There is little logic among the cultural elite, maybe because there is little omnipresent fear of job losses or the absence of money, and so arises a rather comfortable margin to indulge in nonsense. The idea that taxes cause scarcity, and subsidy abundance is a foreign concept. The notion that entitlements create dependency is considered Neanderthal. Tough penalties supposedly do not deter crime. Abroad, military preparedness or deterrence pales in comparison to “soft” diplomatic power and clever talking. Borrowing trillions is “stimulus” and need not quite be paid back. In other words, take a deep breath and imagine the opposite of everything you know by experience to be true, and you have mostly the worldview of the sheltered cultural elite, who navigate in rather protected channels and not in the open seas of the real world.
If you missed it on the weekend, be sure to also read this essay: America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution, by Angelo M. Codevilla. It’s since gone viral, helped in large part by Rush Limbaugh’s massive audience.
h/t EBD
This explains the birth of the Tea Party movement better than any other analysis I’ve read … wish we had such a movement in Canada.
Thomas Sowell has a recent book out entitled “Intellectuals and Society”. I haven’t read it yet, but as one reviewer described it…
‘Mr. Sowell’s complaint is that intellectuals — “people whose occupations deal primarily with ideas – writers, academics, and the like” – are having negative effects. And, maddeningly, these intellectuals are “unaccountable to the external world,” immune from sanction, insulated even from the loss of reputation that those in other fields suffer after having been proven wrong.’
Davers6, we do have it in Canada. This is it right here. You’re in it.
What, you need a t-shirt? ~:D
Today’s male’s voice is often far more feminine than that of 50 years ago.
This may be one of the less important points but it is one I have noticed. The older guys with the deep voices also commanded more authority, IMO. My questions – Can a feminized culture actually cause boys to have higher octave voices or are pre-puberty voices being selected more often by the females who are in HR departments.
Here’s another good article by J.R. Dunn:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/07/president_haters.html
An excerpt:
“Consider these actions. If anyone during the 2008 elections had implied, or even speculated, that Obama was capable of anything of the sort, he’d have been dismissed as a demagogue, a hater, even a lunatic. But today, after his abandonment of the state of Tennessee (also wracked by flooding); his betrayal of the Georgians; his pulling the rug out from under the Poles and Czechs; his dragging and cold response to the Gulf blowout; and his insults to the U.K., the GOP, the Supreme Court, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Dalai Lama, it scarcely raises a shrug. That’s Obama. That’s how he acts — with arrogance, superciliousness, and indifference. We can search the entire roster of American presidents, and we will not find a match. This is not the behavior of an elected chief executive; it’s the conduct of a divine right monarch, and a pretty inadequate one as well.”
“What, you need a t-shirt? ~:D”
YEAH! If SDA had t-shirts I would buy one.
but it’s gotta be black with a simple white bold logo though, like those cool anarchist shirts.
Oooo, profit center! Profit center!
I want a flaming dead gopher. Flames are cool, anarchists are pencil necked little poopoo heads.
“anarchists are pencil necked little poopoo heads”
That of course shall be printed across the back in italics.
Chris:
No s**t refs puh-leeze. What should go across the back is “What we really need is anarchy. With a strong anarchist as leader.”
I must carefully preserve my copy of Codevilla’s essay, dated 16 July, just to prove I was ahead of the wave ;o)
T-shirts? Did someone say T-shirts?
Oooooooh, who better to design t-shirts than Kate? I like this idea.
‘Americas Ruling Class’ explains a lot of what had me puzzled for the last few decades. Namely, why are most politicians, professors, media, justice system, the public school system so devoid of common sense!!??
And here I though the days of being ruled by the likes of Kings and Queens and Intellectuals was long gone.
I want a t-shirt!
T-SHIRT! T-SHIRT! T-SHIRT!
I’d buy one in a heartbeat.
As soon as you hear that something is “nuanced” you know that it’s crazy. Obama has so much nuance there’s no room left for substance.
T-shirts are what “they” would do … if we’re part of some sort of revolutionary movement “we” need to have …. thongs!
