America’s problem is massive inequality – not ‘woke’ educated elites ( www.theguardian.com )

Fake populists like Elise Stefanik (Harvard ’06) and Josh Hawley (Yale ’06) attack higher ed to protect corporations and the rich

More than a third of Harvard’s graduating seniors are heading into finance or management consulting – two professions notable for how quickly their practitioners “make a bag”, or make money, reports the New York Times*.*

Similar percentages show up in other prestigious universities.

…

In this era of raging income inequality and billionaire robber barons, the bags are gigantic. At Goldman Sachs they start at $105,000 to $164,000. At McKinsey, $100,000 to $140,000.

And that’s just the first year.

…

America’s corporate and financial elites have flooded American politics with money in order to receive government subsidies, bailouts, tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks – all of which ratchet up their wealth, entrench their power and make it harder for average working people to advance.

Trump and much of his Republican party are deploying criticisms of the educated class to pose as populists on the side of the people.

Consider Elise Stefanik, Harvard class of ’06 and chair of the House Republican Conference, who doesn’t miss an opportunity to attack elite universities and their presidents. Or Senator Josh Hawley, Stanford class of ’02 and Yale Law ’06, who calls the recent student demonstrations signs of “moral rot”.

It’s all a thinly veiled cover for their efforts to help the wealthy make even bigger bags while keeping everyone else – especially average workers – down.

KillingTimeItself ,

idk man sounds to me like the "educated elites" are the one causing the inequality.

kind of weird that woke is quoted. But whatever.

revelrous ,
@revelrous@sopuli.xyz avatar

A problem is that nationally Dems ignore the districts that things like stefanik crawl out of (or borrow the address of their parent's summer home for.)

What was ny-21 could have been competitive. We've gone for Obama before. But Dems wrote us off as an acceptable loss and never made an honest run against her. They could have kept her on the ropes-she at least used to have to pretend to be bipartisan.

captainlezbian ,

Power to the people must be accompanied by knowledge to the people!

heavy ,

I still can't believe we have some psychopath vying for a $48 BILLION pay package and it's not a comedy skit.

Sanctus ,
@Sanctus@lemmy.world avatar

We know. Its painfully obvious. To the point where there must be some malice on the side of our "leaders".

Cognitive_Dissident ,

The fascist pigs who create the inequality are throwing hissy-fits over so-called """wokeness""" because they don't want 'equality', they want supremacy.

Here's why they're braindead, though: if they got their way, and everyone who wasn't lilly-white was either exiled, enslaved, or killed, eventually they'd start sniping on each other for not being """white enough""", until there was just two of them left, living as far apart as possible, armed to the teeth, constantly plotting how they were going to eliminate that """impure mongrel""" living at the other end of the country.

All this """white supremacy""" bullshit is a mental illness.

AshMan85 ,

Yes.

ryathal ,

Woke elites are a problem. It's also a symptom of the inequality, but that doesn't make them less bad.

grue ,

"Woke" just means "not bigoted" and is thus never a problem, by definition. It's only the "elite" part that's a problem.

RecursiveParadox ,
@RecursiveParadox@lemmy.world avatar

I'm going to presume you just kind of phrased this badly and not downvote you.

Bo7a ,

I'll downvote twice. Oh wait...

CharlesDarwin ,
@CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world avatar

I do wonder how much of the culture that now seems intent on checking off a lot of boxes in games and movies and television is devised to give the people that are easily triggered by "woke" things something to be distracted and upset about (they are trying to cancel cishet xtian white men!!!1111, or, they are trying to ruin <some franchise>, and by extension, my childhood!!!111).

It may be that the money behind the culture machine just so happens to be truly genuine about this. Or maybe they aren't.

kandoh ,

It's simply a conflict between urban and rural values. Left and right just muddies the waters, everything about the culture war comes down to the conflicting values of those two groups.

Rural people have almost zero cultural influence and it drives them crazy to the point where they use their large political influence as a means of making up for that.

erp ,

Rural vs urban is just another mechanism to divide people. Most unheard people just want the quiet dignity of a job that pays enough, enough free time to enjoy life, and to be left alone. The loudmouth sycophants and power-hungry sociopaths manipulate and ruin everything, skewing perceptions for the rest of us.

bassomitron ,

Lots of folks have been yelling this since the dawn of the new populist movement era. Sowing and inflaming interclass division is the best way to keep the people from uniting to take down the ultra rich and their corporations.

