Tuesday, November 1, 2016

America's Ruling Elite

In the notably leftist Guardian the notably progressive Thomas Frank reports on the contents of the John Podesta emails. No Tea Party patriot he. No Trump supporter either. My thanks to the several readers who sent links to this article.

Frank pictures a modern oligarchy, a privileged elite that cares mostly for its own perks and privileges, but not for much more. These people do not much care, Frank says, for what they can do for the country. They are much more concerned for what their country can do for them:

This genre of Podesta email, in which people try to arrange jobs for themselves or their kids, points us toward the most fundamental thing we know about the people at the top of this class: their loyalty to one another and the way it overrides everything else. Of course Hillary Clinton staffed her state department with investment bankers and then did speaking engagements for investment banks as soon as she was done at the state department. Of course she appears to think that any kind of bank reform should “come from the industry itself”. And of course no elite bankers were ever prosecuted by the Obama administration. Read these emails and you understand, with a start, that the people at the top tier of American life all know each other. They are all engaged in promoting one another’s careers, constantly.

Everything blurs into everything else in this world. The state department, the banks, Silicon Valley, the nonprofits, the “Global CEO Advisory Firm” that appears to have solicited donations for the Clinton Foundation. Executives here go from foundation to government to thinktank to startup. There are honors. Venture capital. Foundation grants. Endowed chairs. Advanced degrees. For them the door revolves. The friends all succeed. They break every boundary.

But the One Big Boundary remains. Yes, it’s all supposed to be a meritocracy. But if you aren’t part of this happy, prosperous in-group – if you don’t have John Podesta’s email address – you’re out.

And then, here, thanks to commenter IAC, is a surprising remark from reliable Democrat Chris Matthews:

If you like the way things are and the way they are heading in this country. If you’d like to continue the destruction of our manufacturing base and our jobs that went with it. If you like uncontrolled illegal immigration. If you like being involved in stupid wars from Iraq to Libya to Syria. If you want to say yes to all that and keep all this the way it is… vote for Hillary Clinton. If you don’t like the way things are heading, you’ve got a chance to shake this system to its roots.

[Reliable sources, including IAC have told me that the Matthews comments are a mix of different remarks he made in different places and are more an attempt to show the Trump team how to appeal to voters and are certainly not an endorsement!!]

17 comments:

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

I took that last Chris Matthews comment down on that earlier post because it's a bit out of context. From my research, it is a montage of comments Matthews made in one episode describing how someone might advise Trump on a close, of sorts.

That said, it's worth noting, because it's poignant analysis, and Trump should run with something like it. My sense is that Hillary is in free fall. If Wikileaks or someone else releases the 33,000 deleted yoga/weddding emails, she's toast.

I also think this year's experience should give us pause on "early voting" schemes. If you want to run polls Friday - Tuesday for the convenience of early voting, fine. But two weeks? That seems to be an invitation for fraud and making it too easy to vote.

Dennis said...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqGZV5bpNzg

Enjoy

Trigger Warning said...

I did. Tnx!

Anonymous said...

Read Frank's essay a few hours ago. Why, suddenly, in The Guardian? He's usually in US publications.

Been saying the same things for years. Uncomfortably. Feared I came off as a crank.

I saw it in person, in the Military Leadership. Couldn't write speeches they liked. Me Me Me. Innovations. Change Agent. Me me me. Money money money.

They retired to cushy, well paid positions in business, govt, politics, consultancy, etc.

We have an Oligarchy now. Trans-national Elites. Opinion Leaders. Tycoons. Celebrities.

"The People" (or The Masses, if you will) don't like it. On both sides of the Pond.

Me neither. -- Rich Lara

Ares Olympus said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ares Olympus said...

I tracked down the Matthews quote (or part of it) to this video clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_qa_3BQE5U Chris Matthews From MSNBC Endorse Donald Trump

But here is the longer context. He wasn't expressing his own opinions, but instead he was expressing the sort of rhetoric that a serious candidate Trump would say, if he wanted to win.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/10/28/chris_matthews_why_doesnt_trump_argue_if_you_dont_like_the_way_things_are_then_vote_for_me.html
---
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Whatever you think of Donald Trump, I mean, whatever you think of Donald Trump, you have to wonder, why isn't he doing it? Why isn't he running for president? Why isn't he spending every hour asking the voters again and again do you like way things are? The way they've been headed in this country? Do you like the continued destruction of our manufacturing base, and the jobs that went with it?

