The War On Logic

Noam Scheiber contemplates Palin's anti-Fed speech:

What Palin is after here, of course, isn’t a debate over the finer points of interest-rate setting. It’s just the latest instance of her lashing out against meritocrats and intellectuals, whom she feels talk down to her and her fellow repositories of homespun wisdom. Palin has always practiced a kind of identity politics in which one’s views deserve privileged status by virtue of they’re not being informed by any specialized knowledge. Hers is a politics of resentmentresentment at being led by the sort of snobs who think governing requires expertise. She betrays herself by getting so defensive in her exchange with Reddy, whom she sneeringly labels a “prestigious reporter for The Wall Street Journal”another pointy-head, in other words.