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
On the one hand, I applaud Krugman and Stephens for admitting they were wrong about something. It’s not easy to do and many many people never do it no matter how many times they’re wrong and no matter how public the venue in which they were wrong.
On the other hand, it’s possible – and not at all rare – to admit you’re wrong about something and at the same time be wrong about what you were wrong about, while at the same time making excuses and compounding the error[s] by committing more errors. That’s what Krugman and Stephens have done.
Not only has Krugman been wrong repeatedly about a large variety of predictions, but although he says he was wrong to have missed the seriousness of the coming inflation, he says it’s all just so much more complex than the rest of us can know:
But what, exactly, did I get wrong? Both the initial debate and the way things have played out were more complicated than I suspect most people realize…
What we had…was an argument about magnitudes [of inflation]…Those of us on Team Relaxed argued, however, that the structure of the plan would lead to a much smaller surge in G.D.P. than the headline number would suggest. 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.
He goes on in that vein for a while, and adds that a lot of the metrics he and his fellows on “Team Relaxed” were using happened just as they had envisioned. And yet somehow inflation got much worse than they had thought – why? Here’s his explanation for that:
Much, although not all, of the inflation surge seems to reflect disruptions associated with the pandemic. Fear of infection and changes in the way we live caused big shifts in the mix of spending: People spent less money on services and more on goods, leading to shortages of shipping containers, overstressed port capacity, and so on.
Now, we can’t expect someone like an economist to have thought of such things, can we?
Then he goes into other signs that the economy got “overheated” – but even that shouldn’t have led to all this inflation. Next:
So something was wrong with my model of inflation — again, a model shared by many others, including those who were right to worry in early 2021. I know it sounds lame to say that Team Inflation was right for the wrong reasons, but it’s also arguably true.
Yes Paul, it does sound lame. And what does “arguably true” mean – that a person can mount some sort of argument that it’s true?
And of course both Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s lockdown of major cities have added a whole new level of disruption.
Of course.
Krugman calls all of this a “lesson in humility.” I don’t think Krugman is capable of such a thing in any deep or meaningful way. One thing Krugman has entirely left out – something I think was operating hugely and still is – is Krugman’s own politics coupled with wishful thinking. I can almost guarantee that had Trump been president under the same circumstances, Krugman would not have been on “Team Relaxed” about inflation.
What’s more, isn’t there something else that Krugman has left out? Something rather obvious? Could it possibly have been this?
American Petroleum Institute (API) CEO Mike Sommers ripped the White House energy strategy, accusing it of sending mixed signals to domestic industry…
“This administration’s misguided policy agenda — shifting away from domestic oil and natural gas — has compounded inflationary pressures and added headwinds to companies’ daily efforts to meet growing energy needs while reducing emissions,” Sommers told reporters Thursday…
The Consumer Price Index, which the Department of Labor uses to measure inflation, surged 9.1% year-over-year in June, according to a report released Wednesday. Energy prices, including gasoline, natural gas, electricity and fuel oil, alone increased 41.6% over the last 12 months…
“One of the key concerns that we have are the continued mixed messages that we’re getting from this administration,” Sommers said. “On one hand, they’re asking for more supply, but on the other hand, continuing to talk about how this industry needs to go away within a very short period of time.”
Sommers is speaking on behalf of the petroleum industry, of course, so he’s not what you’d call an unbiased source. But it seems rather obvious to me that he’s correct (some more background can be found here). Yet I don’t hear a whisper about this factor in Krugman’s column. Why doesn’t he even address it? Because it would mean he’d have to not only admit he was wrong, but that Biden has been wrong as well.
And then there’s the Times’ resident “conservative,” Bret Stephens. He says he was wrong about Trump supporters. Not Trump himself, mind you, but his supporters, and that some of the things Stephens wrote – such as this one, in his first column about Trump – were counterproductive: “If by now you don’t find Donald Trump appalling, you’re appalling.”
You can summarize Stephens’ July 21st column this way: he says he shouldn’t have called Trump supporters stupid losers even though they are stupid losers. But they’re losers who have been wronged by the Democrats and Obama and so there was a reason they were willing to support an insurrectionist bigot like Trump and didn’t realize – unlike Stephens, who realized and still realizes – how absolutely terrible Trump was and is. But by putting them down, he alienated them and thereby lost his chance to persuade them to change their minds about Trump and see as Stephens does. He should have empathized with them more.
Here’s an excerpt:
…[Stephens says he wrote] dozens of columns denouncing Trump as a unique threat to American life, democratic ideals and the world itself. I regret almost nothing of what I said about the man and his close minions. But the broad swipe at his voters caricatured them and blinkered me.
It also probably did more to help than hinder Trump’s candidacy.
I don’t think Stephens has that kind of clout with anyone, but he continues:
When I looked at Trump, I saw a bigoted blowhard making one ignorant argument after another. What Trump’s supporters saw was a candidate whose entire being was a proudly raised middle finger at a self-satisfied elite that had produced a failing status quo.
I was blind to this. Though I had spent the years of Barack Obama’s presidency denouncing his policies, my objections were more abstract than personal. I belonged to a social class that my friend Peggy Noonan called “the protected.” My family lived in a safe and pleasant…
Trump’s appeal, according to Noonan, was largely to people she called “the unprotected.” Their neighborhoods weren’t so safe and pleasant. Their schools weren’t so excellent. Their livelihoods weren’t so secure. Their experience of America was often one of cultural and economic decline, sometimes felt in the most personal of ways.
It was an experience compounded by the insult of being treated as losers and racists —clinging, in Obama’s notorious 2008 phrase, to “guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them.”
No wonder they were angry.
Anger can take dumb or dangerous turns, and with Trump they often took both.
