George Packer Strikes Again
by tristero
There’s bullshit, and then there’s Packershit, defined as the pompous and knowingly phony assertion of false equivalence:
But the collective discontent hasn’t gone away — far from it. It’s still with us like a chronic disease: the sense that the country has fundamentally betrayed its promise (freedom, equality, a fair chance, the American dream) and that the political system is too broken to offer hope. Some political careers — Elizabeth Warren’s, Rand Paul’s — have been made from the disease, while others have succumbed to it. Next year’s election will be won by the nominee who can speak most convincingly to this public unhappiness while preventing his or her party from being torn apart by its extremists.
Elizabeth Warren is an extremist? The way Rand Paul is, with his proclivity for white supremacists?
And Packer surely knows that what he wrote is complete and utter nonsense. The problem with his ambition to be known as a “Very Serious Person” who is above the fray and prepared to find a middle ground is that it fails to take into account how majorly bonkers national Republicans are today. Thus, Packer can, and does, privilege incredibly bad ideas, providing them a status of intellectual probity they don’t deserve. Disagree with Warren all you like, but her ideas nevertheless remain entirely within the realm of reasonable discourse. Paul doesn’t, nor do his associations.
Proof once again that being able to sling sentences together with skill – which Packer can undeniably do – does not a responsible commentator make.