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" The hollowing out of the heartland was good for Walmart's bottom line: its slogan might have been an amoral maxim attributed to Lenin - 'The worse, the better.' "

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" My readers know my views on politics and politicians because I make no secret of them in my comments for 'The New Yorker' and elsewhere. "

George Packer

Know

Politics

Secret

" I actually think that self-interest is overrated as an all-purpose guide to political motive. It leaves out something at least as powerful and immovable - individual psychology. "

" Over the years, America had become more like Wal-Mart. It had gotten cheap. Prices were lower, and wages were lower. There were fewer union factory jobs and more part-time jobs as greeters. "

George Packer

Over

" Part of the mystique of blogs is their protean quality: They work both sides of the divide between politics and media, further blurring the already fuzzy distinctions between reporter, pundit, political operative, activist, and citizen. "

" I worked as a carpenter for a few years. I began writing. I wrote a book about my time in Africa - that came out in 1988 - called 'The Village of Waiting.' "

" In a meritocracy, actors who act well get good roles. They don't get to be journalists, too - a job that, in a meritocracy, should go to those who do journalism well. "

George Packer

Job

Good

" 'The Assassins' Gate' is a very tightly controlled story of the ideas that led to the war and the consequences of those ideas in Iraq, and there is no doubt about where it is going and what kind of groundwork is being laid. "

" I've been interested in American politics since I was eight. That was in 1968. It was an interesting year. I was a huge Eugene McCarthy supporter, so I guess he was the first senator I really knew about and cared about. "

" Politics demands certain skills honed by experience, just as journalism does, just as acting does. "

" Everything seems set up for success in digital journalism - money, eyeballs, software, brands. "

" I don't think they need to be nice to reporters, but the White House seems to imagine that releasing information is like a tap that can be turned on and off at their whim. "

" Obama offers himself as a catalyst by which disenchanted Americans can overcome two decades of vicious partisanship, energize our democracy, and restore faith in government. "

" Character is destiny, and politicians usually get the scandals they deserve, with a sense of inevitability about them. "

" A great writer requires a great biography, and a great biography must tell the truth. "

" What the Web has never figured out is how to pay for reporting, which, with the collapse of print newspapers, is in desperately short supply, and without which even the most prolific commenters will someday run out of things to say. "

" It seems in America you are stuck with the position you adopted, even when events change, in order to claim absolute consistency. That can't be good. "

" Abstract sympathy with the working class as an economic entity is easy, but the feeling can vanish on contact with actual members of the group, who often arrive with disturbing beliefs and powerful resentments - who might not sound or look like people urban progressives want to know. "

" WikiLeaks is not a news organization; it is a cell of activists that is releasing information designed to embarrass people in power. "

" Amazon's identity and goals are never clear and always fluid, which makes the company destabilizing and intimidating. "

" What I found in Silicon Valley is an industry that's sort of been kept a very far remove from Washington and had an attitude of 'Just let us do our thing and make the miracles that people love around the world and leave us alone.' "

George Packer

Alone

Attitude

" The invisibility of work and workers in the digital age is as consequential as the rise of the assembly line and, later, the service economy. "

" Last year, in the year 2008, it just became normal to watch great American institutions crumble, almost dissolve like sand. "

" Inequality saps the economy by draining the buying power of Americans whose incomes have stagnated, forcing them to rely on debt to fund education, housing, and health care. "

" While starving refugees in Homs were providing target practice for government snipers, Bashar al-Assad's strongest international backer was in Sochi, at the Iceberg Skating Palace, visibly moved, smiling with deep satisfaction, as the Russians beautifully glided and leaped their way to the gold medal in the team event. "

" A curious thing about this rarefied world is that bloggers are almost unfailingly contemptuous toward everyone except one another. "

" The constellation of opinion called the blogosphere consists, like the stars themselves, partly of gases. This is what makes blogs addictive - that is, both pleasurable and destructive: They're so easy to consume and so endlessly available. "

" Climate change joined immigration, job creation, food safety, pilot training, veterans' care, campaign finance, transportation security, labor law, mine safety, wildfire management, and scores of executive and judicial appointments on the list of matters that the world's greatest deliberative body is incapable of addressing. "

" All over Africa, people are wearing what Americans once wore and no longer want. Visit the continent, and you'll find faded remnants of secondhand clothing in the strangest of places. "

" If giving money to a politician prejudiced my ability to think and write honestly, I wouldn't do it. Fortunately, it doesn't. "

" The difference between a reporter, a newspaper columnist, a paid speaker, a television personality, a radio talk show host, a blogger, a movie producer, a publicist, and a political strategist, is growing less - and not more - distinct. "