Posted on 06/13/2019 4:49:06 AM PDT by Kaslin
What is going on with the unending Brexit drama, the aftershocks of Donald Trump's election and the "yellow vests" protests in France? What drives the growing estrangement of southern and eastern Europe from the European Union establishment? What fuels the anti-EU themes of recent European elections and the stunning recent Australian re-election of conservatives?
Put simply, the middle classes are revolting against Western managerial elites. The latter group includes professional politicians, entrenched bureaucrats, condescending academics, corporate phonies and propagandistic journalists.
What are the popular gripes against them?
One, illegal immigration and open borders have led to chaos. Lax immigration policies have taxed social services and fueled multicultural identity politics, often to the benefit of boutique leftist political agendas.
Two, globalization enriched the cosmopolitan elites who found worldwide markets for their various services. New global markets and commerce meant Western nations outsourced, offshored and ignored their own industries and manufacturing (or anything dependent on muscular labor that could be replaced by cheaper workers abroad).
Three, unelected bureaucrats multiplied and vastly increased their power over private citizens. The targeted middle classes lacked the resources to fight back against the royal armies of tenured regulators, planners, auditors, inspectors and adjustors who could not be fired and were never accountable.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
But you gotta admit it would be fun to see Zuck switch teams even if only to save his butt. It would make the libtard heads absolutely explode.
“the anger directed at them will only increase until they give up — or finally succeed in their grand agenda of a non-democratic, all-powerful Orwellian state.”
There’s a third possibility but Mr. Hansen is too polite to say it.
L
Bump
“Don’t forget the “Senior Executive Service” cabal consisting of over 8,000 unelected bureaucrats running our civil services.”
Don’t forget bureaucrats at the state and local levels of government. Our local public university just hired a diversity officer for over $300K a year. Nice work if you can get it.
Here is an older article about the diversity office at a different university.
Ooooh! I’d pay to see that!
Very good point. People who truly want freedom in their lives aren’t very common now. Freedom, I mean, not libertinism.
Never forget when Charles Rangel let the cat out of the bag in a discussion with Robert Reich over what to do with the “stimulus” money.
Reich, speaking of “shovel ready” projects:
“I am concerned, as I’m sure many of you are, that these jobs not simply go to high-skilled people who are already professionals or to white male construction workers…I have nothing against white male construction workers, I’m just saying there are other people who have needs as well.”
To which Rangel replied:
“And one thing you can depend on, you don’t have to be worried about what the middle-class is gonna do. Things are so bad. They have to put food on their tables. Clothes for their kids. Get them in school. I think this is a tremendous opportunity for a stronger America.”
This is what POLITICIANS...ALL OF THEM.....think of us.
Perhaps the worm is finally turning. Only time will tell.
Great article by the erudite Professor Victor Davis Hansen.
From the article:
Two, globalization enriched the cosmopolitan elites who found worldwide markets for their various services. New global markets and commerce meant Western nations outsourced, offshored and ignored their own industries and manufacturing (or anything dependent on muscular labor that could be replaced by cheaper workers abroad).
I'm not sure which is worse offshoring or H1-B's. Probably H1-B's. I asked a question a while ago: if one must import a new class which would you prefer: a huge parasitic lower class that can only do a bit of menial labor and requires a lot of welfare, a second middle class that depresses wages and keeps unemployment high, while competing for the scarce decent housing, college admissions and other tools by which the middle class raises their long term position, or, third choice: import a new ruling class who quickly take over the commanding heights of society - including elite institutions, running a lot of corporations, etc.
America is doing all three.
(sorry last two paragraphs are mine, not VDH’s , as the indent implies.)
The collectivist scum that seem to hold all the microphones these days never stop denigrating the normals, falsely advising the of racism, sexism, etc. ad nauseum, and falsely stealing credit for what they've achieved (you didn't build that), so why wouldn't they be angry?
That anger coexists with a feeling that those leftists are too stupid to count, almost too stupid to exist, and not worthy of notice.
A few years ago, Thomas Jefferson described this perfectly and more eloquently and succinctly:
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
There is a HUGE flaw in VDH’s otherwise fine article. He constantly says “The ELITES did this or that to their own benefit.” What he fails to explain is ELITES, by and large, means DEMOCRATS (at least in the U.S.) and leftists. I don’t know if VDH is still a Democrat, but perhaps this is a blind spot in his thinking.
He is taking a global view in this essay, so perhaps the word “elitists” is more apt on the word stage. But, throughout the world, “elitists” generally means “far left utopian kooks” which, in the U.S. is the province of Democrats.
Well, being spat on, taken advantage of, and ignored for decades do that people...
For liberals, fair is everyone having an equal share. For conservatives, it is proportionality.
For liberals, exclusion via nationality is oppression and unfair. To conservatives, saying take care of your own poor first is loyalty to the group and fair.
The perfect dichotomy is California saying we’ll charge native born middle class Americans the Obamacare fee so we can provide healthcare to illegal immigrants.
To liberals, this is taking care of poor, helpless and oppressed undocumented Americans. To conservatives, you’re stealing from the middle class to subsidize lawbreakers.
I agree with you in general, especially when you are talking about the bulk of the population. But there are a small number of powerful globalist and neo-con elites who have often supported Republicans who are as guilty as the arrogant, out-of-touch left-wing elites who now control the Dem party.
Oops. My last post was meant to be a reply to post 34.
His, pretty much point for point, is my list too. It isn't so much that the various manifestations of middle class anger are the same; clearly different nations have different aspirations and different expectations of government. What is common is the conviction that there is somebody untouchable to whom we have given power and who is now abusing it in pursuit of their own utopian ambitions, whether or not we share those ambitions.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. - C.S. Lewis
The patina of self-righteousness and moral superiority has worn off and we're left sick of hypocrites and PC busybodies oppressing us with a plague of lawyers, tax collectors, and scolds. These have now seized enough of the power of the state to threaten jail to anyone who pushes back. Regaining the issue of freedom of speech is vital and may well be about the only thing between the pulpit and the guillotine.
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