Something has gone very wrong with the peer-review process.

Could it be that the reviewers are more concerned with WHO the author is than with what the author has to say?  - unless, of course, what the author has to say is critical of some beloved assumptions of those guarding the gates to their own academic citadel. This response it common to religions that are symbiotic with a state.

Thorstein Veblen compared hierarchical religious sects to retail distribution chains. An anthropologist would see the behavior amongst those in the 'mainstream' of modern economics as much more like a church and the theoretical systems as more like doctrine and heresy than like scientific postulate and experimental testing. It is not without reason that economists 'joke' about to which 'church' various economists belong. It is also significant that senior members of the profession argue that economics is more a branch of moral philosophy than of social science and that therefore a deductive, axiom based approach is in order. I agree with that view, though I find the 'moral' aspect problematic.  

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."