Something Those On The "Left" Need To Understand - Again

Trump, the know-nothing victor

Once again a longish article that I suggest reading completely, a few out-takes

In the past decade, there have been many electoral surprises of this sort, almost always followed by three days of soul-searching from the leaders found wanting, and then by the quiet resumption of discredited policies.
The persistence of such a lack of understanding — or the repetition of such a sham — is easier to comprehend when so many of the protest voters live far from the big centres of economic and financial power, and also far from the centres of the arts, media and the universities. Hardly anybody voted for Trump in New York and San Francisco; London massively rejected Brexit in June; two years ago Paris returned its leftwing municipality to power in an election in which the right triumphed nationally. As soon as the election is over, the fortunate people feel entitled to go on governing in their cosy clique, ever attentive to the recommendations of the press and the European Commission, always prompt to ascribe to the refractory voters psychological or cultural deficiencies that disqualify their anger. Are they anything but know-nothings, easy prey for demagogues?

Nothing provides a better example of what the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu called ‘the racism of intelligence’ (2) — increasingly prevalent among leftwing neoliberals but also radical intellectuals and university teachers — than an article on the website of the prestigious magazine Foreign Policy.

You really want to read this on Foreign Policy it is quite a nasty piece of work and shows just how cut off they are from the reality of "Fly Over Territory".
An out-take from that "piece of work" by professor Jason Brennan

In a modern democracy, the uninformed will always greatly outnumber the informed. The quality of our candidates reflects the quality of our electorate. But democracy encourages our electorate to be bad quality.

As Serge Halimi goes on about that article

Brennan was galvanised rather than paralysed by an observation that confirmed him in his anti-democratic creed. Backed by ‘over 65 years’ of studies by political scientists, he was already certain that the ‘frightening’ absence of knowledge on the part of most of the electorate disqualified their choice: ‘Voters generally know who the president is but not much else. They don’t know which party controls Congress, what Congress has done recently, whether the economy is getting better or worse.’

Halimi continues with his pointed observations

Most commentators have preferred to spotlight the election’s racist and sexist dimensions. It matters little to them that in spite of the historic nature of Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, the gap between male and female voters has barely changed and the huge one between black and white voters has declined slightly.

In other words the blinkers are firmly back in place, to continue

For many Democrats, everyone can be pigeonholed into a single group — though never an economic one. So if blacks voted against Clinton, they must be misogynists; if whites voted for Trump, they must be racists. Identity Democrats cannot conceive that those blacks could be steelworkers receptive to Trump’s message on protectionism, and those whites well-off taxpayers attracted by his fiscal promises to the rich.

He concludes:

California voted massively for Clinton, who had a spectacular share of the vote among the college-educated population in its most prosperous counties, which are often almost entirely white. Some Californians, disgusted by the national result, are calling for their state to secede, in a ‘Calexit’. Gavin Newsom, lieutenant governor of California and former mayor of San Francisco, a city where Trump polled just 9.78%, has a different plan: to combat the new president’s policies by teaming up with the western world’s ‘enlightened leaders’. All he has to do is find some.

The left used to pride itself how it communicated with the same people it now writes off as, uneducated deplorables. Rather than speaking like elitist Ayn Randian style assholes of the left, how about getting back down in the trenches? Bernie Sanders focus on income inequality was the right one and the real battleground where the election should have been fought. Rather than the mocking intellectual elitism of the Hillary Campaign with respect to both her opponents in the primaries and general elections and the subsequent derision of their supporters, it might have been better to embrace those working too hard or just too angry to keep up with all the political wheeling and dealing.

Sanders showed the way to communicate with the unemployed, unions, religious groups and the most forgotten by the warmongering pork festival that is DC; independent of race, gender or creed. Democrats would do well to start believing in the people again, rather than their own intellectual superiority.

Calling for idiotic things like "Calexit" no matter what educated references you can pull out of your ass sounds just as idiotic as any previous secession argument that has gone before. Remember your ridicule of the "Tea Partiers" that said the same thing? Well the same goes for you. Run away from the reality of many if you want. Run away from the fight by all means. Personally I think the self styled intellectual "left" lost the plot decades ago when trying to defend rampant capitalism and its owners. rather than its victims. The whole fucking "least bad/lesser evil" argument stinks to high heaven and is intellectually bogus.

In reality you don't want to change a fucking thing, just so long as your side wins. That is why you lost to the worst campaign in history against the worst candidate imaginable. Your arguments and strategies have caused you to lose at Presidential, Federal and State levels across the land, now you want to change the rules, how about changing what and for whom you actually stand for? Neo-liberalism and oligarchical tendencies got us to this point.

Some have said that Fascism is the last gasp of capitalism, I think it is more basic than that

When people hurt they lash out, usually against someone weaker than themselves, yes it is perverse, understand the hurt and help rather than mock.

Vive la Revolution. Seriously, live it.

