I have always thought that people who believe the subject line were stuck somewhere between paranoid and stupid. This is a good piece that gives a believable alternative.
The most common question—or remark—that I get from readers is to say that I’m wrong to talk about how Western policymakers (and especially the Obama Administration) are ignorant, ideologically deluded, and unable to learn from experience. They claim that these problems arise from a deliberate malevolent effort to destroy America.
It tells something about how bad a lot of the administration's policies are as to make such a conclusion possible. Nevertheless, it's not correct.
With academia, mass media, most of the publishing industry, and Hollywood on their side how would these policymakers know any better? Their professors told them they were brilliant; the books they read all tell them they're right. Nobody corrects or criticizes them except those who they can rationalize are opponents--and evil people, too!--and thus these are partisan carpings to be disregarded.
If the critics can be described as conservatives their views are discounted. If you are proven to be correct that seems to have no effect on the powerful institutions and elite opinions.
In fact, the very fact of being a critic is used to disqualify criticism. When I wrote a detailed critique of Obama's policies in a prestigious policy journal, the prestigious authors responded that what I said should be discounted--and my specific arguments need not be persuasively countered-- because...I was critical of Obama's policies!
I cannot imagine any other time in modern Western intellectual history when this kind of thing has happened.
So the usual corrective institutions aren’t functioning".................
