A self-recommending podcast. For example, around minute 7, Yuval Levin points out that what is unusual currently is that elites in various realms have similar backgrounds. It used to be that the business elite was not culturally similar to the … Continue reading
Matt Taibbi writes, Just as the Internet allows ordinary people to DIY their way through everything from stock trading to home repair, they now have access to tools to act as their own doctors, from caches of medical papers at … Continue reading
A richly-produced podcast with Bari Weiss. A must listen. En passant, he connects meme stocks to The Revolt of the Public. Around minute 23, he talks about people metaphorically being mutilated as they go through the rite of passage of … Continue reading
1. Martin Gurri writes, The information sphere teems with platforms of communication: that is its most typical and abundant feature. The governing elites are not forbidden or unable to speak. They are unwilling to compete for attention. They dread the … Continue reading
Contrary to appearances, I argue that the center-left did not win in 2020. As of 2021, both the Democratic and Republican establishments are reeling from what Martin Gurri calls The Revolt of the Public. Both the left and the right … Continue reading
A reader asks, How would you encapsulate Martin’s thesis? 1. Starting around 2000, the amount of information on the Internet doubles in a year. If that goes on for ten years, there would have been 420 one thousand times the … Continue reading
Megan McArdle writes (WaPo, paywalled), The media’s pronouncements about fighting “misinformation” often sound perilously close to declaring that the common presumptions of a handful of major media outlets should define the bounds of accepted truth for everyone. That’s both arrogant … Continue reading
1. Aaron Sibarium writes, provided elites maintained their monopoly on the presses, they could maintain a monopoly on the narrative. That’s part of what made “his realm, his religion” a viable settlement after the Thirty Years’ War. Because princes had … Continue reading
1. He points me to Andrey Mir. To those lucky few, the commodification of Trump appeared to be a game-changer. Historically, there have been no such political events quite so beneficial to the media, except for revolutions and wars. The … Continue reading
Concerning the latest wave of demonstrations, Martin Gurri writes, In a real sense, the digital environment represents the triumph of the image over the printed word. Because it provides the illusion of immediacy, the visual is viscerally persuasive: not surprisingly, … Continue reading