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mimi's picture

in English. Had never thought about searching for that. Glad it exists. Will try to read later. Thanks.

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Steven D's picture

I'll take one of your rambles any day.

There is a reason we call them the Democratic Party "elite" because they are convinced that only they have the answer to every question, even though their "answers" have cost them elections and ruined lives of people of all races, most especially POC.

I used to think I had all the answers, too. It's an easy trap to fall into, if you aren't willing to take a good, hard look at reality starting with yourself.

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"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

Shockwave's picture

Many of those that voted for Trump do too;

On Rural America: Understanding Isn’t The Problem

As the aftermath of the election of Donald Trump is being sorted out, a common theme keeps cropping up from all sides-”Democrats failed to understand white, working class, fly-over America.” Trump supports are saying this. Progressive pundits are saying this. Talking heads across all forms of the media are saying this. Even some Democratic leaders are saying this. It doesn’t matter how many people say it, it is complete bullshit. It is an intellectual/linguistic sleight of hand meant to throw attention away from the real problem. The real problem isn’t east coast elites don’t understand or care about rural America. The real problem is rural America doesn’t understand the causes of their own situations and fears and they have shown no interest in finding out. They don’t want to know why they feel the way they do or why they are struggling because the don’t want to admit it is in large part because of choices they’ve made and horrible things they’ve allowed themselves to believe.

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The political revolution continues

be what it is. Divide and conquer is one of the oldest strategies in the book.

Once divided it is easy to prey upon and divide further along different lines, gender, race and religion both the Ds and Rs are as guilty as one another.

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Anja Geitz's picture

lies within the constituency? That Gerrymandered, Economically Starved, Corporate driven propaganda recipients of cable "news" constituency?

How confusing, and here I thought it was the grotesque amount of power and money poisoning our planet and our people that is the REAL problem.

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

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of growing up in a rabidly right wing household. My mother was a Rush Limbaugh listener as well as my father. I've always argued with my mother and every once in a while she did "get it" on the economic front. But then she turned right around and voted Repugnant, over and over and over again. Yes, she watched the Faux, but her radio listening was far worse.

Then there's my stepmother, who liked Trump in the beginning for his "strength" and is a Faux watcher and purportedly a "good Christian." I know damned well she "gets it" intellectually, and when we have argued she's mostly agreed with the facts I have laid out for her. But she then turns right around and votes Repugnant, over and over and over again. While these two were indeed heavily influenced by blatant propaganda, when DO we start holding them at least somewhat responsible for what they've voted into being?

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Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur

the power and culpability lies in the first instance.

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accountable. I have a box of "books" in my trunk by several of them that will burn in a fire pit one day as I told my mother they would. I can even see where my parents got some of their stupid ideas, and yes, all that anti-communist crap did a lot of it. But some of this is pretty simple - my question to any Repugnant voter over the years would be "do you need that Social Security to live on in YOUR retirement?" "What about Medicare, could you get along without that in your own old age?" Most would have to agree that they DO need it, that they've in fact paid into it and deserve it. But then they'll turn around and vote to cut it in some misguided, and yes propaganda fed, bout of extreme selfishness or willful ignorance. That's the part I have real trouble with - the hypocrisy and why in hell they cannot see that? And aside from recognizing the hypocrisy in their position, at the end of the day some of this is simple math in my humble opinion.

And yes, I'm angry at all of them right now for setting this agenda and disregarding their own futures by doing it. And I don't know how in hell to get through to any of them - I get that my own parents are a poor example as that's too emotionally loaded for them to see my point, I do, but that doesn't ease the frustration with the willful blindness that came with many of their decisions. I've always thought some would simply have to see it happen to them before they get it, and with the Rump they just might get that chance.

And I'm holding a specific sub-group "responsible" here - not people who voted for Rump due to real economic pain but those who did that because they've "always voted that way" and see no problem with doing that. Now they're horrified at Trump and I just want to look at them and ask why, you voted this way your entire life, what did you think would happen? One friend confessed that Trump "scares her" and she did not vote for him, yet she's voted Repug her entire life!

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Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur

Neither Party has convinced me they stand for anything but the 1% no matter how they play the game.

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as I like to call it for years, always believing they're all in it together. Then Bill Clinton came along, with all that hopeful talk and I bought it. I defended Obama for quite a while until I started some serious reading. I remember telling my rabid Tea Party mother years before the Tea Party, that I think they all get together in back rooms and decide who's for this, who's for that, and they agree to "disagree" on many points. She asked me how I could be so cynical and I asked her how she could not. And now I've come full circle, right back to the cynicism I always had before I even knew why I felt that way. And I think that's a big part of why I am so angry, I should have known better all along and I didn't know any more than the idiots like my mother who followed the Tea Party. We have all been played, me no less than them and that does piss me off.

