Some things that came across my feed:
Arrogant Dem quote of the week: Rural Americans ‘have no contact with the expert class’
New York Times op-ed columnist David Brooks ignited a wave of backlash after insulting rural Americans who have no contact with the “expert class.”
The political commentator’s pompous contention, during an appearance on MSNBC, that the right feeds on conspiracy theories and have been “left behind” while those in blue cities are “thriving,” sparked much head-scratching and criticism on social media.
Last week on @MSNBC, @nytdavidbrooks said there’s demand for conspiracy theories on the right because “blue cities are thriving” and “people left behind in the rural parts of America feel threatened”. What? Mr. Brooks: Who exactly is thriving in “blue cities”? pic.twitter.com/MxD30DOU0X
— Rashad Robinson (@rashadrobinson) December 9, 2020
Then this:
Most notably, the stark economic rift that Brookings Metro documented after Donald Trump’s shocking 2016 victory has grown even wider. In 2016, we wrote that the 2,584 counties that Trump won generated just 36% of the country’s economic output, whereas the 472 counties Hillary Clinton carried equated to almost two-thirds of the nation’s aggregate economy.
A similar analysis for last week’s election shows these trends continuing, albeit with a different political outcome. This time, Biden’s winning base in 509 counties encompasses fully 71% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,547 counties represents just 29% of the economy. (Votes are still outstanding in 28 mostly low-output counties, and this piece will be updated as new data is reported.)
How can that be? How can only 17% of the countries in this country be responsible for 70% of the economy?
It’s banking, finance, corporate boardrooms, stock trading, Hollywood, and Silicon Valley.
It’s not manufacturing, agriculture, mining, refining, etc.
Put these two together.
Our “expert class” is made up of people who have been groomed in a handful of institutions to spend their lives fondling money, bloviating, and sucking themselves and each other off about how great they are for being masters-of-the-universe types.
This is neo-feudalism.
Today’s lords are not titles of nobility granted by birth or a king. They are degrees granted by a few institutions and titles given by big corporations.
They are more and more clustered and cloistered into socio-economic Mottes.
The other 83% of counties and the populations within are populated by peons beyond the Bailey to toil in the dirt.
At least Medieval nobility has a religious obligation to take care of their peasants.
This new class of lords has figured put how to divorce themselves from us. The harvest may be spoiled but they still make money by financial wheeling and dealing. People got rich off the housing bubble then got rich off the bust.
If you want to know what they think of you, it’s this. You are unenlightened and unimportant and you need to know your place is under their boot.
Those “high output” counties would be wastelands without the food, energy, and materials produced by the “low output” counties.
David Brooks is clueless and arrogant ranks right up there with water is wet on the obvious and predictable scale. He was right once with Bobos in Paradise and a bloviating fool every other time but he does echo the id of the coastal echo chamber.
“…Blue cities THRIVING…” “Thriving” is the Dem Code Word for BURNING.
These are the same “experts” that will mandate electric cars for all, even though neither the installed generation capacity nor the distribution system can support that number of electric vehicles.
Nor can electric vehicles support the agricultural industry that feeds the entire world…So that means they’ll have to reduce the population to that socialist ideal of some 500 million people…What happens to the rest of us? WE DIE.
I suspect the difference between our current betters and feudal lords can be mostly explained by mobility of wealth.
The landowners were financially bound to the land and its people. So they maintained both to some extent with the view of their future heirs. One usually does not sh*t where one sleeps.
The nowadays aristocracy can take a prolonged dump in the nest and then jump to the next tree with all their digital feathers intact.
I say this as a city-dweller who can barely keep a houseplant alive longer than a week, but if things ever do come down to “Civil War 2.0,” it could be ended in about six months without the red states ever having to go on the offense. Just stop sending food to the SoCal and NYC–DC Sprawls.
Yeah, sure, they can import things from abroad… But not much. They’ve mostly closed the seaports in those regions, y’know, to protect the oceans or whatever.
US farmers feed lots of people around the world — importing from overseas would just be raising global prices, making the poorest areas starve but enriching the red states.
“The Hunger Games” isn’t supposed to be an instruction manual…
Seriously. It’s Capital District vs all the other Districts.
I’ve been revisiting The Hunger Games series. That was pretty much my exact thought: Those 17% are the Capitol; the rest of us are the 12 Districts.
Don’t mince words, J, tell us how you really feel. 8>)