patrick.net

I finished the book "Listen Liberal!" by Thomas Frank and this is what I got out of it:

• The lower 9% of the top 10% defines its self worth by the big-name universities they attended.
• They comprise the professional class: doctors, lawyers, engineers, professors, journalists, financiers, and they are all very interbred with each other.
• They love inequality, because the are 100% certain that their own position is entirely due to their own merit.
• They have contempt for unions and for ordinary working people, whom they regard as failures who had the same chance as themselves but were not as smart, or did not work as hard. They see unions as attempting to give ordinary working "uneducated" people wages that they do not deserve.
• They make their good living by monopolizing information and restricting competition via licensing and deliberately obscure terminology.
• They do not allow any judgement of their own profession except by people highly regarded within it. Outside opinion is regarded as worthless.
• They have completely taken over the Democratic party, and turned it away from traditional working class issues, and toward race, gender, and gay issues.
• They consider themselves "diverse" because they accept anyone from the Ivy League regardless of race, gender, or sexual preference. But they do not tolerate any ideological diversity at all. The "consensus of the educated" cannot ever be questioned.
• Their leaders absolutely worship Wall Street, far beyond any Republican, and give Wall Street everything it wants. Clinton and Obama in particular were instrumental in solidifying Wall Street power and very happy to cooperate with Republicans to eliminate banking regulation.
• They see globalization as always and everywhere good, and do not care in the least if globalization eliminates the jobs of the "uneducated", since it is their own fault for being uneducated. Except of course, when globalization threatens their own jobs. Then it is an outrage.
• The fight between labor and capital was utterly abandoned by these Democrats. They love capital and despise labor. They figure it doesn't matter in elections because the working class will have no choice but to vote for Democrats.