A Quote by Chrystia Freeland
What is interesting is that, although it is framed as a war between the elites and Main Street, the Tea Party is actually really good for the elites.
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I think there are different kinds of elites. I think there are venal elites, and self-interested elites, and selfish elites, and I think there are visionary elites.
It's very un-American to say nice things about elites. Elites are often terrible. It's not like we've ever had a perfect set of benevolent democratic elites ruling over our country. But the fact of the matter is that a representative system of democracy delegates power to elites.
Go ahead and make something for the elites. Not the elites of class or wealth, but the elites of curiosity, passion and taste. Every great thing ever created was created by and for this group.
There are elites that are real leaders and role models. There are elites that are really selfish and want to pull up the ladder once they've reached the roof.
The skepticism that has grown up about elites is totally justified. Since 2008, no one has gone to jail on Wall Street for the crash and elites have not been able to fix the problem, right? We haven't managed to fix post manufacturing job growth. We haven't fixed the issues to do with immigration.
The interesting point is that the polarization is not so much among the public, although there's some of that. The polarization on the immigration issue is really between the elites and the public. In other words, this is not so much a right-left issue, which it is partly.
One thing that's important to point out is that this kind of populism has a long and mixed history. It's part of this tradition of problematic anti-elitism where the elites are always the liberal class - the intellectuals, the professors, the artists - and not the economic elites. Why are we so mad and aggrieved at newspaper editors but not at corporate executives? I think we need to look more at the latter, at economic elites.
If the Tea Party gets its way, there will be less government - which is great for the elites. They don't need the government.
The Tea Party elites gained extraordinary influence by being able to funnel millions of undisclosed dollars into campaigns with ads that distort the truth and attack government.
The elites hate to acknowledge it, but when large numbers of ordinary people are moved to action, it changes the narrow political world where the elites call the shots. Inside accounts reveal the extent to which Johnson and Nixon's conduct of the Vietnam War was constrained by the huge anti-war movement. It was the civil rights movement, not compelling arguments, that convinced members of Congress to end legal racial discrimination.
If you think about what folks have been doing for 20 or 30 years, they have been bottling frustration and resentment that the political elites don't understand them, that the political elites don't care about them, that the political elites judge them in various ways. All Donald Trump does is provide the opposite of those things.
Newt Gingrich has criticized 'New York elites' who ride the subway. One of those subway elites threw up on my pants this morning.
There's a lingering notion that elites continue to lead, and the masses will follow. This historic model of influence was predicated on the belief that elites have access to superior information and their interests are interconnected with those of the broader public.
Don't be buffaloed by experts and elites. Experts often possess more data than judgment. Elites can become so inbred that they produce hemophiliacs who bleed to death as soon as they are nicked by the real world.
The fundamental weakness in the Tea Party machine is the stark difference between what the leaders of the Tea Party elite - plutocrats like the Koch Brothers -want and what the average grassroots Tea Party follower wants.
The Tea Party elites believe government is evil. Everything about government is bad, and they blame all problems, even non-economic problems, problems that were caused by the private sector, on government.
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