Just one item today.
It’s always cool when some remark I make in my blog is amplified the next day by a widely read newspaper columnist. Actually, two or three remarks, from recent days, in today’s column from Paul Krugman.
NY Times, Paul Krugman, 5 Jan 2023: Making America the Opposite of Great
I admit it: Like many liberals, I’m feeling a fair bit of MAGAfreude — taking some pleasure in the self-destruction of the American right.
Referring of course to the failure of Republicans to elect a Speaker of the House after, how many is it now? 11? votes.
This time, there has been no significant dispute about policy — Kevin McCarthy and his opponents agree on key policy issues like investigating Hunter Biden’s laptop and depriving the Internal Revenue Service of the resources it needs to go after wealthy tax cheats. Long after he tried to appease his opponents by surrendering his dignity, the voting went on.
Don’t interfere with wealthy tax cheaters, seems to be a Republican priority, along with pointless investigations of political rivals that have no bearing on the governance of the nation.
But while the spectacle has been amazing and, yes, entertaining, neither I nor, I believe, many other liberals are experiencing the kind of glee Republicans would be feeling if the parties’ roles were reversed. For one thing, liberals want the U.S. government to function, which among other things means that we need a duly constituted House of Representatives, even if it’s run by people we don’t like. For another, I don’t think there are many on the U.S. left (such as it is) who define themselves the way so many on the right do: by their resentments.
It is not, as some cynics claim, that both sides are equally bad.
Here Krugman makes an interesting distinction.
And yes, I mean “resentments” rather than “grievances.” Grievances are about things you believe you deserve, and might be diminished if you get some of what you want. Resentment is about feeling that you’re being looked down on, and can only be assuaged by hurting the people you, at some level, envy.
Consider the phrase (and associated sentiment), popular on the right, “owning the libs.” In context, “owning” doesn’t mean defeating progressive policies, say, by repealing the Affordable Care Act. It means, instead, humiliating liberals personally — making them look weak and foolish.
Again, not the same. There is some deep-seated inferiority complex on the right, it seems; a conclusion I’ve suspected but never actually stated, as far as I recall. Krugman tries to be fair; yet.
I won’t claim that liberals are immune to such sentiments. As I said, MAGAfreude is a real thing, and I’m feeling a bit of it myself. But liberals have never seemed remotely as interested in humiliating conservatives as conservatives are in humiliating liberals. And a substantial part of what has been going on in the House seems to be that some Republicans who expected to own the libs after a red wave election have acted out their disappointment by owning Kevin McCarthy instead.
Then we come to what the rest of the world is thinking about this.
…Trump’s anti-globalism, his promise to Make America Great Again, had less to do with trade balances and job creation than with a sense that snooty foreigners considered us chumps. “The world is laughing at us” was a consistent theme of Trump speeches, and his supporters surely imagined that the same was true of domestic globalist elites.
And I have a theory that Trump’s own underlying ludicrousness, his manifest lack of the intellectual capacity and emotional maturity to be president, was part of what endeared him to his base. You fancy liberals think you’re so smart? Well, we’ll show you, by electing someone you consider a clown!
[…]
Of course, the world is laughing even harder at Republicans, both the ultraright refuseniks and the spineless careerists like McCarthy who helped empower the crazies. For what shall it profit a man, if he shall lose his own soul, and still not gain enough votes to become speaker of the House?
