I know conservatives love to talk about lifting yourself from your bootstraps but that’s not monopolised by one politically aligned group of people.
Wealth and nepotism is not subject to one group of politically aligned group either.
Donald Trump is the product of inheriting wealth. His kids are even more notorious for living off a silver spoon. Just look at this picture:
George W Bush campaigned in 2004 portraying John Kerry as a liberal elite despite Bush attending Yale like his father and benefitting off his name, and the fact Kerry enlisting to serve in Vietnam, getting the Purple Heart, ended up with conservatives doubting his record of service. Bush of course had doubts over his National Guard record.
Then you get conservatives like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh make a living by using that distinction. Neither completed college. There’s no shame in dropping out of a course but the way they talk it’s like the shame is in completing the course.
Meghan McCain appears on a hugely popular debate show as the conservative point of view, but her use of “my father” as a qualifier has become a running joke. Meanwhile someone else, who now may be living a cushy life, had to overcome several barriers to get to the same position.
You get conservatives who went to top class higher education institutes, like Ted Cruz at Harvard, frequently use the “liberal elite” tag to degrade opposition points of view as out of touch. What makes him - a conservative - in touch with the ordinary folks anymore than a liberal at Harvard?
Well, you’re right - a conservative elite is an elite, just like a liberal elite. They’re not necessarily any closer to earth.
That being said, for examples of liberal elites, I suppose the Kennedy family would count as one.
I’ve always interpreted “liberal elite” to be code for “educated liberals.” I think it’s supposed to imply that college-educated liberals live in an ivory tower of idealism while the masses toil away in the “real” world. In reality, of course, most politicos using that term are also college graduates, but what matters to the masses isn’t the educational level of those who use the term; it’s that it reflects their own world view while reassuring them that good ol’ common sense is more useful than a fancy degree.
It’s a boogeyman invented by conservative “leaders” as a scapegoat for gullible, low information voters who they know will just take them at their word.
Interestingly enough, pull one’s self up by one’s bootstraps is impossible, and describes an absurd premise.
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Meanwhile, I understand the term ‘liberal elite’ to describe a class of wealthy people who, at least in theory, “look down” on those who have less wealth as them, and judge them to be inferior in all respects, including taste and class. For these elites, this creates a sort of sympathy for these others, based on a conclusion that they must be dreadfully suffering with their pedestrian way of life. As such, and due to the sense of superiority it reinforces, these ‘elites’ feel perfectly qualified to not only judge these people but also interfere and try to change them.
It’s a stereotype, and not necessarily an accurate one. But perhaps the best example I can think of would be white people who kidnapped native American kids to raise them in white society. Ostensibly, they are ‘offering assistance’ and trying to ‘improve lives’, but the reality is that they are destroying another culture due to a misguided belief that they know better.
When it comes to modern society, and the threat of the ‘liberal elite’, I think this is what is being discussed: it’s an apprehension that people from elsewhere, thinking they know better, will swoop in and destroy the culture and its value under the guise of improvement.
“Those liberal elites are gonna come here and take away your traditions, your beliefs, your way of speech, your cherished sports, your style of dress, your taste in food…because they think they KNOW BETTER.”
Here’s a YouTube video, for instance: Senator Maggie Hirono (D-Hawaii) says that “We Democrats know so much, we have to kind of tell everybody how smart we are.”
To be fair, I think Hirono meant her words in the sense that Democrats should ***not ***try to talk over voters with this mindset of “I know more than you do, so you should just obey me,” but rather, that Democrats need to use more emotional persuasion rather than just cold logic or facts. But there is indeed this prevalent attitude among many liberals that they are the educated, they are the informed, and it is their job to tug along the uneducated dirty unshaven masses by the ears.
I think there’s also an implied accusation of hypocrisy. As in “If these liberal elites are so worried about the poor and think the wealthy should be taxed to fund their pet social programs, then why don’t they take all of their own substantial wealth and donate it to charity?”
