Posted on 05/06/2014 2:00:21 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
It doesn’t matter if you belong to the 0.1 percent as long as you say the right things.
The qualifications of a Tommy “Dude” Vietor or Ben Rhodes that placed them in the Situation Room during Obama-administration crises were not years of distinguished public service, military service, prior elected office, a string of impressive publications, an academic career, previous diplomatic postings, or any of the usual criteria that have placed others at the nerve center of America in times of crisis. Their trajectory was based on yeoman partisan PR work, and largely on being young, hip, and well connected politically. I don’t think either of these operatives has a particular worldview or competency that would promote the interests of the United States. But they do talk well, know the right people, and are hip. Again, they have no real expertise or even ideology other than that.
Al Gore is said to be our leading green activist, and the Steyer brothers the most preeminent green political donors. But do they really believe in reducing carbon emissions to cool down the planet?
Not really. The latter made much of their fortune in the sort of high-stakes speculations that the Left supposedly despises. Many of their financial payoffs derived from promoting coal burning abroad, of the sort most liberals wish to stop.....
[HUGE SNIP]
....So, in medieval fashion, liberalism serves as a powerful psychological crutch: You can be noble in the abstract to assuage worries of not being so at all in the concrete. It adds a hip flourish to the otherwise mundane pursuit of power, lucre, and influence that plays out on the golf course, at the Malibu party, in front-row seats at NBA games, or in the tony Martha’s Vineyard summer home. About three decades ago, sipping a fine wine at a Napa bed and breakfast, or getting the right Italian-granite and teak flooring, became a force multiplier of being loudly liberal.
If a liberal has a really nice Chevy Chase estate or Upper West Side brownstone or Tahoe summer home, it is important to sound all the more liberal. Or maybe it is just the opposite: You cannot sound credibly liberal unless you first have the correct liberal address and square footage. The joke is on us. Having lots of stuff and lots of money, while deriding the system that provides it, is perverse, but perverse in a postmodern sense: You fools love the free market, where you didn’t do too well; we whose parents or selves did very well in it don’t like it all that much. How postmodern — like guffawing that lots of smoke came out of that Gulfstream ride, or lecturing about inequality from Rancho Mirage or the back nine at Augusta.............." Full text
It doesn’t matter if you belong to the 0.1 percent as long as you say the right things .... For them, 21st-century liberalism is a useful badge, a fashion not unlike wearing good shades or having the right sort of cell phone.
Being 'liberal' means never having to say you're sorry for your utter Hypocrisy.
Thanks for the ping
Funny how many of the former middle class of America are now moving in with elderly parents—not to provide care for them, but to have a roof over their heads and food to eat.
The old rich and the new rich seem oblivious to it all and live large while the nation collapses.
Will we ever see pitchforks and torches, barricades, and burnings, officials and bankers strung up from lightpoles?
No, I think not. The biggest losers in the collapse of America are still civilized, educated people who abhor anarchy and will act to prevent violence rather than lead it. They will go to church, give what little they can to help others and pray that God will deliver us from the barbarian rats who are getting their appetites for mayhem aroused.
God knows, I don’t.
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