No one in the DC political class is cool. For all our American spirit of independence, democracy still defers to the majority, and power compels even the most singular, Machiavellian mind to mold itself in the image of the people.

Politics drains the blood out of the individual, replacing him or her with a bland and legible product, flattened into the image of at least 50 percent of the population. Prediction markets are a perfect example of this effect, shining the brightest lights into the caverns of cool, calcifying opinions into trends, trends into probabilities, and probabilities into certainties. There is nothing that poses more of a threat to cool than this, and no market hungrier for it than the politicos of Washington, DC.

I think this is why I find myself responding so strongly to idiosyncrasy lately. At the Polymarket-backed “Situation Room” pop-up bar in DC last month, where ubiquitous screens streamed prediction markets for the situation-monitors of Washington, I glimpsed the end-form of totalizing legibility.

A hive-mind........

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