Michael Kinsley Can't Recall Michael Kinsley's Words of Wisdom

This is one of the key things everyone should understand about politics, by a great writer named Michael Kinsley in 2008:

When you hear the presidential candidates carrying on about democracy and freedom, do you ever wonder what they would be saying if they had been born into societies with different values? What if Mitt Romney had come to adulthood in Nazi Germany? What if Hillary Clinton had gone to Moscow State University and married a promising young apparatchik? What if Barack Obama had been born in Kenya, like his father, where even now people are slaughtering one another over a crooked election? Which of them would be the courageous dissidents, risking their lives for the values they talk about freely—in every sense—on the campaign trail? And which would be playing the universal human power game under the local rules, whatever they happened to be?

Without naming names, I believe that most of them would be playing the game. What motivates most politicians, especially those running for President, is closer to your classic will-to-power than to a deep desire to reform the health-care system.

This is some dumbass thing advocating budget cuts aimed at the middle class, by some dumbass named Michael Kinsley in 2013:

…[Paul Krugman] considers briefly, but seriously, that [my] problem might be simple “sadism,” but retreats from that daring charge to an only slightly more plausible conspiracy theory: that austerians don’t want the economy to recover until they’ve had the chance to use bad times as an opportunity to shred the social safety net. Either that or a psychological variant: they need bad times to continue in order to justify their status and their speaking fees. Amidst these far-fetched possibilities, let me propose one more: maybe austerians really, sincerely want what’s best for America and the world, and really believe that theirs is the better path than Krugman’s. Maybe austerians—poor, deluded creatures that we are—actually think that their path will result in less pain, not more.

How is it possible that Kinsley could write both of these things?* My theory – which has never been successfully disproven – is that there is an anvil in Washington, D.C., and all prominent American pundits are required to have it dropped on their heads once every six months. Kinsley actually has sustained less brain damage than most of them.

*In theory, there's no contradiction between the two things Kinsley wrote. As he says, powerful people are all motivated by "your classic will-to-power," rather than a burning desire to improve the general welfare of their nation. But human beings, including powerful ones, also have a need to believe that they're good. So all powerful people persuade themselves that they are motivated by a burning desire to serve their nation.

For instance, Saddam Hussein saw himself as Iraq's greatest patriot. He sincerely believed that him being in power was best for Iraq, and the occasional torture and massacres and genocides that that required would result in – as Kinsley puts it – "less pain, not more."

So sure, the austerians sincerely believe that slashing Social Security and Medicare – which will coincidentally mean they can pay lower taxes and be more powerful, since other Americans will be more desperate – is sadly necessary.

But obviously this isn't the point Kinsley is making. Despite what he wrote five years ago, he somehow believes the sincerity of the austerians has some significance. It's like someone saying that Saddam sincerely believed that dropping sarin gas on Hallabja was the best for Iraq. Of course he did. Who the fuck cares?

P.S. I don't want my praise for Michael Kinsley in the first sentence to distract anyone from the fact that he is a truly terrible person.

—Jon Schwarz