Matthew Continetti Gets It, Finally: What if the Political Class Knows Absolutely Nothing About Anything?

Continetti had been a populist critic of the puffed-up, jumped-up false elites, but then backed off that position in reaction (I speculate) to Trump's populist victory.

But he seems to be permitting himself to get it again.

Events are turning me into a radical skeptic. I no longer believe what I read, unless what I am reading is an empirically verifiable account of the past. I no longer have confidence in polls, because it has become impossible to separate the signal from the noise. What I have heard from the media and political class over the last several years has been so spectacularly proven wrong by events, again and again, that I sometimes wonder why I continue to read two newspapers a day before spending time following journalists on Twitter. Habit, I guess. A sense of professional obligation, I suppose. Maybe boredom.

The fact is that almost the entirety of what one reads in the paper or on the web is speculation. The writer isn't telling you what happened, he is offering an interpretation of what happened, or offering a projection of the future. The best scenario is that these theories are novel, compelling, informed, and based on reporting and research. But that is rarely the case. More often the interpretations of current events, and prophesies of future ones, are merely the products of groupthink or dogma or emotions or wish-casting, memos to friends written by 27-year-olds who, in the words of Ben Rhodes, "literally know nothing." There was a time when newspapers printed astrology columns. They no longer need to. The pseudoscience is on the front page.

...

"Like a bearded nut in robes on the sidewalk proclaiming the end of the world is near, the media is just doing what makes it feel good, not reporting hard facts," Michael Crichton once said. "We need to start seeing the media as a bearded nut on the sidewalk, shouting out false fears. It's not sensible to listen to it."

Don Surber coincidentally has a piece demonstrating that they're literally always wrong about everything, noting that they have learned absolutely nothing since November.

That's not just laziness. Even a lazy person learns by osmosis.

To actively reject all information is a purposeful exertion. They're remaining proudly ignorant as a demonstration of mule-headed willful stupidity.

posted by Ace at 06:04 PM

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