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| Ellsworth Toohey |
Paul Krugman writes in his latest New York Time column:
Donald Trump’s disastrous leadership is, of course, an important factor. But I also blame Ayn Rand — or, more generally, libertarianism gone bad, a misunderstanding of what freedom is all about... refusing to wear a face covering during a pandemic, or insisting on mingling indoors with large groups, isn’t like following the church of your choice. It’s more like dumping raw sewage into a reservoir that supplies other people’s drinking water.
Actually, Krugman makes a point more about himself more than anyone else. Only an Ellsworth Toohey type-character such as Krugman would compare exercising freedom with dumping raw sewage into a reservoir.
Toohey, in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, displayed Krugman type thinking:
The basic trouble with the modern world … is the intellectual fallacy that freedom and compulsion are opposites. To solve the gigantic problems crushing the world today, we must clarify our mental confusion. We must acquire a philosophical perspective. In essence, freedom and compulsion are one. Let me give you a simple illustration. Traffic lights restrain your freedom to cross a street whenever you wish. But this restraint gives you the freedom from being run over by a truck. If you were assigned to a job and prohibited from leaving it, it would restrain the freedom of your career. But it would give you freedom from the fear of unemployment. Whenever a new compulsion is forced upon us, we automatically gain a new freedom. The two are inseparable. Only by accepting total compulsion can we achieve total freedom.
And perhaps the fetish for demanding by Krugman and government officials that all the public wear masks can be understood with another Toohey quote:
There’s nothing as significant as the human face. nor as eloquent. We can never really know a person except by our first glance at him. Because, in that glance we know everything. Even though we’re not always wise enough to unravel the knowledge.
They can't stand the beauty and power of the face of the individuals who can reject the desires of power freaks who want to control all the people of the world. They want the sameness of masks to prevent the powerful faces to be visible to all. But the fact that some refuse to wear masks even when demanded by them is really, from their perspective, throwing raw sewage in their mask covered faces.
-RW
Thank you for posting this...but you are being too hard on Krugman. I have no reason to believe that Krugman does not sincerely believe that not wearing masks is sheer lunacy.
ReplyDeleteAnd the reason he does is probably one of two things - he does not understand that Covid-19 virtually only kills the very old and/or the very weak. And/or he knows the statistics and rejects them because he has locked into the idea that everyone must be saved from this.
Krugman is smart, a gigantic-government lover and has lived his life in an ivory tower.
Your last paragraph sounds like nothing more than hate speech. Krugman is not that bad.
He means well (mostly) but understands little about the real world (but thinks he does - which is a terrible combination) AND is obsessed with his 'the government is there to make everyone happy' nonsense.
He is not a bad guy...he is just incredibly arrogant, stubborn and out-of-touch with reality.
He is to be pitied - not hated.
Hate gets you nowhere...fast.
You may be right about Krugman. But hate can be a good thing, not hating Krugman the person, but hating what he stands for.
DeleteWenzel is spouting "hate speech"? Does that term have any objective meaning, or is it like "racist", meant to shame and/or obliterate any rational discussion. I see no hatred in his last paragraph but a rather eloquent opinion as to the motives of the powers that be who support the lockdown.
HATE
Delete\ ˈhāt \
Definition of hate (Entry 1 of 2)
1a: intense hostility and aversion usually deriving from fear, anger, or sense of injury
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hate
I appreciate what you are saying.
Here are two lines from his final paragraph:
'They can't stand the beauty and power of the face of the individuals who can reject the desires of power freaks who want to control all the people of the world. They want the sameness of masks to prevent the powerful faces to be visible to all.'
It may or not be hate - but is a silly and ridiculous statement.
1) he is making, GIGANTIC generalities about groups of people he does not know personally.
2) to make blanket, negative, psychological assumptions about people whom you have never met AND whom have never, directly commented about the negative assumptions you are making is done for two reasons:
hatred and/or laziness.
The former is obvious.
The latter - you dislike what they say, you are not able/cannot be bothered to find out why they say it so you make a blanket generality about someone/some group. That is the height of intellectual laziness.