Do you like the uncontrolled illegal immigration? Do you like the string of stupid wars from Iraq to Libya to Syria? if you want to say yes to all of that, if you want to keep all this way it is, vote for Hillary Clinton. If you don't like the way things have been headed, you have have a chance to really shake the system to its roots. And if you wake up the day after the election, and if it is the same as it is today. If it's the same four, five, or eight years from now, remember you had the chance to change it but you were too dainty to do it.

If Trump were to win the election, those would be the reasons listed right at the top of the newspaper the day afterward. So why doesn't he say now what would win him the election? Why doesn't he fight and create stupid headlines with his battles with Megyn Kelly and Dana Bash?

He seems to devote everyday day after day to fighting fights that make people forget the reasons he started running for president, reasons that continue to carry the shrinking chance he has to win this thing. I say this not because I want Trump to win, but because I can't stand politics being practiced so pathetically.
---

Why indeed?

Trigger Warning said...

Neither you nor Tingles has been listening, that's why.

And if Tingles is such an expert, maybe he should have advised his wife, who was crushed in the MD primary. And Tingles also "predicted" that Rand Paul would be the Republican nominee.

You're quite the analyst, Ares.

Trigger Warning said...

Clinton supporters go all out:

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/10/30/13/39DDF2D700000578-3886388-image-m-3_1477832912283.jpg

Sam L. said...

Tommy Franks seems now to have a clue. Can't be sure yet.

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

Ares Olympus @November 1, 2016 at 12:46 PM:

There's an echo in the room. I said that in my first comment, genius.

What is most striking is that Matthews laid out the issues quite ably, yet will still vote for Crooked Hillary, because he's a willfully blind Democrat buffoon. Just like you, Ares. A parroting troll.

How many former Republican staffers have their own TV shows? The Glowing Box is monolithic.

He and his profession have shown themselves to be the frauds and ghouls they are. Zombieland.

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

By the way, have we stopped to consider that these are just Podesta's emails? One man's emails. That's it. Yes, he's a key figure in the Clinton Crime Family, but really... consider... this is the treasure trove... of ONE MAN. And it's all over the news.

We all desire privacy. But when you get into "public service" (or so they call it), you give up some of that freedom. Assange exploits it, and holds up the picture. Do we like what we see?

I don't like what I see, but I must tell you that it is revealing, in the sweep and scope of corruption. I thought I was cynical and suspicious of powerful government figures, but this is wild. Content from just one man.

They laugh at Trump for being a reality TV star. Good gracious, look in the mirror... this is Reality TV D.C. No one has denied the authenticity of these emails. No one seems embarrassed. This is how the corrupt system works. This is their reality. They think it's okay.

This is why we ought not allow government so much power over our lives. Government is run by human beings. Human beings are drawn to power. We are concentrating it in Washington, D.C.

I stand by my comment yesterday:

"We're revolting against the carefully-choreographed klepto-plutocracy of the bigoted globalist cognitive elite that doesn't give a fig whether we live or die."

John Podesta laid this bare. This is how the system works. On your dime, in the name of "equality."

Again, from ONE MAN.

Maybe Assange will crack into Tom Donohue's email over at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and we'll see another dimension of this rot. Bring it on!

Consider: Every one of those labyrinthine tax loopholes was the result of lobbying/advocacy. Every. Single. One. Blow the lid off that sausage fest, and you'll see how this all really works.

Disgusting. Drain the swamp!

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

Hey Ares, keep looking for Trumpist Russians under your bed, you reactionary!

The chickens... are comin' home... to roost! Putin is coming for us all!

The Russians... that's how low you'll go. We're back to the Cold War.

And she won't add a penny to the national debt, right?

What a compelling candidate. Ask her about Russian uranium! The Clintons know a lot about that.

If these Democrats and others in the D.C. bureaucracy are so committed to abating Climate Change, I say we "make a difference" and eliminate all Federal spending on air conditioning! Let's stop Climate Change!lets stand together to stop Federal waste. Air conditioning seems like an outstanding starting point.

Ares Olympus said...

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said... There's an echo in the room. I said that in my first comment, genius.

I apologize for including sourcing a reference in my fact checking. I'm a person of curiosity. I figured someone else might also be curious. You never know.

Looking at the first topic, Thomas Frank, I also notice he wrote "There is also the issue of authenticity to contend with: we don’t know absolutely and for sure that these emails were not tampered with by whoever stole them from John Podesta. The supposed authors of the messages are refusing to confirm or deny their authenticity, and though they seem to be real, there is a small possibility they aren’t."

