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George Packer Quotes

George Packer quote from classy quote

At the heart of the matter is a battle between wish and fear. Fear generally proves stronger than a wish, but it leaves a taste of disappointment on the tongue.

~ George Packer

George Packer Disappointment Fear Inspirational Life Wish

This isn't to deny that there were fierce arguments, at the time and ever since, about the causes and goals of both the Civil War and the Second World War. But 1861 and 1941 each created a common national narrative (which happened to be the victors' narrative): both wars were about the country's survival and the expansion of the freedoms on which it was founded. Nothing like this consensus has formed around September 11th.... Indeed, the decade since the attacks has destroyed the very possibility of a common national narrative in this country.

~ George Packer

George Packer 9 11 9 11 10Th Anniversary Causes Civil War Consensus Goals National Narrative War World War Ii

The attacks of 9/11 were the biggest surprise in American history, and for the past ten years we haven't stopped being surprised. The war on terror has had no discernible trajectory, and, unlike other military conflicts, it's almost impossible to define victory. You can't document the war's progress on a world map or chart it on a historical timetable in a way that makes any sense. A country used to a feeling of being in command and control has been whipsawed into a state of perpetual reaction, swinging wildly between passive fear and fevered, often thoughtless, activity, at a high cost to its self-confidence.

~ George Packer

George Packer 9 11 9 11 10Th Anniversary American History Command Control Progress Reaction Self Confidence Surprise Terror Victory War

The slow, mismanaged arrival of armored vehicles and bulletproof plates for flak vests was only the most conspicuous demonstration of how the Iraq War, like every war -- just or unjust, won or lost -- became a conspiracy of the old and powerful against the young and dutiful.

~ George Packer

George Packer Iraq War Power Soldiers War

[O]nce demagogy and falsehoods become routine, there isn’t much for the political journalist to do except handicap the race and report on the candidate’s mood.

~ George Packer

George Packer 2012 Presidential Election Demagogy Elections Falsehoods Journalism Politics

[T]he enduring problem for liberals, as for everyone else, is not whether history will judge them wise or foolish regarding the war on terrorism; it is, rather, the way that the past decade has splintered them away from other Americans. This fracture comes with a steep price: in today's toxic atmosphere, liberals are no less cynical, shortsighted, and parochial than anyone else, and they understand their fellow-Americans just as badly as they themselves are understood. When liberals look at red-state voters, they see either a mob of pious know-nothings or the insensible victims of militarism and class warfare. Yet.... [such people] defy fixed categories, which means that they have to be figured out the hard way--on their own terms.

~ George Packer

George Packer 9 11 9 11 10Th Anniversary Americans Cynicism Liberals Parochialism Political Parties Politics Rifts Shortsightedness Stereotypes Understanding War On Terror

Both Obama and Romney ended up in the wrong place: the former thought American exceptionalism was no longer true and should be given up while the latter thought it was still true. Neither was willing to tell Americans that they were no longer exceptional but should try to be again.

~ George Packer

George Packer Inspirational Politics

This malignant persistence since September 11th is the biggest surprise of all. In previous decades, sneak attacks, stock-market crashes, and other great crises became hinges on which American history swung in dramatically new directions. But events on the same scale, or nearly so, no longer seem to have that power; moneyed interests may have become too entrenched, elites too self-seeking, institutions too feeble, and the public too polarized and passive for the country to be shocked into fundamental change.

~ George Packer

George Packer 9 11 9 11 10Th Anniversary Change Crises Recession Stagnation United States

Ideology knows the answer before the question has been asked.Principles are something different: a set of values that have to be adapted to circumstances but not compromised away.

~ George Packer

George Packer Circumstances Compromise Ideology Principles Values

Before the nineteen-seventies, most Republicans in Washington accepted the institutions of the welfare state, and most Democrats agreed with the logic of the Cold War. Despite the passions over various issues, government functioned pretty well. Legislators routinely crossed party lines when they voted, and when they drank; filibusters in the Senate were reserved for the biggest bills; think tanks produced independent research, not partisan talking points. The D. or R. after a politician's name did not tell you what he thought about everything, or everything you thought about him.

~ George Packer

George Packer 1970S Bipartisanship Democrats Politicians Politics Republicans U S Politics Washington Dc

The Iraq war was always a long shot. But it was made immeasurably longer by its principal architects in Washington, including Douglas Feith, who ignored expert advice, reserved most of their effort for fighting each other in ideological battles, and regarded the Iraqi people as an afterthought.

~ George Packer

George Packer Effort Advice People

No one pretends anymore that the Olympics are just about sports. It's routine to talk about what effect holding the Games in this or that capital will have on the host country's international reputation, how a nation's prestige can be raised by its medal count.

~ George Packer

George Packer Reputation Country Nation

The Olympics are never just about sports.

~ George Packer

George Packer Never Just Olympics

If the presidential nominating process were an international sports competition, one would assume that top officials of both parties were taking envelopes of cash from town chairs in Durham and precinct captains in Waterloo.

~ George Packer

George Packer Competition Process Cash

It's essential for the U.S. and Europe to prevent Putin from going farther and reversing the hard-won independence of former Soviet republics.

~ George Packer

George Packer Europe Soviet Going

Climate change joined immigration, job creation, food safety, pilot training, veterans' care, campaign finance, transportation security, labor law, mine safety, wildfire management, and scores of executive and judicial appointments on the list of matters that the world's greatest deliberative body is incapable of addressing.

~ George Packer

George Packer Change Safety Training

When I interviewed Paul Bremer in his office, he had almost no books on his shelves. He had a couple of management books, like 'Leadership' by Rudolph Giuliani. I didn't take it as an encouraging sign.

~ George Packer

George Packer Management Office Sign

Inspiration is an underexamined part of political life and presidential leadership.

~ George Packer

George Packer Life Political Inspiration

Inequality saps the economy by draining the buying power of Americans whose incomes have stagnated, forcing them to rely on debt to fund education, housing, and health care.

~ George Packer

George Packer Education Power Care

Abstract sympathy with the working class as an economic entity is easy, but the feeling can vanish on contact with actual members of the group, who often arrive with disturbing beliefs and powerful resentments - who might not sound or look like people urban progressives want to know.

~ George Packer

George Packer Powerful People Easy

Whether as victim, demon, or hero, the industrial worker of the past century filled the public imagination in books, movies, news stories, and even popular songs, putting a grimy human face on capitalism while dramatizing the social changes and conflicts it brought.

~ George Packer

George Packer Hero Imagination Past

While starving refugees in Homs were providing target practice for government snipers, Bashar al-Assad's strongest international backer was in Sochi, at the Iceberg Skating Palace, visibly moved, smiling with deep satisfaction, as the Russians beautifully glided and leaped their way to the gold medal in the team event.

~ George Packer

George Packer Team Deep Gold

I've read a lot of war writing, even World War I writing, the British war poetry of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves's memoir 'Goodbye to All That,' and a civilian memoir, 'Testament of Youth,' by Vera Brittain.

~ George Packer

George Packer War Goodbye Writing

Discerning the legal difference between what WikiLeaks did and what news organizations do is difficult and would set a terrible precedent.

~ George Packer

George Packer Difference News Difficult
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