The Change to Nowhere

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Mrs Snuggles
See, I don't mind elitism. At least, not when it's merited. Because, really? I don't really understand why "being just like an average American" is necessarily a good thing for holding elected office. There's the small point that yes, they could empathize with you, but empathy's not limited by socioeconomic or intellectual strata.

Of course you are right that having the average person hold elected office would probably be a bad idea.

Similarly, there is nothing wrong with cultural elitism (Miles Davis is better than Britney Spears, but forcing people who don't want to to listen to either is probably a bad idea).

What's poisonous is a form of economic and political elitism that is at the core of what the Republican party stands for.

Like overt racism or antisemitism, overt inegalitarianism is unacceptable in modern societies. One of the results of the mid century social revolution was the final acceptance of the idea that inequality stands in need of justification rather than being part of the natural order of things.

So just as racism has had to cloak itself in the rhetoric of egalitarianism (witness the complaints about affirmative action being inegalitarian), those who wish for a hierarchical society have cloaked it in egalitarian language that looks superficially egalitarian (equality of opportunity), but which is intended to produce an inegalitarian outcome (the problem with equality of opportunity is that as a concept it makes little or no sense). In this way, the Republican party, like other conservative parties, has managed to disguise the fact that its guiding principle is inegalitarianism.

The great mistake that the left have made is to assume that only those at the top of the pile are in favour of a hierarchical society. This is not true. There are a great many people further down the pile who are quite happy to put up with a hierarchical society as long as someone else is at the very bottom (in the US it's blacks) and who explicitly value the idea of a tiered society where everyone knows there place.

If you don't think these people exist, then you need to read some social psychology textbooks. They do exist, there are a lot of them, and they almost all vote conservative.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by rah
Heck I was just responding to Kid.

It's results that count in america. It's the scorecard of success. Obviously the dems suck at it despite getting a huge handicap. They obviously don't have a clue what they're doing and don't deserve to win the white house till they wake up and smell the roses.

Actually it's kind of sad. (if you're a dem of course)

The reason is obvious. The US is a very authoritarian society (in the social psychological sense rather than the political sense). That's why US politics is far to the right of every other developed nation.

The democrats don't win because they aren't prepared to tack hard enough to the right to capture more of the authoritarian vote.

The rational thing for liberals to do would be to leave the US. But they still believe, against all the evidence, that they represent the interests of the majority, and they would, if the majority were rational. But they are not.

[Seedle]

Agathon, sometimes your posts frighten me. Sometimes they anger me. Sometimes they fly way the hell over my head. And sometimes, like now, they make me want to a)be more educated and b)be gay so I can lavish my love upon you. Or something.


edit: I realized that made even less sense than I intended. It is a compliment, I swear.

[Lancer]