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Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur

but have a little respect for the people whose choices have been limited from birth by the circumstances they were born into. I live in a rural area with very few well paying jobs around, and even few crappy jobs. Is my dairy farmer neighbor who is up at 3 a m getting ready for the first milking, who then spends 6 to 8 hours, 11 hours in the long summer days, in the fields planting cultivating spreading manure, milking again at 3 P m really supposed to sit down and contemplate party philosophies? Any spare time hes got is used in figuring out how to pay off his $600k debt. Every member of the family works at something as well as helping with the cows. What to do? Sell a piece of land? Raise a few feeder steers? Most of my close neighbors are in the same boat, even if they have some kind of low paying job they drive that rusted out 15 yr old truck to. I know I wouldn't last a week walking in their shoes

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Could you explain to me how the struggles of rural America are caused in a large part by the choices they've made? What were their options when the mines, mills and factories closed? Should they have retrained as cardiovascular surgeons?

Or did the choices they made cause the closing of mines, mills and factories? Maybe if they'd been practical and accepted a sub-minimum wage things would have gone better.

If they'd confessed to white privilege instead of believing the horrible things they, every last one of them, believe, help me understand how their lives would be better.

Because from where I sit they're all fucking peasants as far as you can see, and you don't give a damn about them. That's a bigger slice of the problem than the huge range of choices they ignored and their unwillingness to confess to your version of their impure thoughts.

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Shockwave's picture

B. You know nothing about me.

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The political revolution continues

It is their opinion nothing more, my writing is my own opinion.

I can find no reference to the authors credentials could be a NY hipster for all I know. There is a D-Kos user name with nothing on it.

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Nevertheless I was able to respond without violating community standards--barely.

B. Reading the article you offered for our consideration I can say more about you, and with more justification, than the generalizations about a diverse group of people in the rant you admire. I have lived among such people as well. They are not monolithic in their thinking. Lutherans in WI don't agree with each other, let alone with Baptists in southern Ohio who have plenty of differences among themselves.

Somehow Barack Obama was able to make space for a critical number of these people in his coalition. Hillary Clinton failed, in large part because of the attitude they are perceptive enough to feel that is expressed in your "truth."

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solublefish's picture

In large part, "the closing of mines, mills, and factories" is indeed a product of the choices made by the very people adversely affected by those closures. The tendency of people to vote against their own (economic) interests is one that was recognized even as working people were obtaining the right to vote. From Marx's "false consciousness" to Jose Ortega y Gasset's "Revolt of the Masses" to Thomas Frank's "What's the Matter with Kansas". Heck, we could go as far back as Plato's "Republic": Plato deplored democracy for just that reason, that the "voters" (citizens of Athens) tended to be ignorant of the matters on which they were required to form judgments, and in their ignorance they were easily misled by "sophists" who deployed clever rhetoric to appeal to the emotions of the crowd.

As for our own time, consider Appalachian coal miners, who have consistently voted against their self interests since the 18th century (see Harry Caudill's Night Comes to the Cumberlands for a clear-eyed yet deeply sympathetic overview of that history). Or see the (also sympathetic) writing of the late Joe Bageant (Deer Hunting With Jesus, among others). Or look at the results of the recent election, in which millions of working Americans voted for a lawless, narcissistic, authoritarian exploiter in the hopes that he would deliver them jobs and prosperity (??!!) - how dense can you get?

No one should be surprised by any of this. BUT we should also recognize that poor white people are not the only ones who tend to vote their ignorance rather than their interest. AND we should also recognize that the media bears a LARGE responsibility for the general ignorance of the American public (who, for God's sake, aren't even sure that global fucking warming is real). Finally, I think we must also note that this election year was the worst in the last 16 years of presidential elections, in which American voters were NEVER presented with a viable candidate who represented the interests of the common masses: BOTH parties have colluded in the construction of the current corporate oligarchy that increasingly rules the world.

I think LaFeminista is completely correct to assert that the Democratic Establishment has treated ordinary working Americans with contempt ("basket of deplorables"), and continues to do so. A great many self-styled "liberals" are guilty of the same ("fly-over country"). But this does not vitiate the fact that the great mass of voters are generally ignorant and tend to vote their prejudices rather than interests - or those of the larger community. On the contrary: as I indicated above, this has been recognized for over two millennia to be the central flaw of democracy as a political form. That does not mean, of course, that we should jettison democracy; it means that we must strive to make it healthy and viable, against the forces that tend to destroy it. Chief among those (also recognized as such for over two millennia) is economic oligarchy: the concentration of economic power in the hands of a few. Long before FDR (or TR) addressed this as a threat to democracy, Aristotle did, arguing that a just polity required that property be widely distributed among the masses of people.

In short, we should not be blaming individual voters for the results of this (or any) election. They are human beings, subject to the same limitations as all of us. We should be blaming the system, identifying and working to repair the systemic flaws that tend to give us the bad results we rightly disdain.

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pswaterspirit's picture

Should be blaming the Democrats since they had never voted anything but until Clinton did his number on us. Al Gore didn't stand a chance. They vote republican because they have little left to lose and no one is representing their interests. Giving others a taste of what's happened to them tends to be very effective. Harsh but true.

