As did Liz Cheney. We all know what she’s up to. She made a speech at the Reagan Library a while back. She claims to be a staunch conservative, but truly hates DJT. He’s dangerous, she says. She just sent me a letter requesting a donation to support her run in November. I sent it back with this note.

    “Sorry, I’m all out of money. Gas and food are taking a huge chunk of my fixed, meager income.

    You represent Wyoming, yet you are attacking the man whose policies were very good for your state. Under Biden and company Wyoming’s oil, gas, and coal industries will be hamstrung, and your ranches will be destroyed. Under Biden’s policies Wyoming will become a n economic basket case. Yet, you are serving his cause. Resign and apologize to the people of Wyoming.”

    I know she’ll never see it, but I had to get it off my chest.

  21. So Stephens is honey and Trump supporters are flies (“flies” is Greek for deplorables). What’s he gonna do with the files once he’s caught them?

  22. “…gritted teeth…”

    Indeed.
    But not so much “explanations” as desperate rationalizations.

    Which means they don’t—and won’t—have to dig any deeper regarding their intentions, assumptions, motives, logic, conclusions, failures, modus operandi.

    More of an “Oops, I was caught out…” than genuine contrition.
    More of an OK, I may have been wrong this time, but…” than real repentance.

    Which means they still haven’t shown that they should be taken very seriously.
    (OTOH one ought never expect too much…and I may be expecting too much from them….)

  23. In his weekly monologue, Larry Kudlow never fails to succinctly state “inflation is the result of too many dollars chasing too few goods”. You flood the markets by printing trillions upon trillions of dollars and at the same time declare war on fossil fuels by cutting and imposing restrictions on production of the lifeblood of the economy and inflation takes off. Who could have imagined that? If Krugman had any honor, he would return his Nobel Prize.

  24. Precisely so.
    Even Joe Scarborough(!) was able to conclude that had it not been for Manchin (and Sinema) nixing Bribe Back Better, inflation—already pushed to absurd levels—would be through the roof.

    The only reason why Krugman “didn’t get it” is because he’s an extreme NARRATIVE-UBER-ALLES partisan hack…who can no longer pretend. Stephens is a bit more “complicated” since he’s able to admit, as opposed to many others, that he at least sipped some of the Kool-Aid…(but just a bit!).

    And, of course, THE LIES CONTINUE TO PILE UP (why exactly should they stop?)…
    Here’s Heather Mac Donald (though I didn’t realize she wrote/shared columns with the NY Post…
    “Dems ludicrously cast themselves as ‘tough on crime’ “—
    https://nypost.com/2022/07/22/democrats-ludicrously-cast-themselves-as-tough-on-crime/
    H/T Powerline blog.

  25. Awesome slapdown of two incompetent pundits. I wasn’t impressed with Stephens when he was at the WSJ and he’s gone downhill since (based upon a small sample of his NYT blatherings). Extra points for including Noonan, the WSJ’s worst columnist.

  26. Art Deco: Mr. Gavora’s life reminds me of that of Wolfgang Grajonca, better known as Bill Graham, although they pursued very different lines of work once they settled in America.

    Richard Cook: The plural of lefty is lefties, not lefty’s.

  27. The reason that Krugman and Stephens miss the real appeal of Trump is that it is proverbial kryptonite to them, to the point that they can write hundreds of words supposedly about the attitudes of conservative Americans, without mentioning the two most important words Trump ever said to them…

    “America First”!

  28. I am certainly not surprised by the gentry class” dislike of Trump. He is a salesman and exaggerates. The fact that he usually delivers is not enough to overcome their distaste. The level of hatred and loathing probably has more to do with his supporters than his own style. After all, he was popular with the “elites” when he was a donor to politicians and not a rival. The fact that “Deplorables” are enthusiastic supporters is the source of much of the hate, I believe. Sarah Palin was another example of such class hatred.

    I also believe that much of the hollowing out of US manufacturing was due to the regulatory state which drove manufacturing out of California. Yes, labor was cheaper in China then but regulation was absent. Needless to say that the enviro wackos will not admit that and they are in both parties.

  29. jonah has no excuse for his stupidity, with his mother and his father in law’s example, I had a brief dialog with him back around 2009, that dissabused me of the notion he had a clue, or could even find out where to get one,

  30. There are some legitimate arguments that Trump running and/or winning in 2024 wouldn’t be great for the country. But they all fall short of the main reason we need Trump to run and win in 2024.

