Paul Krugman: Stupid Is A Strategy: Noted for August 19, 2013
Paul Krugman: Stupid Is A Strategy:
Bill Keller has a strong, stinging column about Republican attacks on the… up to now bipartisan… Common Core curriculum…. [But] right-wing leaders don’t strike me as being at all stupid (although I have to say that I’ve never understood why Jindal himself has a reputation for brilliance). Incurious… not given to self-analysis… not stupid…. GW Bush… anti-intellectual, but very cunning…. John Stuart Mill’s dictum: "I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative."… Even that, however, doesn’t get you all the way there, because there are many things [right-wing leaders] could pretend to be stupid about…. I think that the best model is, as I said the other day, the Corey Robin notion that it’s about preserving hierarchy. The idea of a common core disturbs a lot of people on the right not because they fear that it will lead to left-wing indoctrination…. No project, no matter how worthy and blameless, can escape becoming a target for orchestrated rage.