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CambridgePulsar1919's picture

There's some truths in that rant by Forsetti, but there's a lot of bullshit in there as well.

What he seems to have missed is the fact that the embrace of Trump was also a rejection of establishment Republican bullshit. Those unsophisticated voters actually learned some things from the GW and Obama years; mainly that all that trickle-down, supply-side, too big to fail hocus-pocus only made their situation worse. Many Trump voters have obviously copped-on to that hustle, even as they apparently have swallowed whole this new pseudo-fascist populism which Trump represents.

Those people deserve Forsetti's scorn for many reasons, but they do seem to have finally figured out that almost nobody in D.C. represents working stiffs. And they're rightfully angry that neither party seems to believe that people that get off their asses and work hard deserve anything from their govt. at all. If you engage in certain prescribed behaviors, our govt. has cash/assistance waiting, but the one behavior that isn't really included in this reward system is busting your ass at work for 70 hours each week. Because according to the right, that's what you're supposed to be doing, so no reward should be offered, and because according to the left, you're only working that hard because you're fucking stupid and undereducated; unless you're white, in which case STFU and appreciate how good you've got it with having 3 jobs that deny you the time to ever see your kids, or take a vacation, or save your marriage, or do any of the things that might make your extremely limited time on this Earth bearable.

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k9disc's picture

In fact I find it a flaming bullshit version of this, thoughtful piece, that says roughly the same thing without the overwhelmingly pejorative overtones of the piece you quoted.

http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about/

I'm from a part of the country that voted Drumpf. Surburban Detroit, north side -- Macomb County, in fact. I also hail from and spent time in Dryden, MI, a wealthy ex-urban enclave today. We sold lakefront acreage in the hicksville sticks that were Dryden. Land that was sold to a family in trust that it would not be developed that was developed to create a little slice of Graceland for the upper middle class.

I got lots of roots there and also UpNorth.You spend a lot of time UpNorth with family in my generation. I suppose most working class Gen Xers have a similar family reuinion thing going on where you go and live with or stay with family for a few days or weeks at a time over summer.

Anyway, the Forsetti article was a bit too overdramatic for me. I have no doubt that life can be hideous in a small town if you feel as if you don't belong. There's a legitimate shit ton of literature and film media to support that story of ostracism with no escape going back to, I'm sure, the Greeks. And that's what that piece read like: an angry piece of stream of consciousness poetry.

As such, I could relate, but found it to be false enough and over dramatized that it really fell flat as an emotive call, and an overblown political hostage behind enemy lines screenplay of the ostracized youth.

The piece from Cracked was pretty amazing though, and I'm big on that idea, same thing minus the binary, hysteria, and hyperbole. Note to Democrats: When Binary, Hysteria, and Hyperbole combine? Run! You're being manipulated and it's Evil.

I had problems with the Cracked piece, don't get me wrong, it wasn't perfect, but it was an honest argument with thoughtful illustration and nuance.

This Forsetti piece, IMO, is the wailing, tear streamed faced pictures of liberals as eye candy for "thinkpieces" on the Drumpf nomimation, in prose.

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“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu

elmo's picture

I recognize that "it's their own fault! Poor choices!" attitude: that's what Republicans say about the economic woes of minorities. No, it's not racism, it's unwed motherhood and drug use.

It's much easier to blame the problems of working class voters on their "lifestyle" choices than it is to consider that our government has for decades pursued economic policies that enrich the 1 percent by sending those working class jobs overseas and putting these Americans out of work.

In both cases, this attitude misidentifies the effects of the problem as the cause of the problem.

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Even the smallest person can change the course of the future

They wouldn't be necessary in Marin County, but every person in Macomb County would be required to take one. We could use computers to give the tests just like they do at the DMV. The tests could be formulated by rock solid members of the intelligentsia, completely diverse, of course.

We might exempt people wearing fashionable, expensive clothing, but who's going to do that in Macomb County? I mean really.

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No.

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We could exempt people who subscribed to Foreign Policy. We wouldn't require they read that fish wrap, just subscribe.

This debate about voters has been going on since the "Michigan School" tried to prove that voters were stupid because they didn't know much about Quemoy and Matsu. On the other side was V. O. Key, whose books covered everything from southern politics to the 1948 election. He thought most voters were pretty savvy when it came to voting their interests--provided that there is some party/candidate who actually represents their interests.

Democrats are just going back to their southern roots here. First dehumanize, then disqualify the voters who won't vote for you.

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Right.

Need more visual reminders on the internet. Being dyslexic sometimes you miss the signals

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Anja Geitz's picture

The pitchforks now and save ourselves the trouble of disenfranchising them? The Oligarchy can also throw in a supply of overalls and straw hats before they head off to their compounds in Paraguay.

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

solublefish's picture

Your avatar only adds to the irony.

