The essay uses Pauline Kael’s 1972 remark about not knowing anyone who voted for Nixon to argue that liberals live in an “intellectual ghetto” marked by groupthink, citing Janis, Orwell, Rosenberg, and Hayek.

A donor-occupation study is presented as evidence that Democratic-leaning jobs (academia, media, arts, nonprofits) donate more uniformly than Republican-leaning trades, which the author says gives Democrats a cultural-messaging advantage.

It concludes that Democrats’ abstract, utopian habits and control of mind-shaping professions are a vice, while Republican work is more practical and less able to set public opinion.

In the early 1970s, Pauline Kael, film critic for the New Yorker, was stunned when Richard Nixon won the presidential election. She was famously quoted saying, “I can’t believe Nixon won. I don’t know anyone who voted for him.” That was odd. Nixon won 49 states.

Kael claimed she was misquoted. But she admits to saying something similar, “I live in a rather special........

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