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Here’s what our “betters” think of us

And yet for some reason, many in the GOP establishment still crave the love and acceptance of these frauds and posers — whose insistence that their boldly revealed anti-intellectualism, worn with an arrogance that bespeaks a recognition that their reign as intellectual elites is born entirely of consensus group-think and sophistic “reasoning” marshaled solely as a will to power, is the height of sophisticated academic inquiry and learning should, when all is said and done, stand as one of the great, surreal moments in human history.

Me, I don’t even bother engaging with such rhetorical provocation any more. I just like to point it out and describe how it works, either linguistically or hermeneutically as a function of the prevailing epistemological paradigm — and then remind my supposed ideological compatriots that, by proving yourselves desirous of the approbation and respect of such fully political, post-modern creatures, you remain part of the very problem you pretend to be standing against.

In fact, you’re not even playing the game you think you’re playing.

You’re the Washington Generals. And you live for a close score, a few nice shots, and maybe a pat on the ass from Meadowlark Lemon every now and then.

It’s sad, frankly.

(h/t motionview)

27 Replies to “Here’s what our “betters” think of us”

  1. Ernst Schreiber says:

    [F]or some reason, many in the GOP establishment still crave the love and acceptance of these frauds and posers[.]

    Don’t we all want the approval of our peers?

  2. JHoward says:

    We do, Ernst. In collective America nice really counts. So does government having just so darn much to do that disagreement only hinders our good.

  3. Corkie says:

    Want and desire being the source of human misery. Especially the desire to be accepted or recognized.
    The Washington Generals never seem to be enjoying themselves.
    For what ii’s worth.

  4. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Glenn Reynolds links to an essay on the Supreme Court which notes:

    The current justices “have spent more pre-appointment time in legal academia, appellate judging, and living in Washington, D.C. than any previous Supreme Court. They also spent the most time in elite undergraduate and law school settings.” And less time practicing law or in politics.

    The same could almost certainly be said of the near entirety of the D.C. political establishment, in all it’s multitudinous shapes and forms.

  5. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Ooops.

    “elite undergraduate and law school settings.”

    should have been bolded. You can’t see the italics within the italics.

    The point being, the ruling class is the ruling class not because they rule, but because they’re a class.

  6. sdferr says:

    Pan-Italic tyranny.

  7. dicentra says:

    The same could almost certainly be said of the near entirety of the D.C. political establishment

    And the news media.

  8. Ernst Schreiber says:

    I’d include the media within the D.C. establishment.

    the NY-D.C. axis

    with branch offices in L.A. and S.F.

  9. Pablo says:

    That fool isn’t better than anyone. A commenter there drops this link.

    It was noted in the minutes of the Democratic Socialists of America National Political Committee meeting of May 3-4, 2008 that Scott McLemee would be joining the editorial board of DSA’s magazine Democratic Left..[3]

    As of 2009 Scott McLemee served on the Editorial Board of New Politics, magazine almost completely staffed and run by members of Democratic Socialists of America[4].

  10. motionview says:

    That is too rich Pablo.

  11. Squid says:

    “We are experts because we repeat incessantly that we are experts. We are enlightened and wise because we repeat incessantly that we are enlightened and wise. You are ignorant racists because we repeat incessantly that you are ignorant racists. Why do you knuckle-dragging cousin-humpers have so much trouble understanding this?”

  12. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Another example of our betters telling us how awful we are from Taranto:

    ‘What a Snob’

    Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post puzzles over what Rick Santorum meant when he said the other day: “President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob.” One interpretation she offers: ” ‘Candidate Santorum seems to think his audience is dumber than a box of rocks.’ ”

    Parker adds: “Said audience did applaud, but this is because they don’t like Obama and would have cheered no matter what Santorum said about him.”

    Really? TalkingPointsMemo’s Evan McMorris-Santoro was at the Troy, Mich., rally where Santorum said that, and he actually went through the trouble of asking some of the audience members what they made of Santorum’s statement:

    Turns out they quite liked it.
    “I thought that was brilliant,” said Angie Clement of Commerce, Mich. “Not everybody has to go to college. We need garbagemen, we need welders, carpenters.”
    “Everybody can’t be equal,” agreed Paul Murrow of Milford, MI seated nearby. “Somebody needs to do the manual labor.”
    Clement’s husband, Stephen, said Santorum was right on the mark when he said that Obama wants to send kids to get college degrees so as to produce more liberals.
    “It starts down at the elementary school level with all this bullsh– about diversity, pardon my French,” he said. “Diversity and sensitivity and all that crap. That’s the stuff that needs to be taught at home not by my teachers. My teachers need to be academic: Math, science, history, social studies, that sort of thing and keep political opinions out of it, bottom line.”

