The Elite (2 Viewers)

[Optimus Prime]

The elite are ruining the country

The elite are completely out of touch

The elite don’t understand what life is like for regular Americans

But who are the elite?

I can’t remember if I saw or read it but basically said “the Elite” are favorite boogeymen for both parties

When the left talks about the elite they are talking about rich people

When the right talk about the elite they are talking about educated or ‘cultured’ people

I thought it was an interesting point

And for both the elite is a small group of people who not only don’t understand your life they are about to come up with a bunch of laws that favor people like them

What does “The Elite” mean to you?

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Louisiana Republican Sen John Kennedy made a memorable contribution to a Trump rally in his state on November 14, casting himself as a “proud deplorable” in contrast to the “goat’s milk latte-drinking, avocado toast-eating insider’s elite.”........

'Proud Deplorable' Louisiana Republican Attacks 'Goat’s Milk Latte-Drinking, Avocado Toast-Eating' Elite

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.........While Ross, who was worth $2.9 billion in 2016, might have a hard time understanding the economic plight of working Americans, the reality is that 40 percent of Americans can’t cover a $400 emergency expense and 25 percent have no retirement savings whatsoever.......

Trump’s commerce secretary suggests unpaid federal workers take out loans to cover necessities

Wilbur Ross is totally out of touch.

www.vox.com

 

[The moose]

I LOL'ed at the blackberry is a rich person's food. Used to have an almost unlimited supply to pick for free from the vines growing on the Sunrise community club back fence....

You are not kidding Mom would always send us kids out picking. Our spot was by the train tracks. Don't know what they spray tracks with now nothing grows around there now.

After Katrina city park was so overgrown you could pick forever. Man my dog would get bent we were in the same spot in the park forever. Then he opened his eyes and realized he had plenty of bunnies to chase around cuz they liked the berries too.

Anybody know any spots in the New Orleans area I have not seen anything substantial in years.

 

[Taurus]

You are not kidding Mom would always send us kids out picking. Our spot was by the train tracks. Don't know what they spray tracks with now nothing grows around there now.

After Katrina city park was so overgrown you could pick forever. Man my dog would get bent we were in the same spot in the park forever. Then he opened his eyes and realized he had plenty of bunnies to chase around cuz they liked the berries too.

Anybody know any spots in the New Orleans area I have not seen anything substantial in years.

I don't know about New Orleans, but the entire Pacific Northwest is awash in blackberries.

 

[The moose]

I don't know about New Orleans, but the entire Pacific Northwest is awash in blackberries.

Yeah was in Olympia Washington for a bit. You don't have to go far to find more than I have ever seen.

I have to say I would be cherry addicted if I lived there. Completely jealous of the fruit but man the oysters are horrible there.

 

[Heathen]

Yeah was in Olympia Washington for a bit. You don't have to go far to find more than I have ever seen.

I have to say I would be cherry addicted if I lived there. Completely jealous of the fruit but man the oysters are horrible there.

An aside - but how did you like Olympia? I'm considering a move up that way.

 

[The moose]

An aside - but how did you like Olympia? I'm considering a move up that way.

Great town was only there during a summer also I have no idea how the wet season really is. Was about 12 years ago for two months. Really bike friendly everything you would expect it to be good food nice people and all.

Coming from New Orleans things blew me away like how conscious they were driving around people and cyclists.

The thing that I thought would absolutely bank there is a exterior cleaning business because everything is so green and slimy from the wet season. I wanted to pressure wash everything.

Great town lots to do outside.

 

[Optimus Prime]

This could have also gone in The Republican Party thread
=================
Sen. Tom Cotton is what you might call a counterfeit commoner.


The dour Arkansas Republican announced with indignation at this week’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings that he doesn’t want a justice who follows the “views of the legal elite.”

He later complained that “a bunch of elite lawyers” such as nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson “think that sentences for child pornography are too harsh. I don’t and I bet a lot of normal Americans don’t either.”


And who is this “normal American” decrying the “legal elite”? Why, he’s a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, a former clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit and a former associate at two Washington-insider law firms who now sits on the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. Senate.

He’s part of a Republican Party of 2022 that has flipped the script on populism: The gentry are revolting.


At the same hearings this week, Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) decried a “managerial elite” of media, academics, bureaucrats and corporations. “This cabal think they are smarter and more virtuous than the American people,” argued Kennedy, whose bio says he has a “degree with first class honors from Oxford University (Magdalen College).”

