re: say it ain't so, Paul

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

Carl writes:
> > Oh, that's OK then.  I'll stop my carping and let PK continue
> > his tireless task of speaking truth to power.

I said:
>I know you're being ironic, but I'll reply in a non-ironic way: PK
doesn't speak truth to power except within the usual political context of
"what's good for capital"<

he now says: >Seems to be bit of cognitive dissonance here.  Reading
Krugman's NY Times column today, I am given to understand that this whole
flap over his Enron connections is really a right-wing attempt to defame
Krugman because he is such a fire-breathing lefty, e.g.:

>"... reading those attacks [on me concerning Enron], you would think that I
was a major-league white-collar criminal.  It's tempting to take this
vendetta as a personal compliment: Some people are so worried about the
effect of my writing that they will try anything to get me off this
page. But actually it was part of a broader effort by conservatives to sling
Enron muck toward their left, hoping that some of it would stick."
[http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/25/opinion/25KRUG.html]

>So, far from being a self-serving opportunist, Krugman is actually the
left's last best hope.<

by the degraded standards of Washington, D.C., politics PK is a "leftist" or
"left of [a very right-wing] center." After getting rid of true left voices
in public life -- e.g., making it "normal" to treat Chomsky as a paraiah --
the right-wingers would want to get rid of even the ersatz left.

Of course, this kind of "war against the left" is what left much of the
world outside the U.S. with only Osama bin Laden and his dreadful ilk as the
opposition to the power of neoliberal globalizing capitalism.
Jim Devine