Yeah, give me a few weeks to get my current work/travel schedule behind me and I’ll work on a t-shirt release. You heard it here first!
http://www.uncommonthought.com/mtblog/gophers.jpg
Don’t be modest Kate. You had it out their before Rush even seen it.
This is a significant document for this age.
In the long ago. the dream-time! the persecutors of us all didn’t have a face except in an amorphous way. Now we know them by rabid mental instability.
To much inbreeding. Look at Hollywood. You have families in the Biz married to other film families
They hate anyone from rich to poor who do not bow to their gods of the ideology called murder for Eugenic daydreams of the perfect man.
This paper may turn out to be a seminal shift in conservative circles.
Its always nice when someone puts down in logical sequence what you have known buy have not been able to express.
JMO
I’d kind of assumed that the T-shirt caption would be “You don’t speak for me”.
I know I’ll be first in line. Drive my Toronto urbanite friends nuts.
Do yourself a favour and place on the right side of your screen the brilliant editorial by Victor Davis Hanson. Then on the left half place this previously mentioned puff piece about Michael Ignatieff.
The contrast is startling.
18,114,203 0n the counter.
20,000,000 hits commemerative sda T-shirts!
That gives you about 2 months Kate.
Speedy at 4:48 PM: http://www.uncommonthought.com/mtblog/gophers.jpg
There’s our “strong leader” right there.
T – Shirts…Yes
Is it not interesting that a confluence of ideas is beginning to appear? Of course as it is, it would be from independent observers. The “in crowd” would not know the difference, actually they would not know, viz the JournoList.
Conservative mind, as it is, does not necessarily agree a hundred % with anything that is written, though in the case of Angelo M. Codevilla and Victor Davis Hanson, they are getting to the root of the failure of current regime so far as running of government goes.
As is apparent it takes more than intellectual, someone, actually a whole lot of people that have real life experience on how the world works as opposed to how one imagines it work’s.
It is easy to see how the “ruling class” would damn these wrings; it exposes the workings of the “ruling class” and their disregard of anyone that is not connected to them, viz JournoList.
It certainly is good that Rush mentioned the “America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution”, it is hoped that this way it will be disseminated in ever widening circle of readers whether they agree or not. The only drawback is that the articles are so long, not that they should not be, it is that the attention span of today’s reader may not be up to it. Your agent fell asleep, had to reread the next morning, though read it he read.
It seems (at least in the US) that they’ve replaced one monarch- King George- with other monarchs- Obama and various other celebrities. Why would a population gravitate toward such superficial absolutists? Even the most bovine leftist hanger-on must realise that his or her life can never be anything like that of a Hollywood celebrity. How sad that one must live in such a fantasy.
Today’s male’s voice is often far more feminine than that of 50 years ago.
its the estrogen in the water from Birth control pills.and the further downstream you get aka Trona the more estrogen you get.
T-shirts …YES!!!
When can we place our orders?
SDA’s gonna have T-shirts? I don’t care what they say – I’ll take 10. One each for me and my wife and 8 for some lefties I know.
I read a study conducted in Italy where they were able to closely estimate a particular city’s (can’t remember which) level of cocaine abuse by measuring the amount of cocaine metabolites found in the waste water at the water treatment facility.
I wonder if there really is something to the estrogen in the water theory. I’d always heard that with hormone-augmented meats, the hormone molecules were broken down by the digestive process, but I don’t know what to believe anymore.
estrogen water.
at one time there were no male fish in the Thames downstream of London , England
YES! I want a T-shirt!! Great idea and I’m so glad that Kate thinks so too!
Caroline
Gatineau, QC
I did miss the essay, thanks! This is the main reason Iggy won’t become the first American Prime Minister. Or at least why he shouldn’t.
Also:
“Can a feminized culture actually cause boys to have higher octave voices…?”
I don’t know, but of the couple of homosexuals I knew who affected the stereotypical gay voice, both at times would drop if they were excited or angry enough. Could it be that masculinity and authority are deemed so socially inappropriate that many boys and/or men subconsciously play the role that best helps them fit in?
T-shirts.
Yes, pleeeeeeease.
