I'm listening to a podcast interview with Molly Ball of the Atlantic at Harvard's Kennedy School. It's the first time I've heard her in a long form interview, with no other panelists to cut her off. She's very fluent, but I gotta say the glaring contradiction that the more competitive interviews reveal comes through more clearly, and I couldn't just pass on the link without commenting.

First she talks about the Trump supporter, a person who feels left out and what they like about Trump he makes them feel dealt-in. This is reasonable, and I think likely true.

Then she talks about her friends who are Republicans and the sympathy she feels for them as their world is falling apart.

But...

What about Molly Ball?

What about her world?

What does she fear?

This is the old View from Nowhere thing.

Come November we may all know what it feels like to be one of her Republican friends. The system we believe in will be falling apart. The things we took for granted may be either falling away by popular demand, or at least in question. Ideas like whether or not Molly Ball can write her columns for the Atlantic and be freely critical of the government and the president-elect.

This is imho the bug in our system. The true royalty are the entitled journalists who feel above the concerns of a normal person. They wield a lot of power. Unfortunately for all of us that power isn't grounded in the world we all live in, including the journalist. I can't remember when that idea has been more obvious than it is right now.

PS: After writing this piece about Molly Ball at Shorenstein, I realized Harvard should have the equiv of Shorenstein, for blogging.