Posted on 05/09/2019 10:41:18 AM PDT by Kaslin
Recent news is riddled with proof that America's soi-disant elites are the most venal, self-absorbed, sybaritic and utterly tone-deaf group since the French nobility of the 18th century. And the comparison is not idly made.
We start with the Met Gala, for which movie stars, musicians, athletes and fashionistas paid upwards of $35,000 a ticket ($200,000 to $300,000 per table) to show up and show off in the most outrageous (and outrageously expensive) clothing and costumes imaginable. It is meaningless, over-the-top indulgence, par excellence.
Perhaps because I was already peeved by the photos of the Met Gala's vulgar display that were plastered all over the Twitterverse, I found myself further annoyed by promoted commercials in my Twitter feed pitching Coco Crush jewelry from Chanel, and "T" bracelets and other wearable trinkets from Tiffany & Co.
Coco Crush is a line of gold rings and bracelets imprinted with the signature Chanel "quilted" pattern; some are encrusted with diamonds. The ads and taglines promote buying more, more, more, and the beautiful and talented actress Keira Knightley smolders into the camera as she deftly places ring after ring on her lovely slender fingers and fondles the cluster of bracelets on her wrist.
The cheapest piece of jewelry in the collection is $2,400, and prices run up to $55,000.
Hey, kids. Collect 'em all!
The ads Tiffany & Co. is running on Twitter show model Carolyn Murphy gazing seductively and playing peek-a-boo from behind her own collection of expensive baubles. Kendall Jenner, one of the many omnipresent Jenner and Kardashian offspring, also makes an appearance, presumably to show the appeal of jewelry that runs from $250 to $49,000 to the younger crowd.
Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes; she will have chaos wherever she goes.
All this wretched excess would be just mildly amusing if not for the fact that these are the same people who shake their gilded fingers at middle-class Americans and say, "No more cars for you! No more airplanes! No more straws! No more grocery bags! No more meat!"
Let them eat cake.
Early last month, the online publication Quartz published a brief profile of writer and social critic Anand Giridharadas to promote his new book, "Winners Take All." In the book -- and the profile -- Giridharadas questions the conventional wisdom that business leaders are truly interested in "doing well by doing good," suggesting that their true motivation is "more sinister." According to the article's author, Ephrat Livni, "Giridharadas discovered ... that there are strict limits to the kind of solutions that powerful 'change makers' will entertain. They don't want to pay higher wages or taxes or make better products or sell only what's really needed." They just want to be adored by the public for their charity and generosity.
Giridharadas' concerns would make some sense if he were to acknowledge their limits. He spent the better part of two years palling around the world with some of the world's wealthiest billionaires (Jeff Bezos, the Koch brothers, Marc Benioff). But in the cynical conclusions he draws about business and capitalism, he implicates all business owners.
Giridharadas makes the same mistake that so many of our elites do: equating all "business" with the biggest businesses in the world. He utterly overlooks the fact that there are 28 million firms in the U.S., that nearly 80 percent of them are sole proprietorships, that the vast majority of companies that (SET ITAL) have (END ITAL) employees have fewer than 20. The idea that all entrepreneurs are like Mark Zuckerberg, or that all CEOs are like Jeff Bezos, or that all companies are like Goldman Sachs or Twitter, is the kind of inexcusable ignorance that the upper echelons of our society get away with every single day.
This kind of ignorance -- and the arrogance that almost inevitably accompanies it -- is becoming a dangerous threat to the American middle class.
And they know it.
When a "thought leader" like Giridharadas calls for rethinking the entire capitalist system because of what Amazon or Facebook or Lehman Brothers have done, the uber-wealthy will nod and tweet their approval, safe in the knowledge that the flames they fan won't consume them but will consume the millions of small businesses unfairly condemned whose resources will not be enough to withstand -- or lobby against -- the "progressive" solutions proposed thereafter.
The political elites are just as bad.
Democrat presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris announced this week that if elected, she would push to repeal the tax cuts enacted by Congress under President Trump -- despite the benefits to the middle class.
New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proclaimed that Veterans Affairs "isn't broken" and, in the same week, announced that she doesn't care if immigrants are "undocumented." So, while our veterans suffer from untreated PTSD; commit suicide at a shocking rate; languish living in homeless shelters and under bridges; and die untreated on VA waiting lists, political elites throw open the doors to the poor from other countries to come get freebies here.
The "pay-to-play" college admissions scandal showed that the very wealthy can buy their way into college. And of course, the poor can get scholarships. But the middle class can do neither.