Yup, T-shirts are a GR-8 idea! I guess a T-shirt, by definition, has a crew neck, but I kind of like the idea of a V-neck (all the better to hide the double chin, my dear!).
a better side effect of estrogen water
http://www.thefoxnation.com/breasts/2010/07/22/researchers-women-s-breasts-getting-bigger
I hope by “T”-shirt, we’re talking about Kate’s Small Dead Animals blogsite, and not about our loveable reprobate poster “T”.
BTW, what has become of it? There has been a great deal of basement flooding of late, – what with the rains and all. I really do hope he’s ok. ;~0
The shirt? Yeah, I want one too!
T-shirt, yes.
Some interesting ideas starting to come together although I suspect in Canada most city dwellers would identify with the cultural elites rather than the practical, primarily non-city dwellers, that make up a larger part of the population in the US.
In Canada, members of the cultural elite as well as those who aspire to be members of this elite vote Lieberal. The current BC government is run by the cultural elite and the last time that a political party not connected to the cultural elite arose in Canada was the Reform party.
During the last few years I was in Vancouver I found myself having virtually nothing in common with most of the people I saw on a daily basis and hence moved to the interior. What surprised me was the number of Vancouver patients that were aghast that I was moving into “redneck country”. A surprising number of people who lived in Vancouver rarely ventured into the country (aside from the N. shore hiking trails) and generally visited other large cities when they went away.
Since coming to the interior I’ve felt much more at home. Patients I see generally work in trades, ranching or forestry and much more self-reliant than downtown Vancouver residents. I see very few of the “worried well” who need to have every possible lab test done to find out why they’re not feeling well. Here I’ve seen people come in with fractures that happened 2 weeks before and they kept on working. Over the last few years I’ve gotten to meet a good cross-section of the people who work in the industries that make the existence of a city like Vancouver possible.
People out here do very unfashionable things like ride ATV’s in the countryside, dirt bike, drive pickup trucks, hunt and generally have a much more intimate relationship with nature than the city dwellers who idealize nature but never actually go there. People here are almost exclusively heterosexual, get married, have kids and tend to be intolerant of people who don’t work. And, BTW, they tend to overwhelmingly vote Conservative.
Calgary is a large city that has a majority of the population that doesn’t belong to the “cultural elite” and the problem we have is how to convince inhabitants of other Canadian cities that their affirmation of the values of the “cultural elite” is a a recipe for social suicide.
Oops, almost forgot the most important point — put me down for a T-shirt or two Kate.
OMG, I’ve created a monster.
But I’ll have two, please. ~:D
Flaming gophers Kate. You’ll be able to buy Saskatchewan.
“Today’s male’s voice is often far more feminine than that of 50 years ago.
-its the estrogen in the water from Birth control pills.and the further downstream you get aka Trona the more estrogen you get.”
~cal2
I agree it’s the estrogen.
I think all the soy in our present diets is a large contributor.
Non-fermented soy is high in phytoestrogens which can definitely mess with hormones in both men and women.
I must confess to being a bit conflicted about all this “ruling class” stuff.
I mean, is the solution guillotines… or firing squads?
T shirt?…I want one….The beaver emblem with the web site address on the front…A guillotine picture on the back with something like:
“Elite population control machines require no carbon base energy to operate”
Kate, I’ll buy a few SDA T-shirts as well.
If you want some ancient advice on production and delivery, email me.
Good Lord, I read the whole thing. Codevilla is right about one thing, if the Elist Democrats don’t backoff or get defeated a Revolution will come, and it won’t be pretty for them.
Yeah, give me a few weeks to get my current work/travel schedule behind me and I’ll work on a t-shirt release. You heard it here first!
Posted by: Kate at July 22, 2010 4:48 PM
Count me in, but please please, don’t do like the Nascar T-shirts where they put the design on the front of the shirt. That does two things, 1) makes me look like a Billboard, or 2) makes my belly look like a beerkeg.
batb @10:19 – “I guess a T-shirt, by definition, has a crew neck…”
No, not at all! Neither of these are terribly posh brands; but you get the idea; there are many styles on option.
Kate could make a mint off this. I’m mortgaging the microwave as I type.