Its an important point I've been concerned over, but I've since read that there is a way to check if emails have been altered. So this DKIM code can tell you if an email has been changed, although it can't tell you more than that. So that's good news, at least until we create laws that say possessing someone else's stolen emails is a crime.

http://blog.erratasec.com/2016/10/yes-we-can-validate-wikileaks-emails.html
---
Recently, WikiLeaks has released emails from Democrats. Many have repeatedly claimed that some of these emails are fake or have been modified, that there's no way to validate each and every one of them as being true. Actually, there is, using a mechanism called DKIM.

DKIM is a system designed to stop spam. It works by verifying the sender of the email. Moreover, as a side effect, it verifies that the email has not been altered.

Hillary's team uses "hillaryclinton.com", which as DKIM enabled. Thus, we can verify whether some of these emails are true.
...
I was just listening to ABC News about this story. It repeated Democrat talking points that the WikiLeaks emails weren't validated. That's a lie. This email in particular has been validated. I just did it, and shown you how you can validate it, too.

Btw, if you can forge an email that validates correctly as I've shown, I'll give you 1-bitcoin. It's the easiest way of solving arguments whether this really validates the email -- if somebody tells you this blogpost is invalid, then tell them they can earn about $600 (current value of BTC) proving it. Otherwise, no.
---

Trigger Warning said...

If the emails had been altered, Lil' DKIM Ares, you would already know. That liar Brazile made that claim, it was falsified using DKIM, and she's been fired from CNN. Now she's got her pious face on, tweeting God. :-D

Do you bother to read the news?

Ares Olympus said...

p.s. As well, here's an article about Thomas Frank's book "Listen Liberal
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/01/books/review/listen-liberal-and-the-limousine-liberal.html
---
Frank’s book is an unabashed polemic, not a studious examination of policy or polling trends. In Frank’s view, liberal policy wonks are part of the problem, members of a well-educated elite that massages its own technocratic vanities while utterly missing the big question of the day. To Frank, that question hasn’t changed much over the last few centuries. “It is the eternal conflict of management and labor, owner and worker, rich and poor — only with one side pinned to the ground and the other leisurely pounding away at its adversary’s face,” he writes. Today, polite circles tend to describe this as the issue of “inequality.” Frank prefers an older formulation. “The 19th century understood it better: They called it ‘the social question,’ ” he writes, defined as “nothing less than the whole vast mystery of how we are going to live together.”

As Frank notes, today some people are living much better than others — and many of those people are not Republicans. Frank delights in skewering the sacred cows of coastal liberalism, including private universities, bike paths, microfinance, the Clinton Foundation, “well-meaning billionaires” and any public policy offering “innovation” or “education” as a solution to inequality. He spends almost an entire chapter mocking the true-blue city of Boston, with its “lab-coat and starched-shirt” economy and its “well-graduated” population of overconfident collegians.

Behind all of this nasty fun is a serious political critique. Echoing the historian Lily Geismer, Frank argues that the Democratic Party — once “the Party of the People” — now caters to the interests of a “professional-managerial class” consisting of lawyers, doctors, professors, scientists, programmers, even investment bankers. These affluent city dwellers and suburbanites believe firmly in meritocracy and individual opportunity, but shun the kind of social policies that once gave a real leg up to the working class.
---

So Frank's view is the professional class has taken over the Democratic party, and this class fails to take into consideration that this supposed "meritocracy" is failing to address the needs of those left behind.

So candidates like Bernie Sanders challenged this new democratic party from the Left side, while Hillary and the corporate wing is willing to play lip service to the wider needs, but in practice looks first to the needs of the upper class.

And that's why Frank is so interested in the private emails, and looks for how this elite class think, but not necessarily to overthrow, but to see how we can pull the Democratic party back to the people.

But as long as the Democrats can focus blame all their power grabbing on the recalcitrant republicans, Frank's efforts are too easy to ignore on the fearful Left.

Dennis said...

Am I noticing a change in reporting on Trump and if I am why? This from the Washington Post; https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/01/donald-trump-gave-a-very-very-good-speech-today-in-pennsylvania/

I could not get over the look on Mika B's face when she noted how Comey's image had changed so drastically for the democrats. Then one considers how Huma A. has appeared to be "persona non grata" with Hillary. This even though she seemed to be very close to Hillary. Is the "media" beginning to notice that anyone who disagrees with Hillary and the Clinton Crime Familyare "tossed under the bus" and destroyed using the power of government? Nah, they are not that bright!

sestamibi said...

As far back as 1993, The New Republic (in its more reasonable days) had a cover story about this and called it "Clincest".