This man of the people — Phi Beta Kappa at Vanderbilt, executive editor of the law review at the University of Virginia and a member of something called the Order of the Coif — has been heard denouncing the “goat’s-milk-latte-drinkin’, avocado-toast-eating insider’s elite.”


Also on the dais during the proceedings: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), a graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law who loves to inveigh against the “coastal elites,” and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), a former Supreme Court clerk out of Stanford University and Yale Law School who fancies himself standing with the proletariat in “the great divide” between the “leadership elite and the great and broad middle of our society.”……..

Cruz, Hawley and Cotton are all contemplating presidential runs — where they might meet in the Republican primary another man of the people, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

A graduate of Yale and Harvard Law, he wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal titled “Don’t Trust the Elites,” and he rails routinely about “elites” trying to shove this or that “down the throats of the American people.”


These phonies must be onto something, because a new generation of pretend populists aims to join them in the Senate.

In Nevada, Republican candidate Adam Laxalt portrays himself as a modern-day Robespierre. He has repeatedly warned of the “rich elites … taking over America,” “elites in Washington,” the “coastal elites,” the “elites” who “do not believe in our nation” and the “elites” who are “all in one club” while “we’re all in another club.”


“We”? Laxalt is the grandson of a U.S. senator and governor of Nevada and the son of a Washington lobbyist. He is a graduate of prep school, Georgetown University and Georgetown Law School who recently hauled in $2.2 million as a partner at Cooper & Kirk, the same Washington firm that employed those plebeians Cotton and Cruz…….

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/03/25/republicans-anti-elite-hypocrisy-tom-cotton/

 

[Taurus]

This could have also gone in The Republican Party thread
=================
Sen. Tom Cotton is what you might call a counterfeit commoner.


The dour Arkansas Republican announced with indignation at this week’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings that he doesn’t want a justice who follows the “views of the legal elite.”

He later complained that “a bunch of elite lawyers” such as nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson “think that sentences for child pornography are too harsh. I don’t and I bet a lot of normal Americans don’t either.”


And who is this “normal American” decrying the “legal elite”? Why, he’s a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, a former clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit and a former associate at two Washington-insider law firms who now sits on the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. Senate.

He’s part of a Republican Party of 2022 that has flipped the script on populism: The gentry are revolting.


At the same hearings this week, Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) decried a “managerial elite” of media, academics, bureaucrats and corporations. “This cabal think they are smarter and more virtuous than the American people,” argued Kennedy, whose bio says he has a “degree with first class honors from Oxford University (Magdalen College).”

This man of the people — Phi Beta Kappa at Vanderbilt, executive editor of the law review at the University of Virginia and a member of something called the Order of the Coif — has been heard denouncing the “goat’s-milk-latte-drinkin’, avocado-toast-eating insider’s elite.”


Also on the dais during the proceedings: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), a graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law who loves to inveigh against the “coastal elites,” and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), a former Supreme Court clerk out of Stanford University and Yale Law School who fancies himself standing with the proletariat in “the great divide” between the “leadership elite and the great and broad middle of our society.”……..

Cruz, Hawley and Cotton are all contemplating presidential runs — where they might meet in the Republican primary another man of the people, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

A graduate of Yale and Harvard Law, he wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal titled “Don’t Trust the Elites,” and he rails routinely about “elites” trying to shove this or that “down the throats of the American people.”


These phonies must be onto something, because a new generation of pretend populists aims to join them in the Senate.

In Nevada, Republican candidate Adam Laxalt portrays himself as a modern-day Robespierre. He has repeatedly warned of the “rich elites … taking over America,” “elites in Washington,” the “coastal elites,” the “elites” who “do not believe in our nation” and the “elites” who are “all in one club” while “we’re all in another club.”


“We”? Laxalt is the grandson of a U.S. senator and governor of Nevada and the son of a Washington lobbyist. He is a graduate of prep school, Georgetown University and Georgetown Law School who recently hauled in $2.2 million as a partner at Cooper & Kirk, the same Washington firm that employed those plebeians Cotton and Cruz…….

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/03/25/republicans-anti-elite-hypocrisy-tom-cotton/

And yet none of the Dems or reporters ever throw it back at them. "Don't trust the elite, huh? That means YOU, Mr. Harvard millionaire. I completely agree."

