Mark Steyn had a great column the other day comparing the anti-war crowd to Hitler, and not entirely unfairly: his point (read the whole thing!) was that Hitler was consumed by the delusions required to sustain his world view, and wound up believing his own BS, like that Churchill was just a pawn of the International Zionist Conspiracy. We see examples of this all the time among the people who insist that Bush is worse than Saddam, or that the UN losing face would be worse than a WMD attack (see yesterday’s Lileks on that one), and it’s even become all too common among people who ought to know better, like Jimmy Carter saying that American policy depends entirely on “‘white skin or oil [being] involved,'” or Carl Levin insisting that Saddam’s noncompliance with inspections is the fault of sabotage by the all-powerful CIA, or, worst of all, Paul Krugman claiming that Fox News has essentially brainwashed the American people into agitating for war. Krugman talks about TV news in general, but even he can’t believe that CBS News is a Bush Administration propaganda outlet, which leaves him relying on the sliver of Americans who get news from Fox and CNN but not from the print media or the internet. Of course, by explicitly excluding the print media, Krugman is again able to write a column on media bias without mentioning his own newspaper, which is the 800-pound gorilla of any examination of media bias. David Adesnik of Oxblog summed up this rant the best: “If I hadn’t spent two minutes reading his column, I could’ve re-brushed my teeth instead.”