Look how much more effort went into it after 2008. That shit show woke up a lot of people to just how fucked up the financial system is, especially after seeing almost no one face any sort of real justice. I'd say the rise of the "tea party" (who eventually transformed into MAGA) came about right around that crisis. A black person being elected also certainly played a part, especially when that black person started trying to lay the groundwork for universal healthcare (the original Affordable Healthcare plan was far better than the extremely neutered, butchered version that eventually got passed).

Sorry, bit of a tangent. I just get so angry about the extreme polarization, because it's so damn effective at dividing us against the true enemies of the people.

disguy_ovahea ,

The only way to address this, short of a revolution, is by voting blue no matter who. I know plenty of people are unhappy comparing current Democrats to their ideals, myself included.

However, with enough sustained Democratic control of Congress and President, the candidates would be forced to move further left in order to capture more of the vote. We’d also experience less backsliding from every flip to Republican control due to low Democratic voter turnout.

Semi_Hemi_Demigod ,
@Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world avatar

However, with enough sustained Democratic control of Congress and President, the candidates would be forced to move further left

I keep seeing people say this and I never see it happen. Unless you count Fetterman pretending to be a progressive for the election.

disguy_ovahea , (edited )

That’s because it’s exceedingly rare for Democrats. Republicans had two terms of Reagan followed by H.W. Bush not long ago.

The last Democrat elected to succeed a Democratic president was Lyndon B. Johnson, who succeeded John F. Kennedy in 1963 following Kennedy's assassination. Johnson was then elected in his own right in 1964.

You'd have to go back even further in history to find the most recent instance of a Democrat being elected to succeed a two-term president from the same party. The last time that happened was in 1836 when voters elected Martin Van Buren to follow Andrew Jackson.

https://www.thoughtco.com/two-consecutive-democratic-presidents-3368109

cybervseas ,

Bush Sr. was a one term president. Slick Willy got 'im good.

disguy_ovahea ,

Duh. You’re right. My mistake. I’ll edit for clarity.

Regardless, we haven’t even had that since 1836.

kautau ,

There's a reason it's one of the main strategies in this book:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics

Which heavily influnce(d|s) Russia's use of social media to attempt to destabilize the US both socially and politically

Russia should use its special services within the borders of the United States and Canada to fuel instability and separatism against neoliberal globalist Western hegemony, such as, for instance, provoke "Afro-American racists" to create severe backlash against the rotten political state of affairs in the current present-day system of the United States and Canada.

Russia should "introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social, and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements – extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S.

It would also make sense simultaneously to support isolationist tendencies in American politics".

Buffalox ,

Nononono The problem is definitely woke elitists, emigrants, LGBTQ, colored people, Jews, poor people, foreigners, and of course liberals. They are not heartland America.
The good guys are money grabbing corrupt criminals and criminal politicians, Christian fanatics, Totalitarians, Nazis and Russians.
Because how isn't that obvious??? At least that seems true to about half of America!!!

MAGA

/s

Dagwood222 ,

David Brooks is the perfect example of the 'moderate' Republicans who gave us Donald Trump.

If people like him cared one whit about the country they would have abandoned the party the day Trump said that he "liked soldiers who didn't get captured."

psvrh ,
@psvrh@lemmy.ca avatar

David Brooks and George Will's frozen corpses will pave the way to hell.

Dagwood222 ,

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cpac-banner-domestic-terrorists/

sensiblepuffin ,
@sensiblepuffin@lemmy.world avatar

Standard "it was just a joke!" response.

Dagwood222 ,

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2008/07/where-does-the-terrorist-fist-jab-come-from.html

In case you forgot who the real terrorists are.

autotldr Bot ,

This is the best summary I could come up with:

One of the least-discussed but most profound consequences of America’s surging inequality is the number of talented young people now devoting themselves to making bags.

Brooks thinks the gen Z cohort at prestigious universities is so tormented by the cognitive dissonance between their positions of privilege and their commitments to social justice that they must “prove to themselves and others” that they’re “on the side of the oppressed”.

It doesn’t seem to have dawned on Brooks that, at least since the start of Donald Trump’s presidency in January 2017, the meaning of “progressive” has shifted from someone who wants a more just society to someone who simply wants to preserve democracy.

America’s corporate and financial elites have flooded American politics with money in order to receive government subsidies, bailouts, tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks – all of which ratchet up their wealth, entrench their power and make it harder for average working people to advance.

Consider Elise Stefanik, Harvard class of ’06 and chair of the House Republican Conference, who doesn’t miss an opportunity to attack elite universities and their presidents.

Or Senator Josh Hawley, Stanford class of ’02 and Yale Law ’06, who calls the recent student demonstrations signs of “moral rot”.

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