Sublime

The changes of the early seventies marked a long-term Democratic shift in power from the white working class to the college-educated and minorities. It took several decades, but the two parties just about traded places. By the turn of the millennium, the Democrats were becoming the home of affluent professionals, while the Republicans were starting

What this country needs is fewer people who know what this country needs. We’d be better off, in my opinion, without so many opinions. Especially without so many political opinions. Including my own.

Big potatoes don’t dwell on personalities. From a political science perspective, they dwell on ideas—towering ideas that could never be changed, regardless of the arguments against them. These are things like the concept of privately owned property, freedom of speech, and voting.

The cosmopolitan outlook of Smart America overlaps in some areas with the libertarian views of Free America. Each embraces capitalism and the principle of meritocracy: the belief that your talent and effort should determine your reward. In the narrative of Smart America, meritocracy stands alongside democracy as the twin pillars of the American sys

En un sens, l’élection de Trump entérine, pour le reste du monde, la fin d’une politique orientée vers un but assignable. Ce n’est pas une politique « postvérité », c’est une politique postpolitique, c’est-à-dire, littéralement sans objet puisqu’elle rejette le monde qu’elle prétend habiter.