    A huge chunk of our political/media/cultural establishment has lost touch with reality. They’ve spent so long floating on a sea of unearned prosperity they no longer know how to swim. Their hatred of Trump is just their reaction to their state of delusion being challenged.

    Trump’s return to the White House is our last chance to snap these people out of it before they inevitably lead us into some Great Depression-level economic catastrophe and literal hanging-people-from-lampposts-type social unrest.

    Mike

  31. “jonah has no excuse for his stupidity”

    Jonah was a guy who fell into conservative media because of his mother, gained a niche as a Simpsons-reference guy when that level of “wit” was notable on the right, churned out a few conservative-flattering books (likely with a lot of assistance), and now is consumed by his own laziness and lack of seriousness.

    Mike

  32. That video of Tucker and the general was on TV last Friday and I watched. First, why did we get so deeply invested in Ukraine ? I believe that if Trump had been re-elected, this would not have occurred. First, we all know Ukraine is corrupt and Biden has been a major beneficiary. Next, the Democrats, in trying to get rid of Trump, alienated Russia and made it impossible to deal with them. Now, I think there is a real possibility that we will suffer serious harm from these idiots who run the country. The Iran deal seems to be off the table but Iran is now joining the Russia based BRICS group.

    The crazy war on agriculture seems to be gaining adherents. There was a video last week (That I can’t find now) showing an interview in UK with some activist opposed to all agriculture. Apparently these people want to return to hunter-gatherer life. The organics are crazy enough for me.

  33. Stephens has been swimming in the sewer so long he has lost his ability to discern what stinks.

    David Horowitz had a long, hard intellectual struggle to get from red diaper baby to anti-communist. One of his light bulb moments was the realization that liberals weren’t really different from communists. They just want to get there a little slower. The key takeaway is that they posses the same belief in the use of coercion and the same smug arrogance in their own moral superiority. (And I apologize if I haven’t gotten Horowitz quite accurately, but that was what I think I understood.)

    The founders understood that power corrupts. And they possessed enough humility to realize that they were susceptible.

    Humility is the foundational virtue. Everything flows from it. And the essential flaw in the Left is the absence of humility. Their moral depravity starts there.

    Krugman and Stephens lack humility. They lack wisdom. They can’t learn from their mistakes because they aren’t willing to accept and embrace their ignorance, their foolishness and their capacity for error. Plus, they really do despise and hate working class “Deplorables”.

    They should know better. But their moral defects prevent them from learning.

  34. Jonah was a guy who fell into conservative media because of his mother, gained a niche as a Simpsons-reference guy when that level of “wit” was notable on the right, churned out a few conservative-flattering books (likely with a lot of assistance), and now is consumed by his own laziness and lack of seriousness.

    His mother was a literary agent and his father an executive with a newspaper syndicate. I think his father’s influence would have helped getting his column syndicated, but he was actually a fairly capable producer of columns at that time. He was hired by NR in 1998 to establish their website, which has been passed on periodically since. (It appears to be a term-limited position). He was out of work and broke prior to that. Over the period from 1991 to 1998 he tried to establish himself as a producer of documentaries (not successfully) and had some sort of staff position at AEI (which his parents may or may not have helped him land).

    You look at him, his wife, his late brother, his brother’s widow and the whole mise en scene is puzzling.

  35. Stephens needs to read Salena Zito.

    He doesn’t really know any deplorables so he has come to believe all the nasty, hateful slanders that have been used to assault them since before they were attracted to the tea party.

    I suspect his problem starts there. He bought the hate. I wonder if he knows anyone who owns a pickup (other than those who keep one at their stables of their weekend home in horse country).

  36. All those guys’ heads—al of ’em—should be exploding like those Martians’ heads in “Mars Attacks”.

    They should be…but they’re not.
    Now why might that be…?

    Maybe cuz like all those Soviet symps of yore, all those lies just HAD to be TRUE?
    Cuz since the Party encompasses everything and the Party IS everything—including and especially “the truth”—that the real truth (the true truth?) was all propaganda…and could be—had to be—ignored, covered up, despised, derided…MOCKED, DISTORTED and SLANDERED?

    Which is why all those lies had to be churned out hour after hour, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, covering up all the coverups, etc., ad nauseum…until the whole house of cards collapsed.

    They HAD to protect themselves in order to keep the farce running, keep the circus operating, keep the BS flying.

