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Obama is the splendid fruit of a meritocracy.
George Packer -
America's vast population of working poor can only get so poor before even Walmart is out of reach.
George Packer
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The next great technology revolution might be around the corner, but it won't automatically improve most people's lives. That will depend on politics, which is indeed ugly but also inescapable.
George Packer -
A religion is not just a set of texts but the living beliefs and practices of its adherents.
George Packer -
The war in Afghanistan is not of a peace with the rest of Obama's worldview. It's a holdover from the era that his election was supposed to bring to a close.
George Packer -
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.
George Packer -
When I interviewed Paul Bremer in his office, he had almost no books on his shelves. He had a couple of management books, like 'Leadership' by Rudolph Giuliani. I didn't take it as an encouraging sign.
George Packer -
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.
George Packer
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Amazon's identity and goals are never clear and always fluid, which makes the company destabilizing and intimidating.
George Packer -
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.'
George Packer -
I am not a pure fiction writer, nor am I an academic writer. Somehow I ended up in this blended area of literary journalism.
George Packer -
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.
George Packer -
Surrendering to jargon is a sign of journalism's dismal lack of self-confidence in the optimized age of content-management systems.
George Packer -
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.
George Packer
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Partly what I'm writing about is the way taboos get toppled.
George Packer -
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.
George Packer -
What can one man do even if he is the president?
George Packer -
It's - the working class of San Francisco and the Bay Area is being pushed out of its old neighborhoods because of the skyrocketing cost of housing, and there's no real working class left because these are jobs for engineers and managers and designers - very smart people.
George Packer -
It's a cliche that the Senate is broken, and like most cliches, it's true.
George Packer -
'Charlie Hebdo' had been nondenominational in its satire, sticking its finger into the sensitivities of Jews and Christians, too - but only Muslims responded with threats and acts of terrorism.
George Packer
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Millions don't rally to the banner of Uncertainty.
George Packer -
With work increasingly invisible, it's much harder to grasp the human effects, the social contours, of the Internet economy.
George Packer -
Oprah is just this goddess presiding over so much of American life, and her story is really interesting - the way she made herself, and the ruthlessness it took, and also the fantasizing that it took.
George Packer -
I am never going to be able to rest easy in having established a posthumous connection to my father. I'll always be groping for what I can't have.
George Packer