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the Washington Post owned Foreign Affairs "prestigious." A look at those who have written for FA include Petraeus and several senators who recently sought the Republican nomination. My view of Foreign Affairs is that it's a neocon publication suitable for fans of Henry Kissinger.

There's not much of the Left left because it's been under attack since the Truman administration by both government agencies and corporate and 1% funded private hit teams. I don't think there is one radical economist employed by an Economics department in a large private or state owned university.

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"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

Neo-liberals is what they are, using "left" is for convenience only when compared to the rabid right of US politics.

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time through.

Cheers.

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"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

I disagreed with some of the terminology used, but the over-riding principle was clear enough.

As for FP and necons, there are plenty of neo-cons on the "left", indeed one of them was a Presidential candidate recently

Wink

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solublefish's picture

There's not much of the Left left because it's been under attack since the Truman administration by both government agencies and corporate and 1% funded private hit teams.

Not to mention union leadership, demagogue politicians, and "that Uncle" we all seem to have at least one of.

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and signaling its defeat, the conservative trade unions had full control of the apparatus of organized labor. George Meany was a foe of international working class solidarity and had the labor federation join in many State Dept/CIA fake international union pacts.
After Meany, things got worse, reaching its low point with Lane Kirkland.

There are sparks here and there: The National Nurses, the Fight for $15 and a couple of others.

It's darkest before the dawn; it's also darkest before the cave-in. Which?

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"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

Azazello's picture

that I have actually read. I have a copy of his On Television and this reminds me of a point I like to make about "educated" liberals. Suppose one has been to college and graduated with a degree or two. In most cases these degrees are little more than job certificates and indicate nothing more. A person who has credentials in some field or other but still watches TV four hours a day, or listens to NPR, is no better off than a high-school dropout who restricts him/herself to those same sources. Their cognition is just as easily captured by Neoliberal propaganda and they have forfeited the right to look down on the less "educated."

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

intellectual superiority. In chemical engineering it would be difficult to fool me, especially in fluid dynamics, however in electronics pretty easy. Lawyers seem to live an breathe over the con, although they would probably be able to convince me of the validity of whichever position they want to take at any given time.

Wink

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Azazello's picture

and Garbage In Garbage Out applies to all. As for myself, I don't have a job certificate, having taken a degree in Philosophy instead, but I read a lot.

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

solublefish's picture

...you may also like Loıc Wacquant (a student of Bourdieu's), who has written extensively on race, class, and neoliberalism in the US. Great interview here, at Against the Grain, where he offers the sort of analysis one could wish all Americans could hear.

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Big Al's picture

guess I'm not an intellectual. I'm not sure what the article is trying to say.
I read an article the other day I thot made a good case that the 25% of the voting eligible public that voted for Trump were primarily established republicans who always vote that way. Bush had his 20-25% too. Clinton received about 25% of the voting eligible votes primarily from established democrats. It was a contest between to parties and their supporters and this time the republicans won, last time the democrats won. Same old thing.
I guess I'm going to have to stop referring to myself as from the left. I try not to but do occasionally. But the tie in with the democratic party, I can't do that.

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It has no intellectual foundation. Neo-liberals is all that really fits.

The point is that they are content in their own bubble of self justification and anyone that isn't on the same side is intellectually deficient.

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Big Al's picture

intellectual superiority. I guess it's all in what you read and watch. Or don't read and don't watch. Didn't George Bush go to Yale? Actually as someone who has interacted at the upper levels of fed government, I've always wondered how people so smart could be so fucking dumb.

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Roy Blakeley's picture

The incoherencies of the two political parties have made the terms "left" and "right" nearly meaningless. On the Republican side there are the pure corporate shills and the libertarians who are less wittingly corporate shills and less gung ho about military adventurism. On the Democratic side, there are the corporate dems and the populist dems. The corporate media and NPR have a shallow definition of left that seems to coincide with neoliberal economics and social liberalism. This is convenient for them because it takes wealth distribution and economic populism out of the conversation. Anyone that dares point out problems with the policies of Obama or Clinton are automatically conservative or just not talked about because they don't fit the preconstructed niche. To me a Democratic corporate lackey is not "left" no matter how respectful and humane their social views are, because in the long run they will fuck over the many for the profits of the few. We need to come up with a better term for what we are. Any suggestions, anyone.

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sojourns's picture

"and NPR have a shallow definition of left that seems to coincide with neoliberal economics and social liberalism. This is convenient for them because it takes wealth distribution and economic populism out of the conversation."

NPR is notable as it's only been about ten years since they have sold out to the capitalists. Now, because they accept monies from large corporations, e.g. the absolutely reprehensible Koch Bros., they must be sensitive in not only what, but how they report on any given topic. Public television pulled "Citizen Koch" from airing because of this.

When the primaries were unfolding, it always seemed to me that Sanders received mere blurbs as compared to Clinton in terms of coverage.

