In Keeping With What I Assume To Be NYT Corporate Policy -- UPDATE

Paul Krugman remains unable to call Rumpelstiltskin by his true name.

But being very clever people, you can probably figure out who he is talking about.

...
Right on cue, Hungary Lauds Hitler Ally Horthy as Orban Fails to Stop Hatred.

But remember, the big problem is that the public isn’t showing enough deference to the elite.

Honestly, I think that Mr. Brooks' latest odious paean to authoritarianism had less to do with Washington D.C. statuary that the fact that Mr. Brooks is himself a rich and privileged man and getting richer and more privileged every day. And however utterly unearned and undeserved his wealth and privilege may be, Mr. Brooks sincerely believes that those beneath him in the social order should be required to shut the fuck up and defer to his.

After all, in Mr. Brooks' Beltway Universe, moral tidiness and good order is maintained only by relentlessly flattering and cozying up to power.

In Mr. Brooks' world, Sucking Up is The System and he who learns earliest and best how to suppress their gag reflex and cauterize their conscience will rise farthest and fastest. And for Mr. Brooks, no further proof of that system's benevolent efficacy is needed beyond the fact that Sucking Up harder than a quantum black hole is precisely how an otherwise talentless man like Mr. Brooks accumulated his wealth and privilege in the first place.

This is why he goes quite ballistic in the presence of the smelly, Hippie rabble:  not merely because we  adamantly refuse to go along with his moral value proposition, but because we openly mock him for that which Mr. Brook's believes to be his greatest source of professional pride and moral authority -- his ability to be rewarded so very handsomely for producing absolutely nothing but a trickle of lazy, butt-scooting, asymmetriphobic* drivel.

* UPDATE -- My apologies for the initial typo. "Asymmetriphobia" is the horror of asymmetrical things.