    And it was an impressive facade, indeed it was…until…it wasn’t.

    But the Democrats KNOW the truth.
    And so it ain’t gonna happen to them….

    Alas, the only question is how long they’ll be able to keep that beach ball in the air.

  37. Exploding heads (continued):
    “AG Merrick Garland’s kid gloves vs. Hunter Biden”—
    https://nypost.com/2022/07/23/ag-merrick-garlands-kid-gloves-vs-hunter-biden/
    H/T Powerline blog.

    “Where’s Waldo?”, that excruciatingly infantile game, has evolved into “Where’s Merrick?”…

    …with the whole point of the exercise being “Protect Hunter/Joe AT ALL COSTS”….

    But seriously, is “The smartest man I know” really worth protecting?…
    (Heh, jus’ kiddin’…)

  38. More exploding heads:
    “Fauci Set to Receive Fatter Pension Than President’s Annual Salary”—
    https://www.theepochtimes.com/fauci-set-to-receive-fatter-retirement-pension-than-presidents-annual-salary_4615643.html
    Well…doing one’s best to destroy a country has GOT TO be worth something (doesn’t it?)…

    Hold on: To be read together with:
    ‘Birx Admits She Knew COVID-19 Vaccines Were Never “Going To Protect Against Infection” ‘ (which by now is a “golden oldie”…)—
    https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/birx-admits-covid-19-vaccines-were-never-going-protect-against-infection

    Alas, to be fair to Il Fauci, his intention wasn’t so much to destroy the country as to do his best to ensure that Trump wasn’t re-elected…and if the country were to be destroyed in the process, well…it’s not his fault—no skin off his back—since he had the VERY BEST of intentions….Really, he did!
    (And one could certainly say the same thing about Hillary’s and Obama’s exquisite Russiagate gala and the Democratic Party’s 2020 election extravaganza…. That’s right: the VERY BEST of intentions….)

    Gosh, maybe now’s the time to have a little fireside chat about Fentanyl… (I mean, Joe’s just like FDR, right?)

  39. Related (sorta):
    Key article on the process by which journalism and the media got so FUBAR…which in turn is screwing up society (and politics) BAR…
    “How the Media Polarized Us;
    “The shift from ad revenue to the pursuit of digital subscriptions has turned journalism into post-journalism.—
    https://www.city-journal.org/how-the-media-polarized-us?
    H/T Instapundit
    https://instapundit.com/533163/
    Key graf:
    ‘…If ad-driven media manufactured consent, reader-driven media manufacture anger. If ad-driven media served consumerism, reader-driven media serve polarization. There can be no “solution” for a shift of such magnitude. “How do we fix polarization?” is the wrong question. The right question is, “How are we going to live with it?” ‘

  40. Stephens: “When I looked at Trump, I saw a bigoted blowhard making one ignorant argument after another.”

    Without getting into the merits of any of Trump’s arguments, which over time seem to have uniformly been proved correct, I can understand that in 2015 and 2016 someone might reflexively perceive TV personality Trump as a blowhard. But, what evidence has there ever been that Trump has ever been bigoted?

  41. Ira M. Siegel:

    The “bigoted” charge was initially based on two things, as far as I can remember. The first was a statement he made in his very first speech when he announced his candidacy. It had to do with illegal immigration from Mexico and rapists. I wrote something about it here, although that post isn’t really about Trump. The second thing was his statement about banning entry to people from Muslim countries.

    That was Trump the candidate. Then as president he made the “fine people” statement about Charlottesville, which was widely misconstrued by the Democrats and used to paint him as a racist supporter of white supremacists. See this.

    There were probably other things, too, but those are the ones I remember.

  42. Thanks, neo, for the reminder.
    And, if I remember correctly, his comments about the immigration from Mexico and the “fine people” were intentionally misconstrued by the Dems and much of the media.
    Obviously, and empirically, unvetted immigration permits entry into America of vicious criminals.
    His “fine people” comment was coupled with a condemnation of the white supremacists who had come to Charlottesville. As shown by the link you provided, the Dems’ condemning that statement was among the many anti-Trump hoaxes. For the convenience of other readers, here is a direct quote of a transcript from https://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/15/full-text-trump-comments-white-supremacists-alt-left-transcript-241662 of Trump’s press conference with emphasis added by me:

    REPORTER: The neo-Nazis started this thing. They showed up in Charlottesville.

