Paul Krugman on the GOP’s Incoherent COVID-19 Response

Paul Krugman, in a short tweet thread:

In other words, the GOP has in effect decided to ignore the science at the clear risk of being held accountable in the near future both for killing thousands and for wrecking the economy, because that’s what a premature opening would do.

Why take that risk? Partly they may be high on their own supply, no longer able to conceive that there is an objective reality that might be politically inconvenient. Partly I think it’s because they know in their hearts that they can’t actually do the job of governing.

“No longer able to conceive that there is an objective reality that might be politically inconvenient” — man, that’s it. It’s been taken to an absurd, and tragically dangerous extreme, under Trump, but it’s not new as the Republican governing philosophy. Recall Ron Suskind’s interview with a Bush administration official back in 2004:

The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community”, which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” […] “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

Trump has proven that if you’re good enough at bullshit, you can bullshit your way through a lot of things. But they can’t bullshit their way out of this crisis.

★ Wednesday, 13 May 2020