Source: Paul Krugman
So the Heartland Institute seems to have blown itself up with its billboard equating climate change researchers to the Unabomber. Of course, anyone who believed that the right-wing”think” tank was objective in the least was a fool; but now even the fools have been put on notice.
But how could they make such a stupid mistake? I think there’s a process going on here, in which wealth and power creates a bubble in which people are so eager to please the paymasters that they lose any sense of what it sounds like to those not already answering to the same paymasters.
You can see the same thing with Grover Norquist’s comparison of anyone trying to stop wealthy Americans from using abandonment of citizenship as a tax dodge to Nazis — hey, remember Steve Schwartzmann comparing attempts to close the carried interest loophole to the Nazi invasion of Poland?
And my guess is that the Cory Booker thing is ultimately related; I didn’t know this, but apparently Booker is so close to his Wall Street donors that it never occurred to him that echoing their over-the-top reactions to Obama’s very mild populism would destroy his own political future (which I believe it has).
And no, the same thing doesn’t happen on the left, at least not that part of the left that is remotely serious about actual results. Right-wing apparatchiks, living in their billionaire-funded bubble, can forget that not everyone shares their extremism; progressives don’t have that luxury.
Anyway, let’s be glad that we’re getting a better look at how the other 0.1% and its clients think.
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