Pondering What Secret Beliefs Drive Wingnuttia

Paul Krugman ponders an age-old question:

This morning’s Wall Street Journal opinion section contains a lot of what one expects to see. There’s an opinion piece making a big fuss over the fake scandal at the EPA. There’s an editorial claiming that the latest job figures prove the failure of Obama’s economic plan — something I dealt with in the Times. All of this follows on yesterday’s editorial asserting that the Minnesota senatorial election was stolen.

All of this is par for the course; the WSJ editorial page has been like this for 35 years. Nonetheless, it got me wondering: what do these people really believe?

I mean, they’re not stupid — life would be a lot easier if they were. So they know they’re not telling the truth. But they obviously believe that their dishonesty serves a higher truth — one that is, in effect, told only to Inner Party members, while the Outer Party makes do with prolefeed.

The question is, what is that higher truth? What do these people really believe in?

This has always been a riddle that has fascinated me. I have never been able to understand how otherwise somewhat intelligent people can hold views and opinions that are so completely divorced from the facts.

I sometimes rely on the Religion Explanation, i.e., They believe in God and all other sorts of unreal stuff in the spiritual realm which leads them to be comfortable believing all sorts of unreal stuff in the physical realm.

Sometimes I just go with the Malevolent Sociopath Explanation, i.e., people capable of constantly peddling fantastical fabrications in the service of some higher agenda are just out-and-out sociopaths, incapable of recognizing the emotional wickedness of their ways.

These theories can feel comforting at times but never seem to contain the whole answer. Is it one or the other? Is it something else? What say you?

Update: John Cole weighs in:

I’m gonna roll with tax cuts, invisible jeebus, and “shut up, that’s why!” But even that isn’t accurate, because we know that most of the right-wing elites don’t even believe in the invisible jeebus stuff (remember when all the folks at the NRO and other right-wing joints were asked about whether they believed in evolution, and they all did- I can’t find the link), they just pretend to be godbotherers and flat-earthers to keep the rubes busy. So what do they actually believe in?