    Agree or disagree with these sentiments, they are quite a bit more thought out than the Pavlovian anti-Obama reactions of Parker’s imagination. It goes to show what a snob she is.

  13. Squid says:

    I really hope that one day, before she shuffles off this mortal coil, Katie Parker can come to realize just how far beyond parody she has descended. “What’s so snobbish about insisting that every Jack Tar go to college?” It is to laugh.

  14. newrouter says:

    Santorum has inflamed yet other sensibilities by characterizing President Obama’s worldview as rooted in a “phony theology” promoted by “radical environmentalists.” This comes from a speech the candidate gave in Columbus, Ohio, on February 18, here summarized by the Huffington Post. His jab at churches that blend trendy environmentalism with Christianity under the rubric of “stewardship” provoked some strong responses, including an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times by the paper’s former religion writer, Larry Stammer, who in “The Greening of Faith,” said Santorum is “as wrong on his theology as he is on the science.”

    Santorum’s criticisms of colleges and universities and his dismissal of radical environmentalism are, let’s say, not unconnected. Two of the tent posts of the liberal orthodoxy in higher education are that college education is, in some form or another, good for everybody, and that people today face an existential threat from climate change which can best be met (or perhaps can only be met) by drastic changes in our carbon-based economy.

    http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/rick-santorum-is-right/31769

  15. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Sure, tomorrow’s Bachelor’s Degree will be worth yesterday’s 8th Grade education, but if it makes the hicks and morons feel better about themselves, and so long as her kids get to do post-doctoral work before taking up a sinecure somewhere, why the hell should she care?

  16. Ernst Schreiber says:

    The cheap grace overflows,

    like the bounty of other people’s money.

  17. LBascom says:

    Garbage men need student debt too.

    Oh, and at least a BA in recyclable particulate dispersant, including at least one course each in load/volume variability’s and flatcat ethics .

  18. LBascom says:

    I’m thinking a plumber might need a degree in liquid descent, with a minor in Kotex breaching theory.

  19. LBascom says:

    Let’s face it, a logger should have at least a masters degree.

  20. LBascom says:

    Naturally, the the most plumb degree required would be for wood product fusion engineers(you know, a carpenter) .

  21. LBascom says:

    Hello? Is this thing on?

    I’ll be here all week, try the tip jar!

  22. Pablo says:

    More “betters”:

    They Kicked her off the Plantation

    In December of 2011, the Rochester City School District, which ranks dead last in all of New York State outside of New York City, held an essay contest for students at school #3. Students were to read Narrative of the Life, an autobiography by Frederick Douglass and write their impressions.

    Miss Jada Williams, a 13-year old student, understood it better than I think she was expected to. She wrote an essay that offended her teacher so much that the teacher reprinted it, shared it with other teachers and has created a situation where Miss Williams has been socially forced to leave the school. Upon attending another school, she was forced to withdraw again because the essay followed her and so did the deliberate attempts to make her feel uncomfortable. While she’d been a straight-A student, these teachers, who didn’t like what she had written, decided to deface her academic record with some unearned D’s and F’s. This academic warfare cannot stand.

  23. newrouter says:

    beck had jada on tonite. poor girl burst into tears 1/2 way thru.

  24. Ernst Schreiber says:

    If Davie Brooks is a “domesticated conservative,” what’s Katie Parker? “Domesticated” or “turned out?”

    And what happened to miss Williams is why tenure should be abolished.

  25. subconch says:

    “…either linguistically or hermeneutically as a function of the prevailing epistemological paradigm”

    I got stuck here, went looking for definitions, and realized you already said that in the first part of the sentence… i think. Got the point, though, if one was intended, and if not, never mind, as I suppose I have already exposed my duncity.

    I could only get halfway thru the referenced interview? before my gut seized up. What an elistist snob this McLemee is, cramming his propaganda regardless of words of the obviously learned Mrs, Foley.

    Your article is DEAD ON and perfectly written, from this uneducated ex-bystander’s perspective! In fact, I don’t think our side should be playing any game at all, or playing pals with the enemy, ‘cause the enemy don’t play. Just speak the truth and call it what it is, them what they are, and grow a pair, or get the hell out of the way. Look what it did for Newt on occasion, not that he’s my pick, but it shows how people are aching for honesty and totally sick of the bullshit aristocracy.

  26. Danger says:

    “from this uneducated ex-bystander’s perspective!”

    Welcome aboard Mr conch!

    “In fact, I don’t think our side should be playing any game at all, or playing pals with the enemy, ‘cause the enemy don’t play. Just speak the truth and call it what it is, them what they are, and grow a pair, or get the hell out of the way”

    Darn skippy!
    and…
    Keep Firing!!!

  27. Pellegri says:

    hahahah oh that review.

    wait the author is serious.

    haha. ha.

    ha.

    oh.

    oh.

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