Those are my own words, presented as a summary of what I’ve generally considered the term “liberal elite” to be shorthand for as an accusation. Not that I necessarily subscribe to such a view myself.
I heard a very funny segment on the radio this morning describing the two real elites in America: the boat elite and the intellectual elite.
The boat elite are a reference to Trump’s comment that his supporters have bigger boats. To an intellectual elite, the very idea of owning a boat is already kind of stupid, as though one should establish one’s social dominance by piling up large amounts of cash and setting it on fire, all Ozymandias-style. But that’s my take on it.
The author interviewed describes the concept in his own words, which you can sample here. One funny part:
That would be my interpretation as well. Although as other have said its really just a catch-all insult designed to deflect attention away from Republicans Plutocratic policies, it only works because there is a strong resonance among conservatives. It goes back to city slickers with degrees in agriculture from universities trying to tell farmers how to grow their crops. More recently it involves, kids leaving small towns for college and coming back and lecturing their parents on the moral importance of secularism, multiculturalism, and environmentalism. The other place its used is in attacking those in the entertainment industry who promote similar ideas.
I’ve always interpreted the term to be about liberals (obviously) who are elitist. This doesn’t necessarily mean rich, but who have elitist mindsets which I always summarized by, to paraphrase ‘we know better than them what they need’ or ‘what’s best for them’. There are certainly a group of liberals who DO look down on many of their fellow citizens and DO think they know what’s best for the majority because they are smarter, better informed or whatever other props they use to decide they just know best.
There are, of course, conservative elites as well, but as this was more about liberal elites that’s my take. I know several people who I would consider ‘liberal elite’…there are quite a few on this board in fact. Hell, I’m probably one myself, though I don’t consider myself either liberal or an elite, but I’m sure that on some specific issues I’d be considered one (certainly several in my family THINK this is the case) by those who use that term a lot.
It is an appeal to the common man, telling them that they are more worthy because they are common, and that those who strive to be better are striving just to spite them.
He’s also on This Cracked Podcast. It’s worth a listen, as he’s pretty entertaining and he tries to be even handed. The only omission he makes is that there is a conservative intellectual elite with access to their own politicians and celebrities.
He’s pushing a book, but I’m not sure he’ll make any points beyond the interviews.
You know the phrase “flyover country”?
That describes the liberal elite…they are not only disconnected from the heartland, they are proud of being disconnected, and very happy to fly over it— while telling those poor country folk how primitive they are.
Yes, this is a real thing.
And yes, the term “liberal elite” is way overused by Rush Limbaugh types.
But I have met more than a few New Yorkers who fit the stereotype.
People who were born,raised and lived their entire lives between 1st Avenue and 9th.
Never learned to drive a car, and are proud of that fact. Never had the slightest desire to take a road trip and see America.They have never had a conversation with someone who served in the military, and are proud of that. They will go to a concert where an anthropologist plays primitive music on a wooden pipe made by a tribe in the Amazon,but would never listen to a banjo or a country song on the radio.
If they read a New York Times story about the strict and modest dress code at Brigham Young U (the Mormon university in Utah), they fill the comments page with reactions of horror, that women must be free to wear shorts, etc. But these same people will gladly change their clothes to cover up their entire body if they visit a Muslim site.
Pompous asses exist everywhere. There are plenty of farmers who are proud that they are ignorant of big-city culture. But somehow that seems less irritating to me than big-city folk who do the same.
Maybe it’s 'cause I like the smell of a barn more than the smell of smog.
Yeah. Your one bit of evidence is a letters page where students seek freedom of expression, but there is no evidence whatsoever that these same students “will gladly change their clothes to cover up their entire body if they visit a Muslim site.” In fact, your “evidence” doesn’t seem to tie in with your first paragraph at all(which seems to be nothing more than blather that can be found on any number of right-wing websites).
