The key factor underlying much of this sort of thing is the extreme financial fragility of DC pundits and thinktankers, and their abject terror at risking the unemployment lines. Basically, if the CEO of Coke announces a new soft drink strategy, all his mid-level marketing people naturally get into line behind it, and the exact analogy is true of all these “mainstream opinion journalists.”

Let me now get to the point of why this way of living also results in a big increase in the control-freak, Orwellian police state society. Let me go back to that "living paycheck-to-paycheck" phrase. Here's what's the problem with that, aside from the normal worries about the monthly struggle to pay down all the STUFF: One loses much control of his direction in life when he is tied in to the incoming salary on a very short time-line. Let me put this better as an example. I've been reading about the fired Google-guy who wrote a simple, in-my-opinion still PC, memo about the whole male/female differences thing. (This post is not about the particulars, and, as to be expected, Steve Sailer is all over it here, here, here, here, and here.). This guy may come out of this with a job soon, just because this situation has gotten lots of attention. That doesn't happen to the average employee, however, and it can't. The closer you are bound to your job via your tight month-to-month budget, the less likely you will quit, speak-out, or even push-back a slight bit, when you are harassed with all the mass stupidity. You are not a free agent if you live like this - you are much more beholden to your employer and must be more of a suck-up, a kiss-ass, whatever it entails, to the dieversity and PC-crap than if you had a year or two's salary put away to find a new job or even a new career and leave the stupidity behind! [Links are only in the original post.]