Imagine If Bill Kristol Was Your Dad

This is one of the most goddamn irritating articles William Kristol has ever written:

Most of the recent mistakes of American public policy, and most of the contemporary delusions of American public life, haven’t come from an ignorant and excitable public. They’ve been produced by highly educated and sophisticated elites.

You mean like the push for war in Iraq when the country didn't want to?

Needless to say, the public’s not always right, and public opinion’s not always responsible. But as publics go, the American public has a pretty good track record.

You mean like the 2000 election when Gore won the popular vote, and Bush won the "elite" electoral college vote?

In the 1930s, the American people didn’t fall — unlike so many of their supposed intellectual betters — for either fascism or Communism. Since World War II, the American people have resisted the temptations of isolationism and protectionism, and have turned their backs on a history of bigotry.

Our hatred of communism bubbled up from the bottom, as indicated by that great bellweather of public opinion, Joseph McCarthy. Not an inciter, that guy, just a bellweather.

Now, the Pew poll I cited earlier also showed Barack Obama holding a 50 percent to 40 percent lead over John McCain in the race for the White House. You might think this data point poses a challenge to my encomium to the good sense of the American people.

In an article saying we should trust the public over elites, a poll shows the public believes the opposite from the writer. Why should that undermine your argument?

It does. But it’s hard to blame the public for preferring Obama at this stage — given the understandable desire to kick the Republicans out of the White House, and given the failure of the McCain campaign to make its case effectively. And some number of the public may change their minds in the final two weeks of the campaign, and may decide McCain-Palin offers a better kind of change — perhaps enough to give McCain-Palin a victory.

The media elites really hate that idea.

Well, them and the public.

Not just because so many of them prefer Obama. But because they like telling us what’s going to happen.

You poopy-heads!

They’re always annoyed when the people cross them up. Pundits spent all spring telling Hillary Clinton to give up in her contest against Obama — and the public kept on ignoring them and keeping her hopes alive.

Why do elites like to proclaim premature closure — not just in elections, but also in wars and in social struggles? Because it makes them the imperial arbiters, or at least the perspicacious announcers, of what history is going to bring. This puts the elite prognosticators ahead of the curve, ahead of the simple-minded people who might entertain the delusion that they still have a choice.

Specious, self-serving, disingenuous tripe, you dark-hearted piece of shit.