Posted on 02/19/2004 7:24:01 PM PST by quidnunc
There was a commercial that aired on Iowa television in which the-then front-runner for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, Howard Dean, was blasted for being the choice of the cultural elites: a "tax hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left- wing freak show" who had no business trying to talk to the plain folk of Iowa.
The commercial was sponsored by the Club for Growth, a Washington-based organisation dedicated to hooking up pro-business rich people with pro-business politicians. The organisation is made up of anti-government economists, prominent men of means, and big thinkers of the late New Economy, celebrated geniuses of the sort that spent the past 10 years describing the low-tax, deregulated economy as though it were the second coming of Christ. In other words, the people who thought they saw Jesus in the ever-ascending Nasdaq, the pundits who worked himself into a lather singing the praises of new billionaires, the economists who made a living by publicly insisting that privatisation and deregulation were the mandates of history itself, are now running television commercials denouncing the "elite".
That’s the mystery of the United States, circa 2004. Thanks to the rightward political shift of the past 30 years, wealth is today concentrated in fewer hands than it has been since the 1920s; workers have less power over the conditions under which they toil than ever before in our lifetimes; and the corporation has become the most powerful actor in our world. Yet that rightward shift — still going strong to this day — sells itself as a war against elites, a righteous uprising of the little guy against an obnoxious upper class.
At the top of it all sits President George Bush, a former Texas oilman, a Yale graduate, the son of a former president and a grandson of a US senator — the beneficiary of every advantage that upper America is capable of showering on its sons — and a man who also declares that he has a populist streak because of all the disdain showered upon him and his Texas cronies by the high-hats of the East. Bush’s populism is for real. His resentment of the East-coast snobs is objectively ridiculous, but it is honestly felt. The man undeniably has the common touch; his ability to speak to average people like one of their own is a matter of public record. And they, in return, seem genuinely to like the man. Bush shows every sign of being able to carry a substantial part of the white working-class vote this November, just as he did four years ago (although 90% of black Americans voted Democrat in 2000).
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at mondediplo.com ...
Paris
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.
Being on the left is not about building common cause with others: it’s about correcting others, about pointing out their shortcomings.
There is nobody on this planet who think the french are polite!
This guy is so full of it that it's laughable.
..."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
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