Twelve years ago, Clinton Derangement Syndrone swept many reaches of the American right.  Fringe-y conservative pundits claimed Clinton had done everything from murdering Vince Foster to giving prisoners AIDS-tainted blood to (I’m getting a little foggy on the story) make money from the hike in blood prices (?).

Over the past eight or so years, the debt was repaid with loan-shark interest; Bush Derangement Syndrome (he brought down the Twin Towers, doncha know) spawned at least two broadast radio networks and most of MSNBC’s current lineup.

But this pathology is evolving into an uglier, more virulent pathology.  Because while distrusting the government is normal (and to a certain degree healthy), when the government and its attendant “elites” start assuming the people are some sort of mass of depraved animals, it’s a very bad thing.

Paul Krugman, Nobel prize winner, is shocked – shocked – that people are upset about Obamacare.

And he just can’t find a historical precedent for the anger he thinks he’s seeing:

That’s a far cry from what has been happening at recent town halls, where angry protesters — some of them, with no apparent sense of irony, shouting “This is America!” — have been drowning out, and in some cases threatening, members of Congress trying to talk about health reform.

(Because members of Congress, especially those who support Obama, just can’t get heard in this day and age, can they?)

Some commentators have tried to play down the mob aspect of these scenes, likening the campaign against health reform to the campaign against Social Security privatization back in 2005. But there’s no comparison. I’ve gone through many news reports from 2005, and while anti-privatization activists were sometimes raucous and rude, I can’t find any examples of congressmen shouted down, congressmen hanged in effigy, congressmen surrounded and followed by taunting crowds.

And, Paul Krugman, you can’t find any examples of union goons beating up dissenters in 2005, either, can you?

What possible difference is there between now and then?  Between the Social Security debate and Obamacare? I’ll let you take a moment and turn that keen, Princeton-trained mind on solving that little riddle as we move on?

And I can’t find any counterpart to the death threats at least one congressman has received.

Paul Krugman:  you seriously claim you can’t find any expression of anger in the past, say, eight and a half years, any expression of rage that overtopped the banks of sanity?

OK – that’s two jobs for that keen, Nobel-prize-winning intellect to tackle.

We’ll take a detour through crummy journalism…:

So this is something new and ugly. What’s behind it?

Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, has compared the scenes at health care town halls to the “Brooks Brothers riot” in 2000 — the demonstration that disrupted the vote count in Miami and arguably helped send George W. Bush to the White House. Portrayed at the time as local protesters, many of the rioters were actually G.O.P. staffers flown in from Washington.

But Mr. Gibbs is probably only half right. Yes, well-heeled interest groups are helping to organize the town hall mobs. Key organizers include two Astroturf (fake grass-roots) organizations: FreedomWorks, run by the former House majority leader Dick Armey, and a new organization called Conservatives for Patients’ Rights.

…because goodness knows a movement like Krugman’s, which depends on MoveOn.org, ACORN, the NEA and the SEIU to get crowds out for events can’t stand the thought of political action groups actually…organizing politics!

But with that out of the way, let’s move on to the casual class defamation:

That is, the driving force behind the town hall mobs is probably the same cultural and racial anxiety that’s behind the “birther” movement, which denies Mr. Obama’s citizenship. Senator Dick Durbin has suggested that the birthers and the health care protesters are one and the same; we don’t know how many of the protesters are birthers, but it wouldn’t be surprising if it’s a substantial fraction.

Michael Savage told me that the only way Paul Krugman could win a Nobel Prize was by providing sexual favors to Nobel committee members. I think he just might be right.

“Wow”, you might say – “That’s defamatory”.

It would be, if I meant it.  It’d take a bit of scabrous (and in this case fictional) libel from a “source” whose only motivation is hatred for Paul Krugman, and waters it down with just enough weasel words (“he just might be right”) to give myself some ethical wiggle room.

So let’s unpack Krugman’s last paragraph – which is easily the most cynical, stupid paragraph I have ever read in the Old, Gray, Increasingly Demented Lady.

• Tell me,Paul Krugman – do the “Birther” “movement” (a paranoid conspiracy theory rejected by the vast majority of Obama’s opponents) and opposition to Obamacare – which is rapidly becoming a majority position, and is gathering steam among “Blue Dog” members of the President’s own party, based on an empirical reading of the supply and demand for healthcare, as well as the real-life experiences of healthcare consumers in Canada and the UK – actually share a “driving force”, or do they only “probably” share one?   Because when Krugman says…
• “…we don’t know how many of the protesters are birthers”, and you “wouldn’t be surprised” if it was plenty?  That’s called “weasel words”.  You don’t know.  And worse, your only “source” is…
• …Dick “Turban” Durbin, who is one of the weasels being pummeled in public, and whose contempt for the opinion of the American Peasant is summed up by his support for reintroducing the “Fairness” Doctrine, and whose hostility to dissent is famous.

What is the difference, precisely, between Krugman’s real paragraph and my made-up one?

Does this sound familiar? It should: it’s a strategy that has played a central role in American politics ever since Richard Nixon realized that he could advance Republican fortunes by appealing to the racial fears of working-class whites…But right now Mr. Obama’s backers seem to lack all conviction, perhaps because the prosaic reality of his administration isn’t living up to their dreams of transformation. Meanwhile, the angry right is filled with a passionate intensity.

And in Paul Krugman’s special little world, “right wing intensity” can only come from some depraved, immoral motive.

That is the legacy of the Obama administration, so far; dissent is worse than unpatriotic; it is depraved.

They hate you.

(Via Mr. D @ Truth Versus the Machine)

Cross-posted at Shot In The Dark

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