Liberals are all unemployed layabouts who steal money from hardworking Americans, unless they’re employed, in which case they’re stealing jobs from hardworking Americans. If they are wealthy then they are probably sports stars or entertainers who are stealing attention from hardworking Americans. If they aren’t sports stars or entertainers then they are George Soros.
(giant sarcasm tag if it’s not clear enough)
I believe both of those are accurate. The myth of the “liberal elite” is an ironic and intentionally divisive falsehood invented by a certain subset of conservatives (a subset currently well represented by mainstream Republicans) to disparage liberals in a way that resonates emotionally while being completely meaningless. It’s ironic because it’s actually conservatives who tend to be the elitists to the extent of possessing the more disproportionate wealth and therefore being isolated in their own communities and detached from the struggles of the middle and poorer classes – at least, the conservative leadership that sets the conservative agenda, if not necessarily the low-information rubes who believe them and vote for them. It’s further ironic because educated people in general tend to understand social and economic issues better than their less informed counterparts, which indeed is why certain kinds of conservatives brand them as “liberals” in the first place, and consider institutions of higher learning to be “hotbeds of liberalism”.
Think about the Bush dynasty, where George W. and his gaffe-prone mother both famously could never figure out poor people, or Mitt Romney, or Donald J. Trump and his entire family, or the privileged life of Ronald Reagan, he of the “trickle-down theory” fame. Those are the true elitists – people who have never had to worry about a crappy public education system, or about their kids having successful careers, or about community safety, or about social injustices, or mortgage payments or car troubles. Their governing style can be described as “by wealthy elitists, for wealthy elitists”.
Yes, it’s physically impossible, but if I may digress for a moment, it describes a figurative concept that is actually quite important if applied correctly, and to that extent conservatives touting it aren’t necessarily wrong. The figurative concept is the idea of creating stepping stones that let you achieve goals incrementally that would not otherwise be achievable. It’s a pervasive and important concept in computer science that has existed since long before PCs. For example, it’s generally not feasible to load the entirety of an operating system in one single operation to get a computer started, but it’s easy to load a very small number of instructions. That small program can then load a much larger loader, albeit inefficiently. The larger loader can then efficiently load key parts of the OS, which then loads the rest of itself. Computer science is replete with methods by which the information processing power of the computer itself is used to assist with – or “bootstrap” – programming tasks.
In the same way, someone starting a small business might use the modest wealth created by that business to incrementally grow it into a larger and more diversified business that they might not otherwise have been able to do. This part of conservative ideology is sound; the fallacy is in the implication that this is the only kind of value there is, or that starting a business is a sure path to success, or that government’s primary role is to simply clear away all obstacles to that one and only noble goal.
If we’re deciding who knows best, are there better criteria than being smart and informed?
I mean, in my experience, people do not go around saying “I am more smart and informed”. They make arguments and present information. Then the losers of those arguments stomp off, disparaging the very concept of being informed.
To be quite honest, the only folks you hear trumpeting a superior “Facts and Logic” approach are conservatives like Ben Shapiro, Rush Limbaugh, and countless other stooges. Conservatives really love being smarty-pants on the few occasions that they can make it work for them.
So you’re admitting that the opposite of liberal elite is bullshit bias.
Well, they THINK they know best, but often folks think that. And generally they are elitist of one stripe or another who do think that. I’ve rarely seen any historical evidence that elites of any stripe actually DO know what’s best for others, especially when they disdain them and belittle them. YMMV of course.
Look at the posts in this thread. There is a ton of denial here. Very few are attempting to actually take a deep look at this to see WHY there are so many who think there are ‘liberal elites’. Instead, it’s about denial that it’s a real thing, projection that it’s conservatives or Republicans or right wing media that created it out of whole clothe, and, of course, belittling various versions of ‘the common man’ or ‘gullible, low information voters’. Hell, we have one poster who seems to need some sort of extraordinary proof that people use the phrase ‘fly over country’ in a disparaging way…or maybe at all. I’m not sure, as they are pointing at inconsistencies in a post as proof of…well, something.
This is, IMHO, when the 'dope becomes more of an echo chamber than it normally is. This board DOES have a lot of liberals on it. And they are more than happy to point out the mote in the conservatives eyes. Hell, I am as well. But when confronted with something they don’t want to hear, this thread is the general response. Using the tools of skepticism in some cases to pick apart a post to prove…something. And going into automatic denial, with a touch of CT to be honest…as if this is all a manufactured construct by Right Wing Media™ or some other loopy shit like that.
It’s fine. It allows me to kick back and feel superior, which is really the reason I’m a moderate elite in the first place. 
Which is silly, of course since in another thread, it was proved that there ARE no moderates.
I think there is a demarcation between objective things and subjective things. Being smart and informed is pretty damn useful when it comes to objective things. The stereotype of liberal elites comes into play when that attitude is shifted into the arena of the subjective.
