VSP macho complex
by digby
Paul Krugman posted this interesting take on the psychology of the Very Serious People today:
It was obvious during the runup to the Iraq war that what was going on in the minds of many hawks β and not just the neocons β was not so much a deep desire to drop lots of bombs and kill lots of people (although they were OK with that) as a deep desire to be seen as people who were willing to Do What Has to be Done. Men who have never risked, well, anything relished the chance to look in the mirror and see Winston Churchill looking back.
Actually, I suspect that even the torture thing had less to do with sadism than with the desire to look tough.
And the austerian impulse is pretty much the same thing, except that in this case the mild-mannered pundits want to look in the mirror and see Paul Volcker.
Much of the problem in trying to stop the march to war was precisely the fear of many pundits that they would be seen as weak and, above all, not Serious if they objected. Austerity has been very much the same thing β and again, itβs not just the right-wingers who are afflicted.
I wrote something similar about the right's Benghazi obsession yesterday. But Krugman is correct that it isn't just a right wing thing. It's a Very Serious People thing as well, both in foreign policy terms as well as, we now know, economic ones. The world is run by a bunch of macho wannabes who have some deep need to show their masculine bonafides by either pounding their chests for war or demanding human sacrifice to "toughen us up."
Maybe people like this should be in charge instead.
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