The New Yorker’s Cavalcade of Ignorance

[mountaineer]

The New Yorker’s Cavalcade of Ignorance
Some of the greatest minds in America have gathered in the pages of the country’s leading weekly to declare how little they understand things now, and how little they care to understand them moving forward
by Armin Rosen
November 25, 2024

How honest are we about our ignorance? How honest do we want to be? In answer to that eternal question, which is—or should be—of particular interest to reporters, the 20-page, 12-essay onslaught of postelection “dispatches” that dominates the latest issue of The New Yorker is one of the most honest pieces of magazine publishing we are likely to ever see. Some of the greatest minds in America have gathered in the pages of the country’s leading weekly to declare how little they understand things now, and how little they care to understand them moving forward.

“Stunningly, Trump fared better in New York City this year than he did in 2020,” writes Jelani Cobb, which is frankly a stunning assessment coming from the dean of the Columbia Journalism School, given Trump’s marked improvement in the five boroughs in 2020 and the obvious and extensively documented rightward shift across the metro region over the past decade.

“How could Americans be such nice and decent people and support someone so debasing, so deranged, so hate-filled [as Donald Trump]?” asks Adam Gopnik, who makes no attempt to answer these questions, though he clearly wants to be seen as a thoughtful person for asking them.

The New Yorker drew together some of its highest-end chroniclers of the American zeitgeist, who then reveled proudly in their own attachments to in-group biases and cliches. They celebrated a kind of communion with their suffering readership, who found comfort in the certainties these writers gave them. This communion is grounded in ignorance. ...

For this befuddled class of pseudo-stylists and their still-loyal readers, The Ku Klux Klan, Father Coughlin, Adolf Hitler, and the now-realized menace of American fascism are phenomena with far greater impact on the 2024 election than border security, inflation, global chaos, or crime—real-world phenomena which are also barely mentioned here. ...

Read entire essay at Tablet Magazine

Scott Adams
@ScottAdamsSays
Oh, man, this is fun.
Watching the"smart people" slowly realize -- or not realize at all -- that they were living in some kind of brainwashed delusion that the rest of us could clearly see is beyond entertaining.
More, please.
8:43 AM · Nov 27, 2024