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" Today, we have our own concentrations of economic power. Instead of Standard Oil, U.S. Steel, the Union Pacific Railroad, and J. P. Morgan and Company, we have Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft. "

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

George Packer

Great

American

Watch

" 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. "

" What can one man do even if he is the president? "

George Packer

President

Man

" Partly what I'm writing about is the way taboos get toppled. "

" The Iraq war was always a long shot. But it was made immeasurably longer by its principal architects in Washington, including Douglas Feith, who ignored expert advice, reserved most of their effort for fighting each other in ideological battles, and regarded the Iraqi people as an afterthought. "

" 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. "

" The idea of solving as huge and long-term a problem as inequality - which, for my money, is the biggest single problem we have here at home - just never gets serious concern from both sides. "

" American wars in Muslim countries created some extremists and inflamed many more while producing a security vacuum that allowed them to wreak mayhem. "

" Obama is the splendid fruit of a meritocracy. "

" 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. "

" We have at least learned that the offspring of presidents don't necessarily make good politicians themselves. "

" To many book professionals, Amazon is a ruthless predator. The company claims to want a more literate world - and it came along when the book world was in distress, offering a vital new source of sales. "

" 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

" Together, Apple and Walmart represent the intense separation of American life into blue and red, rich and poor, overpriced and undersold, hyperconnected and left behind. "

" 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. "

" Republicans today have given the country conservatism in the spirit of Sarah Palin, whose ignorance about the world, contempt for expertise, and raw appeals to white identity politics presaged Trump's incendiary campaign. "

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

" The Senate was an odd compromise between the founders and the early leaders of the republic who wanted a single house which was based on popular sovereignty representing the people and those founders who wanted two houses, the upper house, the Senate, being the more aristocratic. "

" I am not a pure fiction writer, nor am I an academic writer. Somehow I ended up in this blended area of literary journalism. "

" Walmart's period of explosive growth coincided with decades of wage stagnation and deindustrialization. By applying relentless downward pressure on prices and wages, the company came to dominate both consumer spending and employment in small towns and rural areas across the middle of the country. "

" The base of the party, the middle-aged white working class, has suffered at least as much as any demographic group because of globalization, low-wage immigrant labor, and free trade. Trump sensed the rage that flared from this pain and made it the fuel of his campaign. "

" Afghanistan can't police its borders, and its neighbors give sanctuary and assistance to insurgents. "

" Before Google, and long before Facebook, Bezos had realized that the greatest value of an online company lay in the consumer data it collected. "

" Ambition, of course, is the politician's currency. "

" 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. "

" Lawyers, judges, doctors, shrinks, accountants, investigators and, not least, journalists could not do the most basic tasks without a veil of secrecy. Why shouldn't the same be true of those professionals who happen to be government officials? "

" 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. "

" Foreign policy exactly suits Obama's strong points as a leader, which turn out not to be giving the masses a clear sense of direction and hope, but instead exercising good judgment on a case-by-case basis while thinking many steps ahead of the present moment. "

" In its lowest, most common form, inspiration is simple charisma that becomes magnified by the media, as with Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton. "

" 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. "