So these angry losers – losers compared to people like Bret Stephens, society’s winners – were also stupid to back Trump, but because of their anger it was understandable. That’s what Stephens failed to understand.
It’s really quite something, isn’t it? How condescending someone can be while thinking he or she is being understanding, all the while understanding very little about the actual Trump versus the Trump monster the left created and someone like Stephens agreed with because Trump was obviously so very “appalling”?
The following is probably the most interesting passage in the entire essay, one in which Stephens comes close to saying something true but doesn’t quite make it:
I could have thought a little harder about the fact that, in my dripping condescension toward his supporters, I was also confirming their suspicions about people like me — people who talked a good game about the virtues of empathy but practice it only selectively; people unscathed by the country’s problems yet unembarrassed to propound solutions.
Unfortunately, he follows it up with this:
“I also could have given Trump voters more credit for nuance.”
Nuance? What he means by that – in the next paragraph – is that a lot of people didn’t think much of Trump personally but liked the way he had of “defying deeply flawed conventional pieties.” How about that they liked Trump’s proposed policies, most of which seemed sane as opposed to insane?
Here’s the way it ends:
A final question for myself: Would I be wrong to lambaste Trump’s current supporters, the ones who want him back in the White House despite his refusal to accept his electoral defeat and the historic outrage of Jan. 6?
Morally speaking, no. It’s one thing to take a gamble on a candidate who promises a break with business as usual. It’s another to do that with an ex-president with a record of trying to break the Republic itself.
But I would also approach these voters in a much different spirit than I did the last time. “A drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall,” noted Abraham Lincoln early in his political career. “If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend.” Words to live by, particularly for those of us in the business of persuasion.
So despite the extreme contrast of the state of the US under Trump and what has happened to this country during the Biden administration, Stephens still clings (and not at all bitterly or regretfully) to his deeply-held belief that Trump was awful, and he cites January 6 as the prime example although I’m sure he could come up with others. He must still be in that very very protected class if he still doesn’t get that Trump was enormously better for this country and even the world than Biden has been, and if anyone has been trying to “break the Republic” it has been the left.
Stephens is completely unable to see that. But this time around, he proposes that he won’t show it. Instead, he’ll try to trap those Trump-supporting flies with honey, by convincing them that he’s their friend – the better to do his job of persuading them.
I’m here to tell Stephens – not that he’s listening to me – that he has no hope of persuading a single Trump supporter of anything whatsoever excerpt his own cluelessness and arrogance. And I doubt he convinces anyone on the left of anything, either.
Even though Stephens considers himself to be in the persuasion business, he doesn’t even seem to realize that he’s basically in the “preaching to the choir” business as well as the “token conservative in a leftist outfit” business. Of course, in his failure to persuade he is hardly alone. Persuasion of someone with a different point of view is actually extremely difficult and quite rare, because – as Stephens and Krugman so aptly demonstrate though their own examples – a mind is a difficult thing to change.
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.
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.
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,
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.
What a sad pair of deluded creatures.
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.
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.
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.
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,
I believe it was David Brooks that was so enamored with Obama’s pants crease.
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.
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.
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.”
It’s the NYT, being wrong with consistency is a job requisite.
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
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.
There isn’t a large enough dose of red pills for either of them.
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:
Etc, etc,
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.”
Why did God invent economists?
To make astrologers respectable.
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”.
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.
Joseph stiglitz certified venezuelan central bank and the subprime market
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.
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?
“…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….)
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.
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.
Related:
“Thugs vandalize 77 churches and centers over abortion”
https://donsurber.blogspot.com/2022/07/thugs-vandalize-77-churches-and-centers.html
(Waiting, of course, for Jerry Nadler to call such attacks “myths”…)
File under: “CRIME?? VIOLENCE?? INSURRECTION?? WE DECIDE what the definitions are, comrades…”
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.
I knew Jonah Goldberg’s in-laws
https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/newsminer/name/v-paul-gavora-obituary?id=16779262
I’m not sure I’ve ever read a more engaging obituary. Some people know how to live.
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.
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”!
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.
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,
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
“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
but its always good to reexamine your assumptions,
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2022/07/23/douglas_macgregor_russia_is_going_to_let_germany_freeze_because_they_foolishly_supplied_ukrainians_with_weapons.html
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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’…)
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?)
Oh really
https://mobile.twitter.com/julie_kelly2/status/1551354561872465927?cxt=HHwWjsC40aWwwocrAAAA
Thanks Miguel
…and in case this fell through the cracks,
Heeere’s Tulsi showing that there’s at least one Democratic Party politician who has his or her head screwed on right and has the gonads to tell it like it is:
https://mobile.twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1551154675394744320
(Um, is she still a Democrat?)
– – – – – – – – –
More on Tulsi:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocimum_tenuiflorum
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?” ‘
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?
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.
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:
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.
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.”
“…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….
Eek! Should be “…compelling…”…
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.
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.
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.
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.
deadroddy:
Not everyone lives paycheck to paycheck in this country, even though the Feds are idiots.
}}} 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?
Stephens and Krugman and Goldberg and Brooks and Blow all toil on A.G. Sulzberger’s thought plantation.
The crops are blighted.
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.
Oh no. Not another NYT icon….
“The Economist Plotting the Brave New World Order;
“NYT darling Herman Daly has plans for you.”—
https://spectator.org/herman-daly-new-world-order/
H/T Blazingcatfur blog.
Thanks Barry:
This guy makes Klaus Schwab look like a piker, a dilatente in the court of the Good Idea Fairies.
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.)
To paraphrase Bret Stephens: “When I looked at [Stephens], I saw a bigoted blowhard making one ignorant argument after another.”
“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.