Ta-Nehisi dares to suggest that Americans are to blame for many of their own problems:
I think I'm deeply uncomfortable with any sort of populism. No matter the target--bankers or the poor--it seems to require its leaders to say, "There's nothing wrong with you America."
In saying that I don't mean to ignore the difference in power, but to contest the notion of powerlessness as some sort of moral cleaning agent, and finally to contest the notion of powerlessness itself. There must be some way to acknowledge, all at once, the outer crookedness of deceptive lending, and then the inner crookedness of trying to get something for nothing... the notion that Americans are pure, and what's really wrong with this country, has everything to do with aliens--the media, the Muslim, the poor, the illegal, the rich, the elites--but nothing to do with the natives strikes me as comfort food.
Comfort food, super-sized.