The "Medicare for All" and other comparable policies promoted by Democrats will be similarly unjust: They'll be pitched as paid for by taxes on "the very rich." But when there are not enough "rich" people to fund the boondoggle (and there never are), it will be the middle class -- again -- that will get crushed.
A revolution is brewing in this country. The middle class is tired of being America's beast of burden and whipping boy.
The MetGala, to me - was ostentatious and stomach-turning. I’m in LA. I don’t follow that stuff, but boy oh boy I see it and spit in contempt. It was Louis XIV all the way, and yes, we will storm the Bastille at some point. And we have the numbers.
haha, I love the pix
“But there’s a rather unique twist in the American dynamic. The 2A.”
Unlike any other nation on Earth, we have the 2A, meaning that:
Without registration there is no confiscation. National registration & licensing of owners is dead since the original attempt in 1968.
Blue states with “assault weapon” registration laws face 90% noncompliance rates, yet Governors hesitate to unleash their flying monkeys to kick in doors & make arrests. Is there a reason?
Meanwhile, California may be lost. There is now registration of ammo sales. Under their Red Flag, anyone can denounce anyone else to the po-po. They’ve gone fascist.
But the battle for gun rights as seen on a U.S. map is a crazy quilt of advances, holding actions, and court battles.
The confiscatory intent of Red Flag laws is being thwarted by clogged court dockets. Where does it say that Red Flag warrant requests butt in at the head of the line? And Constitutionality challenges have not even begun yet (they need to; where are you, NRA/ILA?)
The `Trump Slump’ in gun/ammo sales is dying as the U.S. House gone mad demands confiscation down to toothpicks. The atmosphere of “Get ‘em while you can!” is rapidly returning. Cory Booker & the other House nutbags have reawakened the urgency of the Obama years among gun owners.
Venezuelans were disarmed because their guns were registered, ours are not & a 4473 is not proof of ownership. In some states 30 rd magazines must be turned in. Where’s the mountain of magazines outside the precinct house?
Not even the neofascist Il Duce Andrei von Cuomo has gone on TV to warn New Yorkers to turn in their AR-15s or face arrest.
To paraphrase Stalin, “How many divisions has Kim Kardashian and the Beautiful People?”
Judging by the passive, stupid or didn't-bother-to-read-before-pontificating comments on this thread alone, let alone the so-called conservative spectrum, I'm not so sure there's an even match any more.
We're three generations into the death of U.S. History (unrevisionist) and Civics being taught any more. It's all been replaced by Entitlement Studies and Hate Praxis.
“In a few decades....” Decades or years?”
Any attempt to storm the bastille will be blocked by the huge, powerful and all knowing creature which lives in the heart of DC. Over scores of years, we have funded with taxes and massive (money creating) debt budgets the beast which we’ve all been waiting for. It thinks it _is_ our government and shreds Constitutional limitations without opening its eyes.
Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook
or press down his tongue with a cord?
Can you put a rope in his nose
or pierce his jaw with a hook?
Will he make many pleas to you?
Will he speak to you soft words?
Will he make a covenant with you
to take him for your servant forever?
Will you play with him as with a bird,
or will you put him on a leash for your girls?
Will traders bargain over him?
Will they divide him up among the merchants?
Can you fill his skin with harpoons
or his head with fishing spears?
Lay your hands on him;
remember the battle you will not do it again!
Behold, the hope of a man is false;
he is laid low even at the sight of him.
...
—Job 41
AMEN!
MUST READ BUMP
bttt
Engines, people and money all need a load. They all need to work and produce.
“The dynamic in most countries is that the majority becomes so sick and disgusted with the governing class that they are willing to turn to ANYONE who has guns and the power to dislodge them. Which, 99% of the time, is the militant Left.”
In America, the governing class is the left. They have no interest in shaking things up because, well, it’s good to be King.
Cute little firebrands like AOC will be assimilated into the blog over the years as the benefits of becoming wealthy and powerful while pretending that you had to get wealthy and powerful so you could save of the oppressed become obvious.
It’s very seductive; but it means the revolution will not come from the left. They have by far the most to lose.
Militant leftists will be tolerated only so long as they kill people in a manner that justifies the governing left taking more power and more money (school shootings e.g.).
If the author is right we’re in a lot of trouble as the Hard Left typically emerges on top in such struggles.
..............................................
The coming clash here will be different: one side has enormous firepower, and it ain’t the Hard Left!
Be my guest.
*
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