Talk about fake news. When ISIS was publishing videos of the beheading of journalists, there was an outcry that there were in fact fake. I am among that group as I saw the unedited versions before they were pulled. They were worse than bad. They were gimmicky and cheaply done using a green screen and rubber knife. NPR completely refused to address this with any kind of equal time reporting. They simply went with the sensational party line. I've no doubt that some journalists were beheaded with glee by ISIS, just not the ones in the video.

Sadly, Al-Jazeera does a far better job at journalistic objectivity than does any American mainstream media.

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"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage

enhydra lutris's picture

us discussed emigration, and some of us did bail, but many of us decided to stay to fight, no matter how futilely, against what was wrong with the US and for policies embodyng principles of fairness, justice, legitimacy, equality and the like.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Jazzenterprises's picture

when the dark money just keeps pouring in...?

Winning elections has become secondary.

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Progressive to the bone.

gulfgal98's picture

is the idea of meritocracy. Thomas Frank wrote about it and I love this quote from Listen Liberal!

“One of the reasons that inequality has probably gone up in our society is that people are being treated closer to the way that they’re supposed to be treated,” Summers commented early in the Obama administration.

“Remember, as you let that last sentence slide slowly down your throat, that this was a Democrat saying this,” Frank writes. From this mind-set stems everything that the Democrats have done to betray the masses, from Bill Clinton’s crime bill and welfare reform policies to Obama’s failure to rein in Wall Street, according to Frank.

This idea permeates all of neoliberal thought and was exemplified by the elitist arrogance demonstrated by Hillary Clinton and her campaign which could not be bothered meeting with and addressing the real people of this country. Just a few weeks before the election Clinton was still courting big donors in private fundraisers.

Rather than the mocking intellectual elitism of the Hillary Campaign with respect to both her opponents in the primaries and general elections and the subsequent derision of their supporters, it might have been better to embrace those working too hard or just too angry to keep up with all the political wheeling and dealing.

Those who believe in meritocracy see themselves as better and more deserving than the rest of us. This is exactly why Clinton avoided the Rust Belt and blue collar public events. And this attitude is not just limited to the Clintons, but is pervasive among the elite power brokers in Washington, New York, and on the west coast. In fact, I would guess that the vast majority of our elected and appointed officials in Washington cannot be bothered with the real problems facing real Americans. Their neoliberal elitism has them thinking that instead of them being representative of the people's voices in Congress or elsewhere in DC, they see themselves as our overlords.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

or at least that was the effect it had on me.

Also why I included the Ayn Randian way of thinking, the elite can do or think what they want, the rest are worthless.

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solublefish's picture

Summers' words are the classic expression of the essence of what came (in the 20th century) to be called "social Darwinism", which was the regnant political idea in the First Gilded Age (we live now, arguably, in the Second Gilded Age). The same sentiment is the classic expression of the 'petty bourgeois' consciousness described by Marx and other socialists in the 19th century: it is the smug satisfaction of a person who has 'made it' and who therefore assumes 1. that he did so all on his own, and 2. that if he could do it everyone could (and so if they don't, there must be something wrong with them).

And Summers' expression is a perfect example of the profound ignorance of the blinkered, parochial elites who have been handed the reins of political power in this country (and virtually every other industrial nation), whose ignorance is the equal of the densest of Frank's fellow Kansans.

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elmo's picture

of being born on third and thinking you're a triple hitter. And by the way, how about hiring my cousin for a paid internship?

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Even the smallest person can change the course of the future

Phoebe Loosinhouse's picture

and Party Leadership who live in a bubble.

They have secure, well-paying jobs, nice houses, employer healthcare, disposable incomes, savings and they take nice vacations every year. They vote Democratic mostly out of habit because Nixon, Bush, social issues, etc. but they devote almost no time whatsoever to thinking about economic injustices or the Bernie agenda, because it's simply not their war. Hillary is/was fine because in reality they will always be fine regardless of who is in the White House.

This living above the fray mentality is what causes this ilk of Democrat to ascribe Donald Trump's election to ignorance, mental defect, moral failings, sexism, racism, etc. and not to the fact that the Party has largely ignored the plight of the working classes lo these many years and those voters have finally given up on them. When these voters ask themselves , What have the Dems done for me lately? they are hard pressed to come up with any answer, so they said F it. Not even the specter of Donald Trump, Comb-Over Boogie Man was enough to scare them into voting for Hillary.

What can you say about a campaign with so much complacency and hubris that they didn't even show up in some key battleground states they took for granted and then has the gall to blame their loss on the ignorance, racism and sexism of the American public at large and not on their own inability to articulate an economic agenda that speaks to the broad swath of Americans going down for the third time while their cries for help go ignored.

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" “Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.” FDR "

getting more entrenched.

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gulfgal98's picture

from the article you referenced, LaFem. Elitism extends to the press too.

