THE TRIBE IN THE MIRROR: Paul Krugman's ugly motive revealed!

FRIDAY, APRIL 8, 2016

Part 4—One more of our brilliant tribe's bombs: Republican voters are "bat-shit crazy," full stop.

Jonathan Chait, who has never been wrong, thoughtfully told us that back on March 29.

He didn't say that these voters are wrong, or wrong in his opinion. He didn't content himself with saying that these voters are misinformed—that they've been deliberately misinformed by arrays of corporate elites.

He said Those People are "bat-shit crazy," a type of judgment which feels much better. He wasted no time with qualifiers, with words like some or many. He didn't drop any R-bombs that day, but his headline referred to "Haters."

Chait was indulging himself in one of our great tribal pleasures. Over There, Those People are very dumb. The Others are stupid, in fact.

Life forms like Chait have reasoned this way since our ancestors crawled from the swamp. Generally, a tribe's intellectual leaders—sun gods like Chait—have reasoned this way. After that, they've sent their spear-chuckers to war.

For decades, our tribe has loved the idea that The Others are massively stupid. In fairness, it's easy for Us to get this impression, given the massive intellectual brilliance we constantly see Over Here.

What does Chait see when he surveys our tribe? He sees such brilliance as this:

We think we should judge a 68-year-old candidate on things she thought when she was 15. A selective account of her thoughts as a high school sophomore helps define her "atrocious race record."

Chait also sees brilliance like this:

We geniuses may decide to let Candidate Trump get elected. This sublimely sagacious act will bring on the revolution!

That said, there's more, much more. We also find ourselves diagnosing the anti-Semitism of the running dog Paul Krugman. That chapter in our tribe's unfolding intellectual history tends to go something like this:

As such rodents always do, the anti-Semite is trying to pose as the victim today. Right at the start of this morning's column, Krugman slickly bellows about the way he's been treated:

KRUGMAN (4/8/16): From the beginning, many and probably most liberal policy wonks were skeptical about Bernie Sanders. On many major issues—including the signature issues of his campaign, especially financial reform—he seemed to go for easy slogans over hard thinking. And his political theory of change, his waving away of limits, seemed utterly unrealistic.

Some Sanders supporters responded angrily when these concerns were raised, immediately accusing anyone expressing doubts about their hero of being corrupt if not actually criminal. But intolerance and cultishness from some of a candidate’s supporters are one thing; what about the candidate himself?

Krugman goes on to pretend to discuss his concerns about Candidate Sanders' policy views concerning the big banks."

People, pay no attention to that! It's just the intellectuals again! They're trying to confuse you!

Krugman's analysis of the big banks will produce zero discussion. Our "press corps" doesn't discuss such topics. If we want to be truthful for once, we liberals avoid such talk too.

As Press Corps Barbie once memorably said, math—and discussing the big banks—is hard! "Immediately accusing" deviants like Krugman is the better road. This recalls the time when the running dog Krugman had the A-S bomb dropped on his head.

It was Friday, March 11. In his column, the running dog said that Candidate Sanders had been "demagoguing" the issue of trade.

The D-bomb is a divisive term. We'd be slow to use it ourselves, whether here or anywhere else.

For our money, Krugman may sometimes be a bit tone deaf about such political matters. But out in beautiful Mission Viejo, "first responder" Rima Regas understood what he had done.

With amazing frequency, Regas often posts the first comment to columns in the Times. Typically, she then appends a second comment to her own original comment. Frequently, this second comment links us to something she's written somewhere else.

On this day, the first responder posted a two-part comment. In Part 2, the "visionary from Viejo" explained Paul Krugman's "blind rage."

Regas speaks for herself, no one else. But our own brilliant tribe reasons this way with amazing frequency:

REGAS (3/11/16): What is dismaying are the lengths to which Paul Krugman has gone to disparage Bernie Sanders. Why?

