The Anchoress is slightly fretting over the complaint of a lack of authenticity in politics expressed by Dick Meyer. The answer is actually very simple which is to deny phonies their weapons. To attack them where they live and to dismiss their creations.
There is nothing, really to authenticity. All it takes is a cursory look at any television show aimed at teenagers that involves cheerleaders. What do you tell the phony cheerleader? This is all you have to tell the phonies around you. The problem with Dick Meyer and everyone else who laments the takeover by the phonies is that they fully expect that masses of people, less perceptive than themselves, to be dazzled by the phony facade. They thus buy into the bigger fool theory and play the market like PT Barnum. They underwrite the ascent of phonies because they cosign the market of baloney. Baloney Rules! I hate it, they say, but they believe it too. And they are therefore cowed by the entire process sacrificing their own integrity.
Along the way to the inevitable conflict that forms the noose around the phoney neck, those who long for the authenticity they have personally abandoned must admit that they have lost their ability to tell the difference. How does one come up with a genuine answer to the problem of Iraq if you spend half your time arguing against the inanity of Murtha, for example? You can't because you cannot handle the obscurity of not being paid attention. And this is what it's all about.
What Meyer and others desire most fervently is for some miracle to occur in which the sloth of phonies is suddenly replaced by the discipline of authentic individuals thereby transforming popular politics to an authentic popular politics. So that the real people and suddenly be the popular people. It doesn't work like that.
Rabbi Hillel said, where there is no hero, YOU be the hero. Dick Meyer is just waiting for superman to save the day - the problem is, by not being his own superman, he and everyone like him won't recognize a real superman from a phony.
This kinda reminds me of David Brooks' accounting of Bobos
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