 

[Dragon]

There is absolutely nothing new in targeting "The elite" - it is an old and well executed way of getting rid of those pesky intellectuals who may even believe in science and facts

Chinas Cultural revolution, The Cambodian genocide - even the french revolutión

 

[SystemShock]

And yet none of the Dems or reporters ever throw it back at them. "Don't trust the elite, huh? That means YOU, Mr. Harvard millionaire. I completely agree."

Something about going high...

 

[Optimus Prime]

A popular uprising of working-class people against the elites and their values is underway—and it's crossing the globe. There is a growing resistance by the middle and lower classes against what Rob Henderson has coined the "luxury beliefs" of the elites, as everyday folks realize the harm it causes them and their communities.

There were early glimmerings last February, when the Canadian Trucker Convoy pitched working class truck drivers against a "laptop class" demanding ever more restrictive COVID-19 policies. You saw it as well in the victory of Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, who ran on parents' rights in education and went on to win both suburbs and rural areas. You can see it in the growing support of Hispanic voters for a Republican Party, which increasingly identifies as anti-woke, and pro-working class. And now we're seeing the latest iteration in the Netherlands in the form of a farmer's protest against new environmental rulings that will ruin them.

Over 30,000 Dutch farmers have risen in protest against the government in the wake of new nitrogen limits that require farmers to radically curb their nitrogen emissions by up to 70 percent in the next eight years. It would require farmers to use less fertilizer and even to reduce the number of their livestock. While large farming companies have the means to hypothetically meet these goals and can switch to non-nitrogen-based fertilizers, it is impossible for smaller, often family-owned farms.

The new environmental regulations are so extreme that they would force many to shutter, including people whose families have been farming for three or four generations. In protest, farmers have been blockading streets and refusing to deliver their products to supermarket chains. It's been leading to serious shortages of eggs and milk, among other food items............

MSN

www.msn.com

 

[bird]

Unfortunately, such “uprisings” are driven by reactionary forces that will discard the plebes when they are no longer needed. Gated communities, superstar services to wealth, in essence, Elysium, will be put firmly in place and the plebes will die rubbing their faces on the windows as they are not allowed inside.

We are witnessing the beginning of the end game put in place by the merging of libertarian extremism and marketism. It is the shredding of the concept of society. The end result of that will not be pretty.

 

[coldseat]

A popular uprising of working-class people against the elites and their values is underway—and it's crossing the globe. There is a growing resistance by the middle and lower classes against what Rob Henderson has coined the "luxury beliefs" of the elites, as everyday folks realize the harm it causes them and their communities.

There were early glimmerings last February, when the Canadian Trucker Convoy pitched working class truck drivers against a "laptop class" demanding ever more restrictive COVID-19 policies. You saw it as well in the victory of Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, who ran on parents' rights in education and went on to win both suburbs and rural areas. You can see it in the growing support of Hispanic voters for a Republican Party, which increasingly identifies as anti-woke, and pro-working class. And now we're seeing the latest iteration in the Netherlands in the form of a farmer's protest against new environmental rulings that will ruin them.

Over 30,000 Dutch farmers have risen in protest against the government in the wake of new nitrogen limits that require farmers to radically curb their nitrogen emissions by up to 70 percent in the next eight years. It would require farmers to use less fertilizer and even to reduce the number of their livestock. While large farming companies have the means to hypothetically meet these goals and can switch to non-nitrogen-based fertilizers, it is impossible for smaller, often family-owned farms.

The new environmental regulations are so extreme that they would force many to shutter, including people whose families have been farming for three or four generations. In protest, farmers have been blockading streets and refusing to deliver their products to supermarket chains. It's been leading to serious shortages of eggs and milk, among other food items............

MSN

www.msn.com

It's amazing to me that we're currently watching the worlds climate increasingly become more severe, hostile and extreme; claiming more lives and making more of the globe inhospitable to live. Yet, we still have the entrenched climate denialism that will seemingly never end. We're literally seeing climate related disaster's that weren't predicted for 30-50 years down the road today, and that's not enough to snap people our of their delusions and lies they've been fed. Climate scientist have almost always been very conservative with their projections out of fear of being labeled "extreme", and yet when we blow past their conservative worst case projections, it doesn't seem to register with people. And it's not like anybody can't say they haven't been effected at this point, we all have. The cognitive dissonance required to live like it's not happening borders on psychosis, yet a significant portion of the worlds populations is subject to it.

