"Civility" = censorship, has long been this blog's major thesis.
A line has been crossed when the principal spokesmen for contending opinions have no curiosity whatsoever about their opponents’ ideas and radiate cold, steady contempt for each other. That’s dangerous. Civil society depends on a minimum threshold of tolerance and mutual respect. Fall too far below it, and the seething paralysis* you see in Washington could soon be the least of your concerns. This is America’s biggest political problem -- and Krugman’s not part of the solution.
People not being nice to each other is not America's "biggest political problem"; America's "biggest political problem" would be intractable high unemployment.
If the "biggest political problem" we faced today were an excess of shrillness, well, the obvious Way Forward is for the New York Times to fire Krugman. Then in a month everyone gets a job!
This is a colossally stupid commonplace:
Meanwhile, for the side that thinks it has the better arguments, naked contempt for dissenters is plain bad tactics. That isn’t how you change people’s minds. Better to fire up the base with a little demagoguery (such as calling conservatives racist, as Krugman is wont to do) than reach out to the uncommitted? I don’t think so. The enthusiasm you inspire on your side is canceled out by an equal and opposite reaction on the other. Krugman stirs up the right in much the same way that Rush Limbaugh, for instance, inflames the left. Granted, if you’re going to have a spokesman, better a Nobel laureate than a talk-radio clown. The fact remains that Krugman’s weary disdain for roughly half the country is self-defeating.
Please. Krugman is not talking on behalf of what Crook calls "half the country." Neither is Limbaugh.
The fight here is over who controls Elite Discourse.
The KILL THE DEFICIT nonsense was hardly a consensus arrived at after a period of Learned Colloquy after the 2008 collapse.
Calling for Polite Debate is easy and lazy; controlling the terms of Polite Debate is where the fighting happens.
That Paul Krugman has even caused minute fractures in the Elite Consensus is remarkable.
To the extent that "civility" protects a highly politicized status quo, it is censorship, and ought be pissed on, as there is anyhow nothing else you can do with it.
Because CENSORSHIP = UNEMPLOYMENT BEING CONSIDERED LESS IMPORTANT THAN THE DEFECIT AMONG ELITE YAPPERS.
A state of affairs which HAS OBVIOUS POLICY CONSEQUENCES.
(Good Lord... did I use... all caps?
AIEEEEE!
Well, fuck me then.)
* Can "paralysis," in point of fact, "seethe"? Fuck no!