New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is a prolific writer, having authored or edited 27 books and published myriad other pieces. But one need read just a few words from almost any of his Times columns to find fiction which even college-age conservatives will know is nonsense. And New York Times readers, astonishingly, accept it all as gospel.
But why accidental propagandist? Because he clearly doesn’t realize he is one. And with his far-reaching reputation, he cannot be putting out what he doesn’t believe to be factual. So he must truly believe his erroneous information.
With his recent piece, The Dystopian Myths of Red America, he seeks to dispel for his brainwashed audience what he calls the “right-wing misperceptions of blue America.” The number of narratives he gets wrong here is impressive, even for Krugman.
Author and talk show host Dennis Prager often asks if the Left believes their lies. The answer has to be at least most of the time. Deliberate deceivers such as the KGB, from the land which gave us the word, disinformatzia, use lying as an art.
But most folks on the Left, especially those Lenin described as “useful idiots,” have been so flooded with falsehoods that the untruths, even the big ones, such as the Russia Hoax or that the 2020 election was “the most secure in history,” are taken as articles of faith. The “Big Lie” is a term from Hitler’s Mein Kampf to describe the use of a lie so colossal that people “would not believe others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously." Well, it’s become the Left’s stock in trade.
Of the 2020 election, Krugman writes, “… the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen” is “a claim with nothing to support it, not even plausible anecdotes.” He’s so ivory-tower isolated that he’s oblivious to Dinesh D’Souza’s movie, 2000 Mules; half a billion Zuckerbucks spent in battleground states to have operatives penetrate and undermine local election offices; suitcases of ballots cached until polls were closed and objective observers were ousted; sheets placed over election office windows to conceal the modification of ballots; etc., etc., etc. Organized Crime could hardly have done better.
Down the memory hole are the efforts, starting on Wednesday, November 9th, 2016, when Hillary and Friends decided to project her relationship with Russia onto Trump claiming Russia interfered with the results, prompting years of investigations.
Krugman goes beyond positing that there was not a whiff of illegitimacy in 2020, saying there's an even a bigger lie: “That the Democratic Party is controlled by radical leftists aiming to destroy America as we know it.”
It gets worse:
He'd like to know how many Republicans “believe that Black Lives Matter demonstrators looted and burned large parts of America's major cities,” adding, “The B.L.M. protests were, in fact, overwhelmingly peaceful.” That’s akin to the Groucho Marx line, “Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?”
More of what he wrote and believes:
– The modern Democratic Party is a mildly center-left coalition.
– No “prominent Democrats — actually, any Democratic members of Congress —have expressed admiration for any authoritarian foreign regime.” Fidel Castro, call your office.
– 75% of extremist-related domestic killings in the last decade were perpetrated by the right and only 4% by the left.
– The $2B property damage price tag for the 2020 riots “may sound like a lot, but America is a big country, so it needs to be put in perspective.”
– Violent crime rose during the pandemic as much in rural America as in urban areas.
– New York is actually a lot safer than small town America.
– The Democratic Party consists “of what Europeans would call social democrats, and relatively conservative ones at that.”
And what he doesn’t believe:
– Democrats are deliberately undermining the nation and promoting violence against their opponents.
– Biden and other leading Democrats are left-wing radicals.
– “… that a lax attitude toward law enforcement has turned America’s big cities into dangerous hellholes.”
Yes, it’s all there. Sorry for the litany but we must know whom we’re fighting – and how delusional they are.
It seems unfathomable that this much foolishness can be crammed into an 800-word editorial. For a conservative writer, the Krugman column was a target-rich environment.
Add in Krugman’s disdain for “Trump voters sitting in diners” (and for you) and you have a good idea of the Left’s mindset.
Oh, and he doesn’t believe “that we’re already in a civil war.” I guess we’ll just call it uncivil.