Other than the ultra-Orthodox there are varying degrees of Jewishness from conservative to reform, who look and sound as most Americans in their locales, but are still unmistakably Jewish. After that, we have varying levels of assimilated Jews. There are those who, while they are not observant, like Bernie Sanders, are unmistakably Jewish not only in their outward appearance and manner of speech, but in their culture, values and thinking. Lastly, there are those who made a meticulous conscious effort to shed every shred of their Judaism to achieve a level of parity with what we used to call the WASP. These are your secular high-achievers. Educated at the finest schools, their mannerisms are Waspish, right down to their speech. The inside is as clean of their origin as the outside.

What makes a member of the intelligentsia with a carefully manicured atribal persona tick? A Brooklyn Jew who looks and sounds like a ghetto Jew who made it.

Watching Paul Krugman's blind rage at Bernie Sanders has been baffling. So virulent is the hate that Krugman has been willing to eschew long-held positions just so he can demolish the object of his disdain.

Paul writes about hate-filled Sanders Twitter timelines. Judge for yourselves. Two days' worth, right here:

The ugliness has sourced from here and much of the rest of the mainstream media. Et tu, Brother Krugman, projecting much?

Finally, we had our answer. Krugman's blind rage could be explained:

To Krugman, Candidate Sanders is "a Brooklyn Jew who looks and sounds like a ghetto Jew who made it." By way of contrast, Krugman has "made a meticulous conscious effort to shed every shred of [his] Judaism to achieve a level of parity with what we used to call the WASP."

In short, out came an A-S bomb. Attitudes like Krugman's can't be allowed to stand.

Everything is possible, of course, including this explanation. It's also true that Regas is just one person, just like everyone else.

It's silly to think that Regas speaks for everyone else in our glorious tribe; or for most people in our tribe; or even for many such people, even though a fair number of subsequent commenters said she seemed to have nailed it.

This particular first responder is just one person. She doesn't speak for our whole tribe, or for anyone else at all. She speaks for herself.

We assume that she's a good decent person, although we think she may be inclined to get over her skis at times, perhaps in something resembling the approach Krugman describes today. That said, this general impulse—the impulse to drop bombs on the heads of those whose views we judge to be wrong—is extremely widespread in our self-impressed tribe.

In one way, our instincts don't quite make sense. If Those People are so stupid, why do they have to be racist bigoted xenophobe nativists too? Why can't they just be stupidly wrong? Why do they have to be evil?

Whatever the answer, it's clear that our tribe tends to treasure both stories. They're our most basic tribal narratives. And when we drop our various bombs, we tend to be extremely lazy—or perhaps, just very dumb—about our use of qualifiers, like many, a few or some or "maybe like ten percent."

Instead, we love to tell the world that Trump supporters are racists, full stop! We may include a grudging statement saying we don't mean all Those People. But that's about as far as we'll go in denying ourselves tribal joy.

In our view, our performance when we "reason" this way tends to be very dumb on the merits, equally bad on the politics. But now, we're at the end of the week, and we haven't gotten to the low-IQ work we had in mind at the start of the week, when we said we'd be taking a look at the tribe in the mirror.

That said, our low-IQ work when we drop our bombs is extremely widespread. It can be found wherever our tribe exhibits our admittedly flawless work.

Hillary Clinton was wrong at 15! Letting Trump win will produce the revolution! Krugman says Sanders is wrong on the banks because he hates that kind of Jew! And after that, we reach Dana Milbank's attempt to explain his use of our bombs—to justify the bombs he keeps dropping on Those People's heads.

We're about to tell you the world's biggest secret. Brace yourselves. Here it is:

Over Here, we aren't super sharp! Our analytical skills are extremely weak. Our love for our bombs is quite strong.

Over Here, we aren't real sharp. In that sense, we're not unlike Those People, The Others, the ones found Over There.

That said:

All through the annals of time, the endless tribes who prayed for war have been unable to see such things. The Others have always been evil and dumb. One's own tribe has always been flawless.

This is the way our wars come on. It's also how Ron Paul wins.

Next week: Milbank and an array of bombers help attain Ron Paul's dream

Ron Paul's dream: Ron Paul's dream—let's dissolve into many small republics!—is now visiting war-torn Belgium.

For more information, click here. As we keep dropping our low-IQ bombs, we help bring that dream Over Here.