But yeah, let's just blame "the elites" trying to address problems and forget about "the elites" causing all of the problems and obfuscating the truth, preventing any sincere attempt to address the problems, and making money hand over fist while doing it.

 

[J-DONK]

It's amazing to me that we're currently watching the worlds climate increasingly become more severe, hostile and extreme; claiming more lives and making more of the globe inhospitable to live. Yet, we still have the entrenched climate denialism that will seemingly never end. We're literally seeing climate related disaster's that weren't predicted for 30-50 years down the road today, and that's not enough to snap people our of their delusions and lies they've been fed. Climate scientist have almost always been very conservative with their projections out of fear of being labeled "extreme", and yet when we blow past their conservative worst case projections, it doesn't seem to register with people. And it's not like anybody can't say they haven't been effected at this point, we all have. The cognitive dissonance required to live like it's not happening borders on psychosis, yet a significant portion of the worlds populations is subject to it.

But yeah, let's just blame "the elites" trying to address problems and forget about "the elites" causing all of the problems and obfuscating the truth, preventing any sincere attempt to address the problems, and making money hand over fist while doing it.

It's interesting this showed up in this thread. You could argue this very topic is a great example of elites, and corporate interest overriding public opinion. The amount of Americans who support actions to combat climate change are broadly popular.

That example is farms being shutdown over new regulations that large corporate farms can deal with. Could the government have done more to help small Dutch family farms?

Two-Thirds of Americans Think Government Should Do More on Climate

Over half of Republicans and overwhelming shares of Democrats say they favor a range of initiatives to reduce the impacts of climate change.

www.pewresearch.org

 

[Taurus]

It's interesting this showed up in this thread. You could argue this very topic is a great example of elites, and corporate interest overriding public opinion. The amount of Americans who support actions to combat climate change are broadly popular.

That example is farms being shutdown over new regulations that large corporate farms can deal with. Could the government have done more to help small Dutch family farms?

Two-Thirds of Americans Think Government Should Do More on Climate

Over half of Republicans and overwhelming shares of Democrats say they favor a range of initiatives to reduce the impacts of climate change.

www.pewresearch.org

If Democrats could sell fire to Eskimos, we'd be so much better off.

 

[samiam5211]

If Democrats could sell fire to Eskimos, we'd be so much better off.

If they don't do something about climate change, Eskimos better be researching air conditioners.

 

[coldseat]

It's interesting this showed up in this thread. You could argue this very topic is a great example of elites, and corporate interest overriding public opinion. The amount of Americans who support actions to combat climate change are broadly popular.

That example is farms being shutdown over new regulations that large corporate farms can deal with. Could the government have done more to help small Dutch family farms?

Two-Thirds of Americans Think Government Should Do More on Climate

Over half of Republicans and overwhelming shares of Democrats say they favor a range of initiatives to reduce the impacts of climate change.

www.pewresearch.org

To be fair, I don't really know what the situation in the Netherlands is, but I read that opinion piece with a lot of skepticism as to its presentation of facts and its framing of the situation. If the Netherlands is the second largest exporter of food after the US and we know nitrates in fertilizer have a measurable impact on climate change, then I'm guessing the impact is much larger than presented in that opinion piece. Also, it's references to the Trucker's convoy and Glenn Youngskin are huge red flags to me as to the writers intention. Finally, I'm not a populist and I don't always believe that populist movements are always genuine or for the best. Populist movements are often co-opted by bigger players with large financial interest and are often times more about protecting their own power and money to the determinant of others. So just appealing to a populist movement isn't convincing to me. I also know that even though I'm solidly middle class, worked my whole life, never been rich, I'm a minority and gay, I'd probably be classified as an "laptop class" elitist by many of the populist. So that isn't a very convincing argument either.

Could the Dutch government do more to help small Dutch families? Possibly, I can't say I really know. I also don't really know what they are doing to ease the transition (I'm sure it's something). But I do know that addressing climate change means changing the way we've done things and changing behavior, especially in areas that we know are contributing to climate change.

 

[Optimus Prime]

Yikes
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[bird]

Yikes
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Ah, yet another religionist grifter.

Oh, and a whack job too.