Explaining it all to you: The persistence of Vox

This is what is most irritating and dangerous about the Vox mentality. It is the same tendency that afflicts mansplainers generally: the refusal to entertain the possibility that it could be you who is wrong. “Explanation” implies certitude. For the explainer, information flows in a one-way channel, from the mouth of the explainer to the ear of the explained-to. Vox does not need to listen; Vox knows. After all, these are the three charts you need to read about the Trans-Pacific Pipeline. Here’s the real truth about Donald Trump’s taxes, in five simple statistics. Everything you need to know, explained.

People have good reason for not trusting fact-checkers and wonks. That is because they lie. And they torment people with those lies, by portraying disagreement as an irrational refusal to acknowledge objective empirical truth. They treat political disputes as questions of fact rather than value, and steadfastly refuse to acknowledge their own considerable biases.

When Vox emerged, there was some speculation as to whether it would survive. But it has consistently done well, and of course it will survive. It will survive because we are all insecure and confused, and promises of explanation and certitude are appealing in a chaotic world. Ezra Klein is right that we do not know what to do with the barrages of information we encounter every day, and his let-me-explain-it-to-you business model is savvy.

But the more Vox persists, the less hope there is for American politics. The Vox model is premised on the idea that people shouldn’t think for themselves, that the important parts of political thought and decision-making should be outsourced to experts. Inevitably, these experts will produce solutions nobody likes, because the moment one is convinced that all opposition must be founded in ignorance, one will always be right no matter how many people are hurt or how many people complain. The point of politics is no longer to help us live together and understand one another. The point is policy, and our job is to listen to the explainers. After all, they have the facts. They’ve got them here in 5 charts. It’s everything you need to know.