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20 Nov 2008 09:58 am

The Real Source Of Washington Corruption

Spencer Ackerman nails it. It's the think-tank lunch:

Here I'm going to reveal an open secret in Washington. The best free lunch in town -- by far -- is at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute. I remember a panel discussion on Iraq a couple years ago at which AEI wheeled out a massive amount of succulent, just-grilled chicken shwarma. Rice that had been seasoned. With almond slivers! The whole thing displayed a stunningly real Middle East expertise, or at least what a Washington Jew thinks passes for real Middle East expertise. And that is how you succeed in this town...

Are you ready for some straight talk, my friends? Ladies and gentlemen, you need to go back to your parent organizations and tell them to step their cook-game up. The CAP chicken-salad wraps? With mayo? From Corner Bakery or whatever-the-fuck? It's at least partially responsible for the decline of liberalism in the age of Bush.

I have to disagree. One of the biggest problems the intellectual right has had, in my view, is the cozy camaraderie of its think-tank culture. Those great lunches build friendships and relationships within the context of ideology. And so it becomes socially very hard to break with that ideology when necessary. The conservative intellectuals are too friendly with one another, too civil, too social. One reason why I've been able to stay relatively immune to the Bush era's groupthink is because I have almost no friends in the conservative world (and those I had ... well, only a tiny few remain). So I can take issue with people's public commentary with no social inhibition. The last thing liberals need in power is the same kind of chummy self-reinforcing but very well-fed cocoon that helped lead conservatives over the cliff.

Eat Chipotle at your desk, my ex-friends. And be rude more often.

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