Paul Krugman has outdone himself (a high bar, too!). His column this morning includes a perfect description of what the far far right has become. Florida governor DeSantis just signed a "save our beef" law:
Florida has banned making and selling meat that is grown in a laboratory, a move several other states have considered amid worries about consumer safety and concerns that the technique could hurt the beef and poultry industries. [emphasis added]
Krugman lays out what DeSantis did in Meat, Freedom and Ron DeSantis:
[T]he new Florida law is a perfect illustration of how crony capitalism, culture war, conspiracy theorizing and rejection of science have been merged — ground together, you might say — in a way that largely defines American conservatism today. [emphasis added]
He goes on:
First, it puts the lie to any claim that the right is the side standing firm for limited government; government doesn’t get much more intrusive than having politicians tell you what you can and can’t eat.
Well, actually it does get more intrusive: government telling women they have to risk their health, sanity, even their lives, to carry their rapist’s fetus to term is about as intrusive as it gets. But Krugman is making the same point about food. In this case, it’s about the meat industry worrying about losing market share. And, as Krugman makes clear, it’s also about the culture wars:
But politicians who claim to worship free markets should be vehemently opposed to any attempt to suppress innovation when it might hurt established interests, which is what this amounts to. Why aren’t they?
Part of the answer, of course, is that many never truly believed in freedom — only freedom for some. Beyond that, however, meat consumption, like almost everything else, has been caught up in the culture wars.
Real men, you see, eat beef. Not some liberal-mandated substitute.
Sure enough, eating or claiming to eat lots of meat has become a badge of allegiance on the right, especially among the MAGA crowd. Donald Trump Jr. once tweeted, “I’m pretty sure I ate 4 pounds of red meat yesterday,” improbable for someone who isn’t a sumo wrestler.
Krugman adds that he is not a vegetarian and likes his meat. (So do I; we’re in Dublin at the moment and last night had some delicious beef-and-guinness stew. And I don’t like Guinness.) But, the point is, it’s his choice (also mine) whether or not to eat beef or some plant-based equivalent. DeSantis and the GOP want to take that choice away from us. (Pro-choice: It’s not just about abortion.)
As I just said, we’re in Ireland, and I’m killing a bit of time before we go off on a food tour (which will include lots of meat), so I won’t be following the comments as much as I usually do. But Krugman’s column deserves a diary, especially because he ends with one of my favorite arguments: The right is engaged in a denial of reality:
It’s not even about “owning” those they term the elites; it’s about perpetually jousting with a fantasy version of what elites supposedly want.
But while they may not care about reality, reality cares about them. Their deep unseriousness can do — and is already doing — a great deal of damage to America and the world.