Aram Zucker-Scharff

“Ever wonder why the economic experts never seem to change, keep coming back, despite racking up such shattering failures as the housing bubble and the financial crisis and the bank bailouts? Ever wonder why a guy like Larry Summers gets to be chief economist at the World Bank, then gets to deregulate Wall Street, then gets to bail Wall Street out, then almost gets to become chairman of the Fed, and then gets to make sage pronouncements on the subject of—yes— inequality? It’s for the same bad reasons: Because D.C. worships expertise and because Summers, along with a handful of other geniuses, are leading figures in a professional discipline dominated by what a well-informed observer once called a “politburo for correct economic thinking.””

– All these effing geniuses: Ezra Klein, expert-driven journalism, and the phony Washington consensus.

“Scepticism of the notion that our entertainment consumption shapes our political perspectives only has traction if you think that we arrive at our political views rationally.”

– Magic effect: how Harry Potter has influenced the political values of the Millennial generation.

Everyone is totally just winging it, all the time:

Oliver Burkeman: Every time a public figure behaves with less-than-stellar competence, we’re incredulous. We probably shouldn’t be

Fun fact: no one knows WTF they’re doing. 

Crazier and crazier “justifications” for war.:

American Public Turns Anti-War … Warmongers Desperately Reply, “But War Is GOOD for Us!” The American people are now overwhelmingly opposed to more war

War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery, and Ignorance Is Strength. America, F*ck yeah! 

The last time we discussed the concept of America as “globocop” on the world stage, our collective pop culture derided the concept as so plainly ridiculous it could only be discussed with the aid of marionette puppet sex. Now it’s a book and a WaPo column.

I wonder if having a Democrat wage global war has in some ways normalized it. Before you could point to a group and say ‘But only THEY do it.’ Now all sides are filled with hawks.