It is troubling to me how the liberal investment in meritocratic standards as *neutral* and *nonideological* (“brilliant,” “qualified,” “credentialed,” “experienced”) preemptively delegitimizes *political* grounds for objecting to someone’s ascent to power 1/

People talk as if there were a bygone era in which neutral “qualifications” were the consensual grounds of civic-minded, bipartisan governing— i.e., longing for the days when Democrats & Republicans set aside ideological differences and assessed only if someone was qualified. 2/

I think it’s more accurate to say that the supposed neutrality of “qualifications” was just one mode in which they enacted a real ideological synchronicity between conservative & liberal. They actually shared substantive common ground; they didn’t meet in a neutral zone. 3/

That ground has eroded—the center truly cannot hold—and I do not understand fighting to get back to it, especially under the fetishized terms of bipartisanship and meritocracy. That framework has been great for the right’s amassing of power! 4/

This has been me, thinking aloud. I may be wrong. But I don’t think so.