    TRUMP: Excuse me, they didn’t put themselves down as neo-Nazis, and you had some very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides. You had people in that group – excuse me, excuse me. I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down, of to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.

    REPORTER: George Washington and Robert E. Lee are not the same.

    TRUMP: Oh no, George Washington was a slave owner. Was George Washington a slave owner? So will George Washington now lose his status? Are we going to take down – excuse me. Are we going to take down, are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? What do you think of Thomas Jefferson? You like him? Okay, good. Are we going to take down his statue? He was a major slave owner. Are we going to take down his statue? You know what? It’s fine, you’re changing history, you’re changing culture, and you had people – and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally – but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly. Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people, but you also had troublemakers and you see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball bats – you had a lot of bad people in the other group too.

    REPORTER: I just didn’t understand what you were saying. You were saying the press has treated white nationalists unfairly?

    TRUMP: No, no. There were people in that rally, and I looked the night before. If you look, they were people protesting very quietly, the taking down the statue of Robert E. Lee. I’m sure in that group there were some bad ones. The following day, it looked like they had some rough, bad people, neo-Nazis, white nationalists, whatever you want to call ‘em. But you had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest and very legally protest, because you know, I don’t know if you know, but they had a permit. The other group didn’t have a permit. So I only tell you this: there are two sides to a story. I thought what took place was a horrible moment for our country, a horrible moment. But there are two sides to the country. Does anybody have a final – does anybody have a final question? You have an infrastructure question.

    The “reporter” was obviously trying to trip up Trump, and he failed.

    Regarding Trump’s call for a temporary shut down of Muslims entering our country after the San Bernardino killings carried out in part by a Pakistani here on a fiancé visa, well that made sense, particularly with 9/11 being of recent memory. That is, vetting of immigrants and vistors is important. In my opinion, Stephens’ leap to accusing Trump of bigotry was malicious and, as you indicated in your post, instructive about Stephens’ own character. Trump had a reputation of being unbigoted when it came to Americans.

  43. More: Dems, RINOs, many media folk, think it is VERY important that America demonstrate in the extreme that it is not racist. They insist that we even do really stupid things (or stupidly avoid doing necessary things) in order to make a demonstration that we are not racist. Trump, of course, said, in not exactly these words, “Hey, let’s STOP being stupid.”

  44. “…But, what evidence has there ever been that Trump has ever been bigoted?…”

    The point is that Democrats and their friends and colleagues (even “mythical” ones) MUST perceive all enemies as BIGOTS.

    As RACISTS.

    And that is PRECISELY the argument!

    It’s really the only argument they have (and they believe it’s not only ALWAYS TRUE but that it’s ALWAYS EFFECTIVE).

    Kind of a “You DON’T AGREE with me??” You MUST BE A RACIST!!”—Nothing new here, mind you, but it’s a fun game to play and the virtue of it—along with the ability to “freeze” your despised target—makes one feel soooo good!…

    ….The only problem is that there’s this story of the boy who cried “wolf” a few times to often…. IOW folks have begun to catch on to their sorry, pathetic, despicable, dishonest game.

    That is, it’s more clearly being perceived by most thinking Americans—especially minorities (though it seems as though the intellectual classes haven’t quite caught on yet)—as a truly bogus, rather than ompelling, argument for the intellectually impoverished….

  45. Love ya, Sarah. Here is a description of this Deplorable: Married 28 years, father of three contributing adults, mechanical engineer designing and manufacturing American OEM products(minor in history), former soldier and Desert Storm vet, and current volunteer firefighter.

    I support Trump wholeheartedly because he actually did what GOPe Stephens and the 20 year losing war crowd campaigned on but never implemented for the last 30 years. The actual results tell the story for both examples.

    Stephens literally spits on me with his condescension and he can go sod himself. My People make him the loser.

  46. Completely different worlds. WAPO this morning has an article saying Biden should announce he will not seek a second term. Over six thousand comments so far mostly claim he should and that he is doing a great job. The Blue Bubble is real and its inhabitants show no signs of changing.

  47. Thanks Art Deco for that link. I can’t get enough of stories like that. I taught English as a second language (ESL) shortly after the wall came down. Many of my students were from Eastern Europe. One of my great joys in life was getting to know them and hear their stories. Much of what I think I know about the world came from those classes.

