A War Against Elites: The America Will Vote for Bush (Les Américains stupides alert!)

Le Monde Diplomatique ^ | February 2004 | Tom Frank

[walden]

Thank you-- you saved me the trouble.

It is true that the disparity between the richest and the poorest is greater now than it has been in a long time, but that doesn't equate to what they're trying to prove. The real truth, as you point out, is that poor people in the U.S. today live better than well-off but servantless people in the '20's, and better than the middle-classes of many, many countries do today.

[AmericanVictory]

Especially his insights about the "brilliant" de Willypan calmly refuting all our arguments with his "logic." Yeah, right!

[Bedford Forrest]

There is a fair to good chance that ours is the last generation of Americans that will have to listen to these irritating and totally disgraceful slanders and aspersions from the Frogs, spewing their envious bile, as always. That is, given the birth rate disparity as between the Frogs and their resident muslim population, how long can it be before France becomes a Syrian protectorate and French itself becomes a completely dead language, spoken only in a few failed West African states?

[Republican Wildcat]

I still don't understand what the Club for Growth's strategy was in getting involved with the Iowa Caucuses and helping to take out Dean.

[ijcr]

How do you say "tax hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left- wing freak show" in French?

Paris

[marron]

Until the American left decides to take a long, unprejudiced look at deepest America, at the kind of people who think voting for George Bush constitutes a blow against the elite, they are fated to continue their slide to oblivion.

I agree with some of the other posters here. Americans don't resent the "rich" because they see wealth as the natural result of a productive life. Not everyone becomes "rich" but its not that far out of reach. Some mechanics start their own body shop and become millionaires in terms of assets, although they will likely work every day of their working life. Or start a restaurant, and if they manage not to go bankrupt they may also qualify as a millionaire although they too will never miss a day's work.

The people at the top of the corporate ladder had a long hard slog to get there, and no one really envies them. And if they are good, they deserve to be where they are, and if they aren't, some college drop-out is working on something in his garage that is going to eat their lunch.

The left, and the Euros, don't understand that the working class in America doesn't see himself as part of a permanent underclass. He certainly doesn't consider himself less than those that purport to fight for him. He more likely than not holds such people in utter contempt.

And the poor in America are only a permanent underclass to the extent that they sign on to the programs intended to help them. Hit bottom, depend on family, friends, and your own wits and you will rise to fight again. Hit bottom, and depend on the professional helpers to save you, and you are probably trapped for life, you will never get out.

Most people see that. So far from seeing the professional helpers as morally superior folk, they see them as toxic.

Still, there once was room on the left for real Americans. There is a kind of "Christian Socialism" or "Christian Democracy" movement which exists in Europe which once would have fit comfortably within the Democratic party, but the visceral hatred by the left for anything remotely Christian has driven believers out. Only the Socialists remain, the Christians have gone or soon will. And with them has gone any connection the Dems had with normal people.

[inkling]

Another great line he makes about lefties...

Being on the left is not about building common cause with others: it’s about correcting others, about pointing out their shortcomings.

[McGavin999]

The French are always characterised in American popular culture as a nation of snobs: they drink wine, they eat cheese, they’re polite.

There is nobody on this planet who think the french are polite!

This guy is so full of it that it's laughable.

[luvbach1]

...they drink wine, they eat cheese, they’re rude, they smell.

[Tamzee]

We are being lectured by a country that had an appalling number of deaths from a HEATWAVE...people even died after reaching the hospitals because medical workers couldn't make ice.

[Schattie]

You forgot NPR-and-Lake-Wobegon-listening

[Free Vulcan]

Apparently those monkeys did some random typing and came up with this rambling diatribe.

[ApplegateRanch]

Let's see: 2004 - 30 = 1974.

Bush 2 = 4 2000
Clintoon = 8 1992
Bush 1 = 4 1988
Reagan = 8 1980
Carter = 4 1976
Ford -> 2 1972

Yep, 30 years of Right Wing victory, IF you are a contortionist, looking from the perspective of a "Centrist" Frog.
Only a Frog could croack out that Billous & Mr. Peanut were Right Wing!

[JCB]

I don't care what the Islamic Republic of France has to say anymore than I do Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia or North Korea.

[dvwjr]

..."You will recall that the French foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, clearly believed he was making progress every time he slapped down some US misrepresentation or pointed out some US error."

"Here he was, a well-dressed and accomplished man, soundly refuting the arguments of the Americans, speaking several different languages, even receiving open applause from the UN representatives of much of the world as he berated the US Secretary of State, who stoically endured the abuse of his social superior, for this obvious error or that."

The author, Mr. Franks has internalized the views of the European elites, and expressed them perfectly in his above paragraphs. You see, the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell had to take it on the chin from his "social superior", the French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin. Since Colin Powell was only a four-star US Army General who brushed elbows with the Washington social and power elite during his career and likes to restore old Volvos in his spare time, he obviously acknowledges the superior social background and upbringing of a well coiffed diplomat who write poetry in his spare time and even speaks French. High time those crude bores from American learn their place in the world social pecking order...

Mordez-moi...

dvwjr