Nicholas Kristof, leader writer at the New York Times, reflected on 17 November: ‘There is a problem in journalism that we favour lots of diversities over economic diversity ... We don’t have enough folks who grew up in working-class rural communities.’ This sociological bias has been documented and commented on in the US for the past quarter of a century, so it’s a safe bet that it isn’t going to change any time soon.

Jordan Chariton of TYT called out the New York Times for not even sending a single journalist to cover the Standing Rock/DAPL standoff.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

One "comedian" in my neck of the woods said, one copy of the NYT on Sunday kept the outhouse supplied for a year.

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gag moment when reflecting on Rush Limbaugh saying the NYT was full of propaganda and yet people believed it. Once I figured out he was "right" there it about made me sick! And I know my mother got a real kick out of watching me yell about the lies in the NYT, although she did seem to hate it when I tried explaining the exact why of that.

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Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur

Phoebe Loosinhouse's picture

Ignoramuses, Wise Up!
(with a nice arrow pointing upward)

The Clinton campaign simply didn't seem to understand the Electoral College or that it's always nice to stump in states you'd like to win, as opposed to constantly schmoozing with movie and rock stars at 6 digit per head fundraisers.

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" “Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.” FDR "

receive a "Hillary Approved My Intelligence" sticker rather than

If you don't vote for her "you are a stupid racist misogynist" label.

As the saying goes “You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar”

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elmo's picture

that I didn't think it was such a great political strategy to go around cheering the American economy and telling people who didn't think things were so hot that they must be simply mistaken about the reality of their own lives.

Trump at least recognized the economic pain of these voters.

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Even the smallest person can change the course of the future

Redstella's picture

I came from a family that was middle class and worked hard to remain middle class. My parents sent their children to college, a luxury that was not available to everyone from their background. They were FDR democrats, aware of the benefits that the new deal brought americans.

A brother went to medical school and in the process removed himself from the middle class in his mind. He is a republican conservative. Somehow, medical school made him feel he was a different social class. In my working career, I worked with lawyers who had worked hard to get through law school and while not everyone did, a big majority felt they deserved more because of that hard work. They also changed social classes.

I live in a semirural area of Oregon, where there are not good paying jobs available and certainly not if you have only gone to high school. It isn't really middle class, it is working class poor. What opportunities are there but to leave the area, go to college, get a corporate or professional job?

From my perspective, it looks like a class system. It is possible to ascend to another social class, but only with the winds at your back and alot of hard diligent work. People come to believe they deserve more. They believe they have more merit than others. That belief has separated us. And it allows an uncaring perspective on those less fortunate than themselves. And don't get me started on the religious underpinning of merit that many creeds espouse.

We are all in the same stew.

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states income inequality as it now stands has become a class driver rather than actual background.

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solublefish's picture

But this was also the argument that was made by Thomas Piketty in Capital in the 21st Century.

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elmo's picture

through education and hard work is all but gone now.

Even if you manage to get a good job after college, you're likely to also have a crushing, mortgage sized debt to pay back.

That's something people of my generation often don't really grasp: the opportunities we had just aren't there any more, no matter how hard one is willing to work.

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Even the smallest person can change the course of the future

PriceRip's picture

          Lifting oneself has never been an option, as such is an impossible task. Those that rise (in a fair system) do so only because of the good works, and good will of "the other". Such it is, as it has always been, and will be, forever.

          I am surprised this truism is not the foundation of all sociological thought.

          A corollary: Too often those that rise in our system do so by crushing the less fortunate in the process.

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MarilynW's picture

Gore Vidal once suggested that the USA should be broken up into more geographic regions. It's always been divided that way unofficially. The North from the South and the East from the West. And the precious Fly-over country in the center, urban from rural. California has the same sized population as Canada and the 6th largest economy in the world, bigger than that of France. I'm all for California breaking away and I hope eventually joining Cascadia (the Pacific Northwest including British Columbia.) These ideas are not idiotic. They are just ideas for now.

The banks put Trump in place not "the left." There's a revolving door from Wall Street to Washington DC. It all begins with the anti-democratic Citizens United. That's when big money began to own the election.

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To thine own self be true.

boriscleto's picture

As thinking Merrick Garland can be snuck into the Supreme Court or that the electors are going to select anybody but Donald Trump.

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" In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy "

MarilynW's picture

To declare that such an idea is idiotic is to limit discussion. There's enough scolding going on here.

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To thine own self be true.

pswaterspirit's picture

I have no desire to be a part of a new country that includes California. Perhaps you missed all the hoopla during the Reagan administration when they tried to force the sale of Bonneville Power? Wanted to pipe a big chunk of the Columbia down there for agriculture? Seemed like a dumb idea but they were certainly persistant. Nothing would be safe. Unfortunately we are tied to Montana and Idaho by the same collective power generator. Oregon, Washington, Montana and Idaho are co owners.

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MarilynW's picture

according to some analysts. Water will be its problem.

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To thine own self be true.