People like that lose credibility FAST with me. Any moron can go around making negative generalities about people whom they have never met. That takes ZERO skill.
America has too much hate as it is. And it is getting us NOWHERE.
I say park your emotions, act like an adult and let's work on fixing this nation...not calling everyone names.
Making broad, highly negative opinions about people without unbiased, factual evidence to back it up helps not at all.
And frankly, any idiot can do that.
Good day.
I just want to add that:
Deletea) I made some assumptions myself in my top comment - so I am guilty of it as well. So I apologize if that comes of as hypocritical.
But I was speaking of one man only and RW said 'they'. And I have read/viewed SO much of Paul Krugman that I think it is fair to make those assumptions that I did. THOUGH - I should have at LEAST added a 'IMO" the sentences in question. So, my bad.
b) I make these negative comments about what RW said because I think he is better then that. He seems to have the intellectual ability to use more exactitude. And I think he hurts his credibility when he types like that on his own blog site (this one).
c) I think he and I generally agree about Krugman...my problem was just that America needs more fixing the problems and less calling each other names.
Once you start calling someone a generalized name - the conversation almost always devolves into a messy, useless, emotional free-for-all.
And if (seemingly) intelligent people like RW cannot rise above the muck of political bile...who can?
Krugman has been rewarded well in a career as an intellectual that supports the ruling class by telling people why they must obey the ruling class. He will even write and say the opposite of what he wrote or said decades prior as what the ruling class needs from him changes. He's even gone against the textbook he wrote when necessary.
DeleteSorry, Krugman knows exactly what he is doing and is paid very well for it.
McRocket: I'll respond by quoting Thomas Szasz from the introduction to his book "The Untamed Tongue:A Dissenting Dictionary":
Delete[Serious error would seem to require serious argument to refute it. While this may be true in the hard sciences which deal with material objects, it is not true in the social sciences which deal with human affairs. Indeed, faced with the pretentious solemnity of official Nonsense, evidence and reason are helpless. Our only effective weapon against it is laughter, especially the laughter of ridicule. "Nothing," observed Voltaire, "is so effective in crushing superstition as mockery....Ridicule gets the better of anything; it is the most powerful of weapons."]
While it is debatable whether Bob's post is a piece of ridicule, I would extend to him poetic license and not hold him to the stricter standards you require.
@McRocket: it is never necessary to add "IMO" to your takes. It's a discussion forum. Opinions are assumed, unless one is making a "water is wet"-type statement.
DeleteDesertBunny - the guy runs around saying something as disgusting as he thinks of stupid people as not worth his time - or words to that effect (of course, this hypocrite would probably think they were worth his time were they putting out a fire in his house or similar).
DeleteBut yet, he makes such a rudimentary and childish mistake as to make a blanket, negative assumption about groups of people whom he has never even met.
Or I will put it simpler - any one who runs around deciding what unnamed groups of people (remember, he typed 'they') thinks about anything that they have not stated is either staggeringly stupid and/or monumentally lazy/arrogant.
2) I am not discussing this further with you. He is obviously reading this and he can defend himself. He does not need a 'fan' to do it for him.
Good day.
Rick Gee - thanks, but it is never necessary to you, maybe. But I strongly disagree.
DeleteAnd, no offense, but you are obviously not familiar with slander/libel laws.
You cannot/should not run around saying matter of fact, negative statements about people. It is immoral, sometimes illegal/actionable and inexact.
But you can say 'I believe ______________' about something and thus are less immoral, more exact and risk less legal trouble.
Plus, being I am a writer...I work very hard to try and say exactly what I mean.
Good day.
Toohey is describing an automaton, not a human being. He and Krugman bewail the fact that humans have judgement/ choice and cannot avoid that fact.
ReplyDeleteLove the quote. But my concern is with the prescience of Ayn Rands essay on the Sanction of the Victim.
ReplyDeleteIs there anything new from the Democracy Institute's polling that could give some insight into the trends (especially in the key states that matter) going into the election week?
ReplyDeleteDavid B.
Krugman is really the Economist for the Idiocracy! They are the only people that will eagerly nod at his wrong minded thoughtless proclamations.
ReplyDeleteMan should lose his Economist card