The Maanga

George Packer explained to Americans why they were too stupid for their Democracy. Then Rush Limbaugh, who seems to read The New Yorker religiously, agreed. Which made George respond without actually responding. By quoting obscure historians who died 40 years ago.

All that is absolutely irrelevant. Except to wonder, how apt that quote of Richard Hofstadter is in another context.

One of the primary tests of the mood of a society at any given time is whether its comfortable people tend to identify, psychologically, with the power and achievements of the very successful or with the needs and sufferings of the underprivileged. In a large and striking measure the Progressive agitations turned the human sympathies of the people downward rather than upward in the social scale.

P Sainath detailed the context here. That the largest media house in the country banned admission of the existence of underprivileged is an astonishing case for political and social analysis.