Nuggets from Paul Krugman

Busy today -- so I'll pass along some thoughts from the eminent economist and all round decent observer of American follies. 

After the No Kings demonstrations, Krugman seeks to understand why these big actions seemed to unhinge MAGA's always loosely ordered psyche. 

Civil Resistance Confronts the Autocracy

... to show their fealty to Dear Leader, Republicans must engage in bizarre rhetoric....

... what are we to make of the completely unhinged things Republicans were saying in advance of the protests? 

... Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, attacked the whole Democratic base:

The Democrat Party’s main constituency are made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals.

These claims were all self-evidently absurd. So why make them? CNN says that it was a “weird strategy”: Calling grandmothers Hamas terrorists won’t convince anyone who isn’t already deep in the MAGA tank and will backfire as those not in the tank see the disconnect between this rhetoric and the reality of the protests.

But it all makes sense once you realize that what we have been seeing in operation isn’t the Trump administration’s strategy for dealing with its critics. It is, instead, the strategies of individual MAGA apparatchiks for dealing with He Who Must Be Obeyed. ...

Krugman has a label and an explanation for this weird behavior from Trump's circle:

... telling lies ... serves the autocrat’s ego. Call it “mendacity inflation.” Trump insists that he’s overwhelmingly popular and that only a lunatic fringe disapproves of his presidency. Well, to show loyalty his hangers-on must go further, declaring that grandmothers and parents pushing prams down 7th Avenue are illegal aliens and violent criminals. The humiliating absurdity is a feature, not a bug. 

Simply lying about demonstrators isn’t enough; to prove their MAGA mettle; people in Trump’s orbit must tell lies that are grotesque and ridiculous.

Again, what’s historically odd about this is that while Trump’s personal depravity may match that of historical autocrats, his power doesn’t. Call him Caligula, if you like, but he can’t order Senators — even Republican Senators — to commit suicide. ... 

One is moved to ask "Yet?" Republicans seem pretty far gone ...

• • •

Today, Krugman goes for Trump's insane essence. He's a mad king now.

... it takes the power of the presidency to threaten the lives and livelihoods of millions of people. And Trump is doing just that – he is descending into states of delusion that are as he would say, like nothing anyone has seen before (notwithstanding Nixon’s nighttime drunken tirades).

On Sunday, the day after millions of Americans marched in the massive No Kings Day protests, Trump dismissed them:

The demonstrations were very small, very ineffective and the people were whacked out. When you look at those people, those are not representative of the people of our country.

Does Trump actually believe that? I suspect that he does. ... There are many, many more examples of Trump’s delusions. He really does seem to believe that Portland is “war-ravaged,” that Chicago is full of “beautiful Black women in MAGA hats” begging him to stop crime, that China is going to cave to his trade demands, that gasoline is $1.99 a gallon, that he will lower drug prices by 500%, and much more.

Granted, previous presidents have also been surrounded by flatterers. In the case of George W. Bush, it’s unlikely that we would have been lied into the Iraq War without Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz assuring him that we would be welcomed as liberators. And we know now that Biden’s inner circle hid his increasing physical frailty from the public and even from his own cabinet members.

Yet Trump’s disconnect from reality is uniquely destructive. No previous president has tried to overturn an election, sought to use the military against U.S. citizens, or sought to use the Justice Department as his own personal vendetta machine. 

The difference is that he’s the first president to live in an autocratic bubble, surrounded by a cult of personality within which nobody dares to criticize him, tell him uncomfortable truths or refuse to engage in blatantly illegal acts.

Furthermore, Trump is clearly getting worse, growing even more out of touch with each passing week. Regardless of whether it’s advancing age or growing frustration, even Trump, I think, realizes that his efforts to suppress all opposition are running into serious resistance. Putting out an AI video of himself dumping shit on protestors suggests panic, not strength. But his claims about what’s happening in America and the world keep getting stranger and wilder.

And Trump’s denial of reality is already having devastating consequences for America, with more to come. ...

We're in for a wild ride.  We don't know how it ends. There remains a fragility to MAGA's grasp on dictatorial power, complicated by its submission to a crazy man and the existence of a massive, probably majority, resistance. Like Krugman, I find it possible that the people will create enough friction so that things will come apart and massive change will happen. To what end? Time will tell.