The fallacy is that politicians don't really do much about social issues. They just demonize their opponents as elitists and reap the benefit. It's a stupid way to do politics. Economic issues can more often be addressed concretely, and it would seem logical for people to vote their interests in this area.

Timothy Noah

Categorized in : Stupid Often Is Issues

Customer service, they say, is dead. Actually, it isn't. It's just hiding behind a call center in Manila.

Timothy Noah

call-center hiding behinds

There is quite a lot of mutual misunderstanding between the upper middle class and the working class. Reviewing what's been said about the white working class and the Democrats, I realized that there's even a lot of disagreement about who the working class IS.

Timothy Noah

middle white class

Is New Ageism inherently fascist? Of course not, though I'm happy to pronounce its babble about chakras and cosmic energy errant quackery.

Timothy Noah

about new energy happy

What if an asteroid were to strike planet Earth? What could we possibly do to prevent it? However many guys we have working on this problem, it can't possibly be enough.

Timothy Noah

what-if problem enough earth

The gulf between Virginia and Maryland isn't only a function of geography. It's also sociological. Indeed, it's probably not much of an exaggeration to say that Maryland suburbanites and Virginia suburbanites constitute two mutually hostile tribes.

Timothy Noah

say only function geography

The Reagan years really were a bonanza for the rich; you didn't imagine that.

Timothy Noah

you rich imagine years

The Kurds were the only people in Iraq who were completely unguarded in expressing their gratitude to the United States for setting them free.

Timothy Noah

only free gratitude people

What type of 'person' is the for-profit corporation? A spoiled brat - all rights and no responsibilities, a traditional conservative argument would say.

Timothy Noah

person say argument rights

Some liberals think that describing any role that education gaps play in creating income inequality is some sort of sellout - that, in essence, you're telling the middle class, 'Tough luck; you should have stayed in college.'

Timothy Noah

think you luck education

Voters care only that student loans remain freely available and that they cost taxpayers as little as possible.

Timothy Noah

possible student only care

The central con of the political coalition assembled by Ronald Reagan and maintained by his successors was that government was a common enemy.

Timothy Noah

con political government enemy

Is class snobbery a social reality in the United States? Absolutely, and the kind that's codified by meritocracy is probably more toxic than the old-fashioned kind based on bloodlines.

Timothy Noah

more toxic class reality

The liberation of Iraq, which is already hard to justify from the perspective of American interests, at least had the virtue of freeing Iraqis from a brutal dictator. Despite all the anarchy and violence, life has gotten better for most Iraqis.

Timothy Noah

better perspective violence life

To pine for the days before public education became a practical reality is to pine for an America held back by mass ignorance and mass illiteracy.

Timothy Noah

back ignorance education reality

Everyone agrees that animals should not be exposed to unnecessary pain. But neither should scientists be hamstrung by the requirement to use anesthesia in every animal experiment that might cause pain.

Timothy Noah

animals everyone pain animal

Income inequality has gotten worse under President Barack Obama.

Timothy Noah

worse inequality income president

If corporations are people, as the Supreme Court wishes us to believe, they are stunningly unpatriotic ones.

Timothy Noah

wishes us believe people

The U.S. policy of hoarding crude oil never made the world, or even the U.S., a safer place.

Timothy Noah

place never oil world

The doomsayers of the 1970s were wrong about how quickly the world would run out of oil, but not about the dangers that hydrocarbon consumption posed to the global environment, especially with respect to climate change.

Timothy Noah

climate-change respect change world

Presidential election results in 2008 and 2012 clarified that talk radio was not, in fact, running the country.

Timothy Noah

talk election radio country