The Politics Industry

Introduction

In 2005, celebrated author David Foster Wallace delivered a commencement address at Kenyon College. He started with a fish story: “There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, ‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’ The two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, ‘What the hell is water?’”1

After Wallace assured the new graduates that he wasn’t positioning himself as an embodiment of the wise old fish, he got to the point of the story: “The most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.”

For most Americans, the political system surrounds us ...