You're nothing but a pack of libertarian bloggers!
From Megan McArdle:
The other reason I don't necessarily trust elites is that they really like thinking big.
McArdle jumps on the newest right-wing meme, that the liberal elite are destroying America. This is after The Atlantic and Time and The New America Foundation got together and decided to promote McArdle as one of the nation's elite Big Thinkers.
Pfffft. It's useless. We're in Wonderland and we'll never wake up.
15 comments:
Which, of course, is so much better than thinking in black and white the way libertarians do.
Jesus God, the comment section.
It's like a big game of "why do you keep hitting yourself?"
The other reason I don't necessarily trust elites is that they really like thinking big.
Two thoughts and an obvious joke:
Thought 1: Megan "Argument from authority be the only argument I know" McArdle doesn't trust elites?
Thought 2: Does anyone - anyone - of sound mind consider the greatest failing of the American political class to be that they try to implement large-scale, radical plans as part of a grand, sweeping statement of intent and belief?
Obvious Joke: No-one can accuse McMegan of thinking big. She's one of the most small-minded people I've had the misfortune to read.
So, to MegaleBargle everyone "thinks big"?
Is she thinking of the interlinked Multi-national corporations openly trying to buy the election? They are thinking "big", all right.
More likely she means Liberals who want us to keep Social Security and Medicare; maybe even extend it to more people.
Jesus farking Christ. This woman is someone who is paid to write her opinions on business and politics for a political magazine. She got her undergrad degree at Penn and she has an MBA from Booth. And she's hating on "elites"?
I know she's mendacious, writes anything for money, and will latch on to whatever right-wing meme comes along and shout it from the rooftops, but even this is too much. I can't believe that she's just lying here - she has to be an idiot. Anyone who is as privileged as McArdle, and who is as lucky as McArdle and doesn't recognize that they are sitting among the elites is an idiot. Anyone who does recognize where they're sitting and still hatemongers against elites is also an idiot.
Either way I've now finally found my conclusive evidence. I've wondered for a long time if McArdle was just a liar who was willing to write anything - no matter how stupid - for the money, or if she was an idiot. This answers my question.
Oh fuck me, she cites Douthat. And according to Douthat, Czech Republic, Austria and Germany are in Northern Europe.
I like this bit:
But the same figure for Britain (where Rush Limbaugh has relatively few listeners, I believe) was 48 percent
True, very few people listen to Rushbo in Britain. But Tokyo Rose Limbaugh is merely the loudest loudspeaker in the US; in Britain and elsewhere in Europe, conservatives have other outlets through which they influence the public, ehm, debate. In the Czech Republic, for example, the loudest voice for climate change denial is Václav Klaus, the motherfucking president of the country.
bulbul - I haven't gotten out of the boat, she (or Douthat) really says that?
Fuccccccccccccck, that's stupid, I mean, all you have to do is google "Melanie Phillips" or "Richard Littlejohn" to realise we Brits have our loathsome, scumsucking conservatives, too.
FSC,
those are Douthat's words. Stay in the boat, the stupid is strong with this one.
Nony,
She does footnote her post with the following:
"Yes, I am construing the word 'elite' broadly enough to include myself in it, as well as thousands of other people who make their living thinking about how we ought to run the country."
The irony of this being that, despite the education and upbringing she's so readily willing to brag about, she's an utterly mediocre, uninteresting, incurious person completely lacking in intelligence. If this person is considered one of the best "thinkers" in the US, then all that stuff grandpa used to moan about the place going to hell in a handbasket is genuinely true.
"I don't trust the big thinking elite although I am a member of the big thinking elite."
I will never understand why she thinks admitting a conflict of interest negates that conflict of interest.
Since one of her core, oft-repeated principles is that nobody can know anything about anything ever at any time, of course she's afraid of "elites" who "think big".
After all, "elites" might make her pay taxes, or register her car, or buy stamps, or some similarly tyrannical thing.
Clever Pseudonym -
That makes it worse because it sticks her firmly in the "I know I'm an elite but here's why you should hate elites" camp. Which is incredibly idiotic. You can get away with that kind of thing if you truly pulled yourself into the elite by your own bootstraps and sweat (see Nixon,Dick) or if you've stagemanaged your image to make people think you did (see Limbaugh,Pompous Boil on the Ass of Humanity).
But when you're a child of privilege, whose parents made sure you got every available opportunity when you were growing up, who got into college on the backs of your parents money, who has a job that you are obviously unqualified for, and whose own writing shows you to be an snob of the highest caliber, you are playing with fire when you're rousing the rabble into hating elites. The rabble aren't really stupid - eventually they will notice.
Nony,
The thing about her snobbery and belief that she's genuinely a part of the elite is that it constantly manifests itself into her talking down her nose to her readers. She really does think she's so much smarter than most of us and that we're all so stupid and in need of her advice and guidance, she thinks she can get away with writing on stuff she knows absolutely nothing about, and that the rest of us little people will just be too dumb and ignorant to notice. I find that absolutely infuriating.
Though I'm lauging, picturing of one of her sycophants who actually eats her bloviating BS up, attempting to make mashed potatoes for the first time by boiling them in milk, per her recipe advice.
She really does think she's so much smarter than most of us and that we're all so stupid and in need of her advice and guidance, she thinks she can get away with writing on stuff she knows absolutely nothing about, and that the rest of us little people will just be too dumb and ignorant to notice.
That right there, a perfect description of nearly every journalist and pundit, especially those of the right-wing political slant.
"Boil potatoes in milk"? hmmm. I wonder if she boils spaghetti in spaghetti sauce- it might save time you know!
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