For many Democrats, everyone can be pigeonholed into a single group — though never an economic one. So if blacks voted against Clinton, they must be misogynists; if whites voted for Trump, they must be racists. Identity Democrats cannot conceive that those blacks could be steelworkers receptive to Trump’s message on protectionism, and those whites well-off taxpayers attracted by his fiscal promises to the rich.

That paragraph is such massive bullshit...after all, it was Donald Trump that told mostly white audience that people like me live in hell and probably attended a failing school, someone in this comment thread jokes (I think it's a joke, I am not too sure) about administering literacy tests in Macomb County that would include large portions of my very black and occasionally fashionable family and, of course, there is Hillary Clinton who can't seem to imagine black people that don't go to church (since she's forever in black churches)...

Everyone pigeonholes, to an extent, in other words...

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Yes pigeon holing exists by most groups with respect to other groups, it also presumes more that it informs.

PS the comment to which you refer was ironic, it fooled me first time.

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It is now almost literally a century since psychology partnered with business and government to manipulate public opinion as they saw fit for their purposes.
The revolving door of Psychologists, Business, Intelligence/Military, Politics has been spinning like a dervish since 1951 or so.
In the early '80s it was thought by the left that 55 companies controlling media content was a threat to freedom. Now there's six. Owned by the 1%.
People can claim they don't watch TV or whatnot. Makes no difference. Figures show people getting 90ish% of their news/entertainment from Media Central, whatever the medium for that.
I can't believe people talk about revolution but don't remember the rule "First, seize the presses." No, not build an alternate press over a decade or three to challenge the existing order's hegemony. No, not cultivate private niches for the like-minded to share their precious fee-fees. Seize the existing structure.
Which means in this case content and narrative have to be made democratized. No more economic panels where truckers and cleaning ladies are not allowed for instance.
Seriously if we don't make our first task be to change the content and control of mass reach media, depriving the 1% of their highly effective tool, then "we're stupid and we'll die."

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Orwell: Where's the omelette?

k9disc's picture

those.

Born and raised in the lower rent portion of the burbs outside of Detroit. My mom picked beans with the Mexicans on the other side of the tracks, to get the shorthand family reunion version of the story.

...
Blake Hurst stressed that Republicans, who ‘saw red’ (their colour on electoral maps) turned the stigma of being rubes to their advantage: ‘Most Red Americans can’t deconstruct postmodern literature, give proper orders to a nanny, pick out a Cabernet with aftertones of liquorice. But we can raise great children, wire our own houses, make beautiful and delicious creations with our two hands, talk casually and comfortably about God, repair a small engine, shoot a gun and run a chainsaw without fear, calculate the bearing load of a roof, grow our own asparagus, live in peace without car alarms, security guards, or therapists’ (10).

I got that in my family in spades. And they're all decent public school supporting (used to be) small l liberals who are rabidly conservative these days because they have no connection to the Liberal Elite and Big City Economics.

Perhaps a message from the Left with these themes could be persuasive:

  • Hillbilly Socialists
  • Liberal Elite
  • Conservative Con Men
  • Big City Economics

Might be part of that "Black and Blue" coalition that needs to develop. This SNL piece is completely on point and one of the more human expressions of the vibe coming from LeMonde Diplomatique:
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7VaXlMvAvk]

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“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu

dervish's picture

there is no legitimate American Left, and the Bernie campaign is the closest we've come to one. The Hillary campaign, like similar Democratic campaigns, gave open access to their billionaire donors. Here is an example, Haim Saban, the owner of Univision, describes how he would like to sodomize Bernie with an arrow.

He had access that none of us would ever have wielded. The Democratic party exists only to pull the Overton Windows to the right, and to enable gazillionaires like Saban to create a faux opposition to the powers that be. It puts us in a difficult situation, because third parties are generally non-starters under American election law, and the "left-wing" party is co-opted. Our best hope is to recapture the Democratic party, as difficult as that may be, and barring that, to fight the oligarch's dominion in every way possible.

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"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."

ggersh's picture

she needed to win, the D party is a party of the Oligarchs

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/12/09/the-democrats-do-their-job-again/

"Obama and Hillary telling folks to “give [the ugly white nationalist ogre Donald] Trump a chance” makes perfect sense. They and other top Democrats are allied with the Republicans in the longstanding top down neoliberal class war on workers, the poor, and the even just slightly progressive left. They are counterfeit progressives by Deep State design."

"Sure, Mrs. Clinton would have loved to claim the presidency but it wasn’t in the cards and there was no way in Hell she was about to move as far toward “good society” reformism as would have been required – even just in campaign rhetoric – for her to defeat Trump. The arch-classist former Goldwater Girl just didn’t have that in her. It’s not who she is.

Still, she has the bragging rights on the popular vote. And she did her first job, which was to defeat the progressives and keep the Democrats a party of “inauthentic opposition.” She avoided the ultimate failure and humiliation, which would have been handing the Democratic Party over to hated progressive insurgents in its own ranks. That part of her mission was accomplished"

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I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

Touche!!!!

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