  48. Well, the answer is right there in the beginning. Anyone who believes that one time stimulus checks would go into savings, rather than being spent is an absolute IDIOT. I don’t know on what planet that might be true, but it sure as hell isn’t on this one.

  49. deadroddy:

    Not everyone lives paycheck to paycheck in this country, even though the Feds are idiots.

  50. }}} A big piece of the plan was one-time checks to taxpayers, which we argued would be largely saved rather than spent; another big piece was aid to state and local governments, which we thought would be spent only gradually, over several years.

    What the man just did is admit that he’s a complete, total, fucking imbecile, whose “advice” should be scoffed at by drunken homeless bums.

    “Hey, have some free money!” ??

    Yeah, no one’s going to spend THAT. Particularly not governments. What planet are you from, you lackwit idiot, that that has not ALWAYS been the nature of the people around you?

  51. Stephens and Krugman and Goldberg and Brooks and Blow all toil on A.G. Sulzberger’s thought plantation.

    The crops are blighted.

  52. Excellent summary, Neo, particularly the discussion of the insufferable Stephens.

    Admittedly, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel, but you did it with a nuclear-tipped torpedo. So well-deserved.

    As both an old guy and an old-fashioned guy, I still have a sense of shame. So, if I were in Stephens’ shoes and happened to read your column, I would resign from the NY Times and try to do something with my life.

    Forty years ago, when I was in the Air Force, one of the more raunchy expressions that my fellow enlisted folks used when talking about what they’d do after separating, went like this: “I’m going to get a job cleaning the restrooms at the bus station with my tongue until I get my self-respect back.”

    That might be a good place for Stephens to start.

  53. Thanks Barry:

    This guy makes Klaus Schwab look like a piker, a dilatente in the court of the Good Idea Fairies.

  54. Seems they’re all so eager to out-evil the other…
    But this guy has delusions of power that are a bit off the deep end…
    Scary…
    (Hallucinations ‘R Us?)
    – – – – – – – – – –
    And wouldn’t you know it, it’s time for another…REDEFINITION OF TERMS!
    Just as Vaccination was dutifully redefined by a desperate CDC (because reality kinda got in the way and wasn’t terribly cooperative); and then “Woman” had to be redefined (at least at first for the benefit of frustrated, mediocre male athletes who couldn’t seem to win any medals); and then practically everything else had to be redefined to be more consistent with Leftist “reality” (AKA insanity)…”Biden” has—SURPRISE!!—decided that the time is ripe to redefine “Recession”…
    “Delusional Biden Admin Front-Runs Recessionary GDP Print… By Redefining Recession”—
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/delusional-biden-admin-front-runs-recessionary-gdp-print-redefining-recession

    If “Biden” is in Wonderland than it behooves us all to be.
    If “Biden” is naked, then the only logical thing to do is make clothing illegal….
    Etc.

    One may well wonder what they’ll do when the depression hits….
    (Probably have to haul out the “Things-have-never-been-better” tap dance routine and make it mandatory across the land…the idea being that if people are busy tap-dancing 24/7 they won’t notice that the economy has tanked. It’s not original—I stole the idea from Krugman.)

  55. To paraphrase Bret Stephens: “When I looked at [Stephens], I saw a bigoted blowhard making one ignorant argument after another.”

  56. “Groupthink” was an idea developed decades ago to explain US decision-making on Vietnam and the Bay of Pigs fiasco.

    Type I: Overestimations of the group — its power and morality

    Illusions of invulnerability creating excessive optimism and encouraging risk taking.
    Unquestioned belief in the morality of the group, causing members to ignore the consequences of their actions.

    Type II: Closed-mindedness

    Rationalizing warnings that might challenge the group’s assumptions.
    Stereotyping those who are opposed to the group as weak, evil, biased, spiteful, impotent, or stupid.

    Type III: Pressures toward uniformity

    Self-censorship of ideas that deviate from the apparent group consensus.
    Illusions of unanimity among group members, silence is viewed as agreement.
    Direct pressure to conform placed on any member who questions the group, couched in terms of “disloyalty”
    Mindguards— self-appointed members who shield the group from dissenting information.

    It’s still around now. Isn’t it what people were voting for when they voted for Biden and “normal” politics? The party left criticizes Biden for what they think was too moderate and consensus-oriented an approach. What really made them angry is that their form of groupthink didn’t prevail over the groupthink of the more Establishment, not so radical Democrats. Say what you will about the chaos of the Trump years, groupthink wasn’t a problem then.

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