Yglesias was the front man for a highly-capitalized wonk shop predicated on the idea of intellectuals having the capacity to rapidly change the way people live through influencing top-down policy. Might be a reason why people now treat intellectuals as weapons to be controlled.

Ibram Kendi’s racism went from fringe to published book to mandatory policy in a handful of years, while Yglesias et al. spent that time insisting that actually support for free speech was rising, led by educated liberals. Then Vox ran him out of town.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/12/17100496/political-correctness-data

Two and a half years separate these two quotes from the same man.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/substack-and-medias-groupthink-problem/617102/

See also: https://mobile.twitter.com/TheAgeofShoddy/status/1327380788359393280

I’m sure Yglesias is a charming peer for many wonks, public intellectuals, journalists and other denizens of the vaunted Back Channel which, like dark matter, seems to warp and shape the visible world more each day. But in public... this is what he is. I decline to respect that.

This is well-said, and suggests another point: the idea that everything is settled is fundamentally a belief of the powerful, as is the willingness to systematically lie. The Yglesias of 2018 and before thought that was him, riding high on the tiger. https://mobile.twitter.com/Ecclesiasticu12/status/1361005010499305477

Desperate insistence on the right to state uncomfortable truths and the idea that maybe everything *isn’t* settled for all time is the argument of the minority, those who have less or no power. That’s where Yglesias finds himself now, thrown from the saddle of the monster he fed.