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Credit to the WSJ’s Taranto (always worth reading!) for pointing out this fragment of recent history.

Readers of the New York Times are the smartest guys in the room. You know it’s true because they’ll tell you so themselves.

Here’s a recent headline that expresses the smug superiority of the smugly superior: “Donald Trump Finds New City to Insult: Brussels”.

Donald J. Trump has upset the already beleaguered people of Belgium, calling its capital, Brussels, “a hellhole.”

…Mr. Trump argued that Belgium and France had been blighted by the failure of Muslims in these countries to integrate.

“There is something going on,” he said. “Go to Brussels. Go to Paris. Go to different places. There is something going on and it’s not good, where they want Shariah law, where they want this, where they want things that — you know, there has to be some assimilation. There is no assimilation. There is something bad going on.”

Warming to his theme, he added that Brussels was in a particularly dire state. “You go to Brussels — I was in Brussels a long time ago, 20 years ago, so beautiful, everything is so beautiful — it’s like living in a hellhole right now,” Mr. Trump continued…

What an embarrassing, contemptible jerk that Trump is! He’s making Americans look bad by saying these stupid things!

Before long, the hashtag #hellhole was gaining traction on Twitter as Belgians lashed out at Mr. Trump, deploying an arsenal of insults, irony and humor, including images of Belgium’s beloved beer and chocolate.

This NYT article was published on January 27. Eight weeks later, on March 22, Islamic radicals attacked Brussels, giving that playful hashtag #hellhole a tragic irony and leaving Trump looking rather prescient. Not that the geniuses at the New York Times would ever admit it.

If we end up with President Trump, it will be because it’s been amply demonstrated that smart people are far more dangerous, and vastly more stupid, than stupid people.

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