There are no upcoming events right now.
Why not post one?
Recent Articles
- Justice for Indigenous Peoples is Long Overdueby Ryan McGreal, published June 30, 2021 in Commentary
(0 comments)
- Third-Party Election Advertising Ban About Silencing Workersby Chantal Mancini, published June 29, 2021 in Politics
(0 comments)
- Did Doug Ford Test the 'Great Barrington Declaration' on Ontarians?by Ryan McGreal, published June 29, 2021 in Special Report: COVID-19
(1 comment)
- An Update on Raise the Hammerby Ryan McGreal, published June 28, 2021 in Site Notes
(0 comments)
- Nestlé Selling North American Water Bottling to an Private Equity Firmby Doreen Nicoll, published February 23, 2021 in Healing Gaia
(0 comments)
- Jolley Old Sam Lawrenceby Sean Burak, published February 19, 2021 in Special Report: Cycling
(0 comments)
- Right-Wing Extremism is a Driving Force in Modern Conservatismby Ryan McGreal, published February 18, 2021 in Special Report: Extremism
(0 comments)
- Municipalities Need to Unite against Ford's Firehose of Land Use Changesby Michelle Silverton, published February 16, 2021 in Special Report
(0 comments)
- Challenging Doug Ford's Pandemic Narrativeby Ryan McGreal, published January 25, 2021 in Special Report: COVID-19
(1 comment)
- The Year 2020 Has Been a Wakeup Callby Michael Nabert, published December 31, 2020 in Special Report: COVID-19
(0 comments)
- The COVID-19 Marshmallow Experimentby Ryan McGreal, published December 22, 2020 in Special Report: COVID-19
(0 comments)
- All I Want for Christmas, 2020by Kevin Somers, published December 21, 2020 in Entertainment and Sports
(1 comment)
- Hamilton Shelters Remarkably COVID-19 Free Thanks to Innovative Testing Programby Jason Allen, published December 21, 2020 in Special Report: COVID-19
(0 comments)
- Province Rams Through Glass Factory in Stratfordby Doreen Nicoll, published December 21, 2020 in Healing Gaia
(0 comments)
- We Can Prevent Traffic Deaths if We Make Safety a Real Priorityby Ryan McGreal, published December 08, 2020 in Special Report: Walkable Streets
(5 comments)
- These Aren't 'Accidents', These Are Resultsby Tom Flood, published December 04, 2020 in Special Report: Walkable Streets
(1 comment)
- Conservation Conundrumby Paul Weinberg, published December 04, 2020 in Special Report
(0 comments)
- Defund Police Protest Threatens Fragile Ruling Classby Cameron Kroetsch, published December 03, 2020 in Special Report: Anti-Racism
(2 comments)
- Measuring the Potential of Biogas to Reduce GHG Emissionsby John Loukidelis and Thomas Cassidy, published November 23, 2020 in Special Report: Climate Change
(0 comments)
- Ontario Squanders Early Pandemic Sacrificeby Ryan McGreal, published November 18, 2020 in Special Report: COVID-19
(0 comments)
Article Archives
Blog Archives
Site Tools
Feeds
By Greenlee (anonymous) | Posted June 05, 2013 at 14:52:46
Spook shop or not, The Atlantic’s soothing IV drip of frictionless, borderless, culturally agnostic thought-output plays a useful scrambling role in the context of unmitigated national crisis. A featured Atlantic contributor can be counted on—without interference from any known machinery of coercion—to wax incredulous when the current GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt, for example, pleads with the audience at a competing Thought Leader conference to spearhead a manufacturing revival.
The Bradley-subsidized chattering class instinctively knows to tune out altogether more articulate assessments of our plight, such as former Intel CEO Andy Grove’s withering indictment of free-market dogma in a summer 2010 Bloomberg Businessweek cover story. Grove blamed the economic malaise on a sick cultural deification of “the guys in the garage inventing something that changes the world” at the expense of anyone involved in what happened afterward. His lament was the most eloquent tribute to the symbiosis of design and production and imagination and reality I’d read since Mao’s 1937 essay “On Practice,” which declared “man’s knowledge depends mainly on his activity in material production.” The Thought Leaders of our own political leadership class would never know about Grove’s broadside, though—it was greeted by a Washington-wide wall of silence. (Indeed, the one wayward D.C. player who did take it to heart former SEIU chieftain Andy Stern— was reduced to imploring unsympathetic readers of the Wall Street Journal op-ed section to search online for Grove’s essay some sixteen months after it appeared.)
What mystified Grove was the assertion, voiced by the economist Alan Blinder and others, “that as long as ‘knowledge work’ stays in the U.S., it doesn’t matter what happens to factory jobs.” This was not only inhumane, Grove declared; it was idiotic.
But it is why the ideas, so-called, that inspire the omniscient gentlemen of The Atlantic are flat: their world is, literally, flat. Habitual “bipartisanship” has given way to a tendency to level the playing field between reality and fiction. And so in The Atlantic’s account of America’s present crisis, Hanna Rosin wonders whether it was not deregulation or securitization that caused the financial crisis, but . . . Christianity; and James Fallows suspects America’s awareness of its own decline is merely “our era’s version of the ‘missile gap.’” It’s as though, in purging labor from the ranks of accredited Thought Leaders, they have eradicated thought itself.
https://www.thebaffler.com/past/omniscient_gentlemen_of_the_atlantic
Permalink | Context