Pacific Views

Our challenge: find something nice to say about the Republicans being in charge of all three branches of the United States government....

"Well, it's not as bad as the 'Reign of Terror' in 1793."

--ventura county, ca

Usually people are reluctant to admit they would inflict calamity on the nation if they thought they would benefit. Oddly, most people won't even admit it to themselves. Some ways to avoid this include stupidity. Allow me to use Donald Luskin as an example. Luskin has devoted his life, it seems, to reviling the NYT and Paul Krugman--for pointing to shortcomings of the current administration. Luskin's method of argument is to find some minute omission of detail in Krugman's columns, then decry it as another fall of man.

Why does Donald Luskin spend so much time venting about Paul Krugman? Even if Krugman were wrong about most things, Luskin could still relish the fact that his side has total power and Krugman merely gets to suffer because he doesn't exult in the brave new world. (Luskin's side features the legend, "How big government, big business, big media, and big academia block your road to financial freedom...", and recommended The Case for Global Capitalism. Is Luskin really as persecuted as that?) What does Luskin have to defend?

It seems to me it is his narcissism. Paul O'Neill was appointed to the most powerful job on earth by the Bush team. O'Neill resigned and made some relatively mild criticisms of the Bush administration, then qualified them. Luskin (whom I cite as a famous and very helpful example) heaps obloquy up O'Neill. "Why," he demands, "does anyone believe a word this man says?"

Luskin is obviously an alert man with a high IQ. I'll give him credit for that. But is he behaving stupidly? I humbly submit he is. If O'Neill is an untrustworthy bastard for criticizing GWB, GWB's ability to look into other people's souls is perhaps prone to occasional lapses (lasting for 2 years at a stretch). Only a moron would believe anything he said. But appointing him to head the Treasury Department--that's the mark of a gifted leader.

Luskin is entitled to his lapses of rhetorical perspicacity. But I think his lapse merits a little analysis. Luskin is outraged at O'Neill because he criticized GWB. Does Luskin actually know that O'Neill is telling a fib? How could he? And O'Neill is hardly a be-suited Noam Chomsky. Could it be that Luskin is driven to vituperation by the mere fact that that O'Neill has less than [David] Frumian flattery to lavish upon the Leader? Indeed it does.

Again, why is Luskin so bitter? Why does O'Neill's intimate, slightly jaundiced, view of a politician (a category of person whom Luskin professes to loathe) offend his so much that he himself inadvertantly accuses Bush of being an idiot for having appointed the "turn-coat" ALCOA CEO to he most powerful job on earth? I think it is because Luskin knows his own clique has flourished at terrible cost to the nation. He knows it, and in his heart he believes that his clique is somehow to entitled to have done so. But it's probably not a notion the Hezb-i-Bush* would care to defend.

* Dari/Farsi for "faction of Bush"