Once upon a time, hope was scarce and dark­ness every­where. Peo­ple looked for heroes. Dur­ing the worst years of the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, we found them. They weren’t big or brawny, but they had heart. A bunch of nerdy kids blog­ging about pol­i­tics were here to save the day.

When faced with cybernetic revolt, organic life prevails through the use of emotions and guile to exploit the mechanical thinking of the synthetic mind.

Matthew Ygle­sias, Ezra Klein and their com­pan­ions were fear­less — but, beyond that, ana­lyt­i­cal. They knew how to use graphs and the Inter­net, bring­ing an earnest quan­ti­ta­tive approach that would make lib­er­als the Very Seri­ous Peo­ple of the Dig­i­tal Age. Even the media estab­lish­ment had nice things to say about our protagonists.

There seemed to be some­thing dif­fer­ent about this band, an ide­al­ism that blend­ed the resur­gent youth activism that ral­lied behind Howard Dean’s 2004 cam­paign and against the Iraq War with the lib­er­al ​“net­roots” cul­ture that devel­oped along­side it. Their pop­u­lar­i­ty grew as they were absorbed into the media ecosys­tem. Klein’s writ­ing moved from his epony­mous Type­pad to the Amer­i­can Prospect to the pages of the Wash­ing­ton Post. Ygle­sias also got his break at the Prospect and end­ed up at Slate.

But at some point, Klein and com­pa­ny stopped being lib­er­als. They even stopped being human. The sin­gu­lar­i­ty — a tech­no­log­i­cal super­in­tel­li­gence — was upon us. The wonks had become robots, ready to force enlight­en­ment down our par­ti­san throats.

In sci­ence fic­tion, cyber­net­ic revolts often begin benev­o­lent­ly. Humans are fal­li­ble, pet­ty, prone to argu­ment and war. Syn­thet­ics are pre­cise, dis­pas­sion­ate, above jeal­ousy and strife. Wouldn’t our inter­ests be bet­ter served kneel­ing at the altar of dis­in­ter­est­ed judgment?

Klein wield­ed his new legit­i­ma­cy with a sim­ple, high-mind­ed goal: to con­struct pol­i­cy to ben­e­fit the great­est num­ber. To this end, he went rum­mag­ing through the mar­ket­place of ideas. He even sam­pled those of Rep. Paul Ryan (R‑Wis.), inter­view­ing him in three parts and laud­ing his ​“hon­est entry into the debate” in a 2010 Wash­ing­ton Post piece titled ​“The virtues of Ryan’s roadmap.” In the same venue a few months lat­er, Klein defend­ed Ryan against attack by the far-from rad­i­cal Paul Krug­man. Klein pushed back against Ryan’s indi­vid­ual points here and there, but his mechan­i­cal mind failed to real­ize that the con­gress­man was play­ing a dif­fer­ent game — a far more dynam­ic and ide­o­log­i­cal one — than he was. The blog­ger want­ed to tin­ker with num­bers to make Wash­ing­ton run smoother; Ryan want­ed to use data to obscure a dif­fer­ent mis­sion: end­ing the wel­fare state.

Ori­gins of the present robot

Klein is the arche­type for the bank­rupt­cy of mod­ern lib­er­al­ism, so much so that he dis­avows being a lib­er­al at all. He’s a tech­no­crat, obsessed with pol­i­cy details, bereft of pol­i­tics, earnest­ly search­ing for solu­tions to the world’s prob­lems through the dialec­tic of an Excel spread­sheet. He told The New Repub­lic​’s Alec MacGillis, ​“At this point in my life, I don’t real­ly think of myself as a lib­er­al. That’s not the project I’m part of, which is to let the facts take me where they do.” This state­ment isn’t unusu­al. It reflects a new cen­ter-left com­mon sense — lib­er­als against pol­i­tics and demo­c­ra­t­ic messi­ness. Lib­er­als, in the inter­est of human­i­ty, against humanity.

The rapid inte­gra­tion of for­mer­ly obscure, wonk­ish out­siders into the media spot­light elite is easy to under­stand. Tech­no­crat­ic analy­sis and blog­ging that divorces pol­i­cy from pol­i­tics dove­tail neat­ly with the noble-sound­ing notions of objec­tiv­i­ty long dom­i­nant in Amer­i­can journalism.

This fetishiz­ing of objec­tiv­i­ty hasn’t been with us for­ev­er. The 19th-cen­tu­ry press was unapolo­get­i­cal­ly ide­o­log­i­cal. News­pa­pers edi­to­ri­al­ized at every turn, open­ly declar­ing alle­giance to a polit­i­cal par­ty. The Pro­gres­sive Era saw a shift away from this mod­el. It was a mixed bless­ing. The reformed pub­li­ca­tions could take on cor­rup­tion and entrenched polit­i­cal machines like nev­er before, but this shun­ning of overt bias was tied in with hos­til­i­ty toward mass par­tic­i­pa­tion in debate and pol­i­cy for­ma­tion. Only pro­fes­sion­al jour­nal­ists and tech­no­crat­ic politi­cians, untaint­ed by pop­u­lar pas­sion, could be trust­ed to illu­mi­nate and solve the prob­lems of the day. The media rev­o­lu­tion was, by nature, an elite project.

