David Foster Wallace wrote an incredibly powerful essay on John McCain - I couldn't find a piece so here are some excerpts in the form of a summary.
The piece focuses a lot on the question of McCain's commitment to sincerity and whether it's manufactured. I think many people ask themselves that question about politicians - for example I feel that Walid Junblatt genuinely cares about the cause and ideal of March 14, but I always wonder.
In some ways, manufacturing sincerity becomes an obligation once you're past a certain level in politics. Some do it better than others.
And everyone gets stuck when manufacturing sincerity clashes with a certain political move.
We can say the same thing about big tech companies, Google is a case in point. People's attitudes toward Google are changing. It's becoming unsurprising to see an article with a title explaining "Why Google gets too much power over your private life," etc. This is the result of Google starting to be perceived as part of the establishment, of the intelligence apparatus, etc. These are political choices Google made that clashed with its previous "genuinely nice" persona.
Do people at large have a different attitude towards politicians who betray a particularly sincere-looking image and companies that do the same?
If so, why? Is the justification for that purely psychological or can a moral justification be made as well?
My guess would be that similar mechanisms are at play and it varies a lot, but maybe the ability to "bounce back" is easier for politicians because we are more used to that phenomenon with them.
The piece focuses a lot on the question of McCain's commitment to sincerity and whether it's manufactured. I think many people ask themselves that question about politicians - for example I feel that Walid Junblatt genuinely cares about the cause and ideal of March 14, but I always wonder.
In some ways, manufacturing sincerity becomes an obligation once you're past a certain level in politics. Some do it better than others.
And everyone gets stuck when manufacturing sincerity clashes with a certain political move.
We can say the same thing about big tech companies, Google is a case in point. People's attitudes toward Google are changing. It's becoming unsurprising to see an article with a title explaining "Why Google gets too much power over your private life," etc. This is the result of Google starting to be perceived as part of the establishment, of the intelligence apparatus, etc. These are political choices Google made that clashed with its previous "genuinely nice" persona.
Do people at large have a different attitude towards politicians who betray a particularly sincere-looking image and companies that do the same?
If so, why? Is the justification for that purely psychological or can a moral justification be made as well?
My guess would be that similar mechanisms are at play and it varies a lot, but maybe the ability to "bounce back" is easier for politicians because we are more used to that phenomenon with them.
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