Since I don’t read The Daily Caller, which is apparently still going on, I rely on FrumForum to clue me in on the ridiculous content they produce. Here’s Evan Thomas:

“This is no longer a theoretical exercise,” Thomas said. “Every chart, every graph, everybody who has ever looked at it is faced with this reality – that if we do not get control of our debt situation, which is driven by entitlements, we are going to have a lower standard of living in this country for sure. We are going to have high inflation and people are going to live less well.”

He even goes so far as to say that the debt will cause “unrest” of some sort. Sheer nonsense. Even though I really liked his books on Bobby Kennedy and the early CIA (both of which I would absolutely recommend), this is the sort of D.C. elite positioning that only further validates the public’s hatred of Washington political society.

I’m not going to say that the debt problem is no problem. Indeed, it’s a problem, though less pressing to my mind than jobs. But this Washington tendency to seize upon a problem and then describe it as the apotheosis of everything bad that could conceivably happen (inflation arising from too much debt?) is so bizarre to me, like an ignorant mob mentality led by people who really should know better. Obviously, it recalls the Iraq War in terms of the apocalyptic interpretation by the press, in which the absolute worst case scenario is treated as the normal one. American culture is often criticized as being too black-and-white, of ignoring nuance in favor of easily-understood, universal, too pat solutions. I’m reading George Kennan’s memoirs, which shows so many examples of this in a Cold War setting that it’s not even funny. But historically, it’s been elites like Kennan who have had to step in, read all the reports, appreciate the nuance, and then craft policy. This was their job, their responsibility. And it is no longer happening–now, our elites seem to share the same flaws with the public at large, without much in the way of redeeming attributes. They reinforce the weaknesses in our own thinking and add little, when they’re not busy blurring important issues.

I really don’t have any explanations for why this might be, aside from the general heuristic that our political system, like most American institutions, has been hollowed out over the past few decades, with talented and civic-minded leadership being replaced by connected wealthy individuals motivated mostly by self-interest. I don’t want to take this too far–of course there are some good people in the establishment, and careerism has never not been a factor in politics–but this theory just seems to fit the thousand examples that I encounter during my keeping up with events.