The first is the propensity for journalists to be in lockstep with US foreign policy. This occasionally gets brought up to them and they generally act offended and might respond with "my views haven't been bought" to which the retort is "you wouldn't have this job if you didn't have these views". The point is that there are filters at every level to produce people who are complicit with the status quo, not just in journalism.
The second is an old Noam Chomsky video talking about Newt Gingrich railing against "welfare queens" when in fact his congressional district (at the time) received something like the third-most (after the Kennedy Space Center and another I forget) most from Congress, which is really the definition of welfare. But we don't often talk about "corporate welfare".
But the point is the Democrats at the time never challenged him on this. Why? Class solidarity. The political elite (regardless of party) are more interested in perpetuating the system than anything else because they directly benefit from it.
A good example of this is so-called "floor privileges". If you've been a Congressperson and leave, almost inevitably to become a lobbyist, you retain, by convention, "floor privileges". That is, you have the right to enter Congress and the chamber of the House of Representatives even though you're a private citizen (worse, a lobbyist). No Congresspeople wants to upset that apple cart because that's their future path to wealth: selling access.
So people like Matt Levine are an outlier basically by design.
The first is the propensity for journalists to be in lockstep with US foreign policy. This occasionally gets brought up to them and they generally act offended and might respond with "my views haven't been bought" to which the retort is "you wouldn't have this job if you didn't have these views". The point is that there are filters at every level to produce people who are complicit with the status quo, not just in journalism.
The second is an old Noam Chomsky video talking about Newt Gingrich railing against "welfare queens" when in fact his congressional district (at the time) received something like the third-most (after the Kennedy Space Center and another I forget) most from Congress, which is really the definition of welfare. But we don't often talk about "corporate welfare".
But the point is the Democrats at the time never challenged him on this. Why? Class solidarity. The political elite (regardless of party) are more interested in perpetuating the system than anything else because they directly benefit from it.
A good example of this is so-called "floor privileges". If you've been a Congressperson and leave, almost inevitably to become a lobbyist, you retain, by convention, "floor privileges". That is, you have the right to enter Congress and the chamber of the House of Representatives even though you're a private citizen (worse, a lobbyist). No Congresspeople wants to upset that apple cart because that's their future path to wealth: selling access.
So people like Matt Levine are an outlier basically by design.