realthog

American academic Paul Krugman has won this year's Nobel economics prize, it has been announced.

It does begin to seem that an essential prerequsite for Americans to win the non-scientific Nobel prizes is to be vilified by rightwing extremists in their own land, rather as if it's an imperative to treat with revulsion those who have potentially the most to contribute to our nation; just think of the treatment meted out by the right to eventual Nobel laureate Al Gore. And now another of the rightist wingnuts' boogeymen has received perhaps the highest accolade the civilized world can offer.

The image is of an American ship of state chugging along on quite a separate course from the rest of the world fleet. This is the sort of thing you expect from countries like North Korea and Zimbabwe, where the only way the imposed national worldview can be made locally credible is through rejecting the version of reality accepted by the international consensus. But it's to say the least disturbing when large factions of the population of the world's leading superpower -- including, for much of the past decade, its dominant faction -- are doing the same. Fingers crossed the next eight years will see the reintroduction of the US to the rest of the world.

In the meantime, congrats to Prof. Krugman, whose columns in the New York Times are a regular and gratefully received source of enlightenment to this humble reader.