Dur­ing the long era that fol­lowed — the hey­day of CBS News and the New York Times—the dom­i­nant media’s elite char­ac­ter was obfus­cat­ed by this cult of objec­tiv­i­ty. Pub­lic rela­tions spin aside, these out­lets didn’t present all views; rather, they offered a lim­it­ed spec­trum of debate select­ed from what pub­lish­ers and jour­nal­ists — and the cor­po­rate adver­tis­ers who fund­ed them — deemed ​“accept­able”. Ties were forged with experts in the state, the cor­po­rate world and acad­e­mia. Old ideals of cit­i­zen­ship and par­tic­i­pa­tion were aban­doned. Pub­lic debate that might derail the new lib­er­al con­sen­sus was not to be tol­er­at­ed. ​“All the news that’s fit to print” became the Times’ slo­gan in 1897.

Like their jour­nal­is­tic pre­de­ces­sors, Belt­way lib­er­als today pre­fer to tout their exper­tise and talk raw facts. It’s what dis­tin­guish­es them, in their minds, from the ​“ide­o­logues” (peo­ple with a coher­ent world­view) to their left and right. Moral and eth­i­cal appeals to vot­ers are thus discounted.

Refresh­ing­ly, Repub­li­cans such as Ryan sport a more ide­o­log­i­cal project. They real­ize pol­i­cy and pol­i­tics can’t be sep­a­rat­ed and that an empir­i­cal debate about num­bers can serve a prepack­aged ide­al — in Ryan’s case, some sort of lib­er­tar­i­an fan­ta­sy world of free mar­kets and almost-free labor.

It’s a project com­plete­ly for­eign to ​“solu­tion-ori­ent­ed” tech­nocrats like Klein, who are quick to find nuance and com­pro­mise with­out con­sid­er­ing long-term con­se­quences. They refuse to acknowl­edge that all pol­i­cy has polit­i­cal impli­ca­tions, either build­ing momen­tum for the pro­gres­sive move­ment or under­min­ing it. After all, if you keep fight­ing the very peo­ple who vote for you, you’ll have no one left to sup­port you.

Just look to the New York Times edi­to­r­i­al on the 2012 Chica­go Teach­ers Union strike, titled ​“Chica­go Teach­ers’ Fol­ly,” which explains that ​“teach­ers’ strikes, because they hurt chil­dren and their fam­i­lies, are nev­er a good idea,” and then places much of the blame for the strike on a ​“per­son­al­i­ty clash between the blunt may­or, Rahm Emanuel, and the tough Chica­go Teach­ers Union pres­i­dent, Karen Lewis.”

What room is there for jus­tice and injus­tice, right and wrong, when there are per­son­al­i­ties to dissect?

The Times wasn’t alone. Though more num­bers than per­son­al­i­ty obsessed, Slate​’s Ygle­sias and fre­quent Klein col­lab­o­ra­tor Dylan Matthews found mid­dle ground between a ​“blunt” neolib­er­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic may­or and a ​“tough” pub­lic sec­tor union. Tech­no­crat­ic lib­er­al blog­gers have accept­ed terms of debate set out by con­ser­v­a­tives, mak­ing only tiny adjust­ments and push­ing back on the fringes against a reac­tionary vision designed to stop the emer­gence of any new Left coali­tion. The new tech­nocrats’ ​“open-mind­ed­ness” legit­imizes attempts to smash these emerg­ing movements.

By com­par­i­son, the Repub­li­can ten­den­cy to shore up their social base by clos­ing ranks and enforc­ing ide­o­log­i­cal con­for­mi­ty seems awful­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed. Big pol­i­cy changes, after all, require mobi­lized and mil­i­tant polit­i­cal actors. And some­times uncrit­i­cal defense of these actors, what­ev­er their short-term pol­i­cy fail­ings, makes the most long-term sense.

The wonks couldn’t under­stand. ​“Quite sim­ply, the Rom­ney cam­paign isn’t adher­ing to the min­i­mum stan­dards required for a real pol­i­cy con­ver­sa­tion,” Klein whined. Repub­li­cans weren’t play­ing fair. They were play­ing at pol­i­tics, while he was try­ing to con­struct sound policy.

This is the kind of rigid sim­plic­i­ty that will even­tu­al­ly bring about Klein’s down­fall. As sci­ence fic­tion fore­tells, when faced with cyber­net­ic revolt, organ­ic life pre­vails through the use of emo­tions and guile to exploit the rigid, mechan­i­cal think­ing of the syn­thet­ic mind. Many of those cel­e­brat­ing Pres­i­dent Obama’s vic­to­ry over Mitt Rom­ney will share this fate. Lib­er­als pore over data and cite demo­graph­ic trends favor­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty and its dom­i­nant ​“vital cen­ter.” Sim­i­lar opti­mism per­vad­ed the pun­dit class fol­low­ing Bar­ry Goldwater’s defeat in 1964. But the Right had a long-term vision: build­ing social forces, recon­struct­ing a polit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy, recruit­ing a B‑list actor, chang­ing the coun­try. That wasn’t a pol­i­cy revolt; it was a revolution.