Rocket scientist talking about the engineering feats of launching satellites into orbit doesn’t elicit liberal elitism criticism. Rocket scientist saying that their work is more important than XYZ is closer along those lines.
I thought the look I took at it upthread was plenty deep enough. The short version is that the word “elite” doesn’t actually mean anything except some vague sense of disparaging someone who allegedly thinks he is better than you or me. It resonates well with Republicans as a disparagement of liberals because it fits with the idea of an educated person who cites facts that the listener has never heard of or that Rush Limbaugh has told them are wrong, and which undermine the listener’s emotionally held beliefs.
The true concept of elitism is a real or feigned disconnect from the everyday reality of the common man and his struggles to raise, support, and educate his family. It’s George W. Bush’s frankly stated inability “to figure out poor people”, it’s Barbara Bush saying that the displaced New Orleans flood victims now get better food and better housing than they’ve ever had in their (presumably miserable) lives, it’s Ronald Reagan and his henchmen pushing the “trickle-down” fraud to get the rubes to support even more tax cuts for the rich, it’s Trump and his family literally living in a gilded cage in a gaudy Manhattan penthouse and so detached from reality that I honestly think they regard self-serving corruption as just normal business practice.
Only because it doesn’t pose a threat.
Some examples:
Liberal elitism is more often correlated with agnosticism and atheism.
Liberal elitism is more often correlated with climate change science.
Liberal elitism is more often correlated with social justice and equality.
Now, is liberal elitism an indicator of advanced progressive ideas, or, are advanced social and scientific ideas something that attracts people who tend to identify as liberals and thus get labeled “elites” when they espouse/promote these agendas?
So, let me ask you a question. If there was a thread started on this board about conservative elitism, what do you suppose would be the reaction if a poster basically ignored the question, but instead focused solely on liberal elitism, using various liberals to demonstrate it? I’m curious how you think that would go over…and what your own reaction to that might be. Would you post a rebuttal saying something like ‘your entire post is ignoring the OP and basically doing a whatabout rebuttal’? I think that there would be a lot of posts that would.
That seems to be the theme to be honest. But, let me ask you a further question. Do you honestly think there aren’t any examples of liberals who are elitist? You cherry picked some very good ones for conservative elites…but do you think there aren’t any for liberals? That there isn’t any basis, at all, for the seemingly wide spread notion that ‘liberal elite’ is a thing? Outside of right wing media planting it of course. Outside of that, do you honestly think there just is no basis for the meme at all? Enough that it’s entered the general lexicon and basically is a term that is instantly recognized AS a thing, and not just in the US?
I’m genuinely curious, not just about your answer but other 'dopers in this thread who seem to disbelieve this is a real thing. To me, that will be a more interesting answer and will tell me more than pointing fingers or doing whataboutisms and cherry picked examples.
I’ll honestly think about the possibility if you can provide honest examples.
Sound fair?
No, I’m really not interested (nor, to be honest, should you be) in me Googling examples of ‘liberal elites’, as, for one, it’s trivially easy, and two, it would prove nothing. Hell, there would be quibbles, as conservatives could quibble, about wolfpup’s examples. I found them compelling and agree with him, but that’s not going to be any sort of universal acceptance.
No, if you don’t want to answer that’s fine. If you feel there really aren’t any, and that it’s a completely made up thing, that’s fine too. From the posts, I think that IS what many in this thread think. So, I just wanted someone to go into detail…or maybe, genuinely, think about it and not go into automatic denial, and see there are always examples on any side of bad shit that folks who might align, generally, with your world view think or feel. Or maybe not.
For my part, I answered the OP so I’m really in it to see what others on this board think about the subject and what they say in the thread.
I’m not sure how to respond to this because I’m not sure if it’s relevant or a response to me.
For me, I view the term is accurate when describing ideas that are subjective in nature as if they are objective. More specifically, the assumption that one person knows what’s best for the other, not recognizing the idea that each could have different evaluations of the relative utility of a given choice set.
Would you call this a common definition used by those who toss the term around in the media?
I see a lot of people claiming that their perception of liberal elites proves that there is a perception of liberal elites, which seems a little bit circular to me.
I’m not going to try to argue a negative, but the author of “The View From Flyover Country” does not share your take.
Echo chamber protestations are lazy and worthless. True, everyone made fun of Columbus, and everyone also made fun of Bozo the Clown.
But lots of people can’t seem to distinguish between objective and subjective. Does Inhofe’s snowball qualify as subjective climate change denial or objective climate change denial?
How about Trump ignoring the advice of foreign policy experts and stabbing the Kurds in the back. (I’m charitably assuming this was done by himself.) Foreign policy is not objective, but ignoring those with decades of experience because you think you are an expert because you are smarter than the generals is just stupid. And a great example of anti-intellectualism and anti-experience that the right is full of.
Is that what you think I did – ignore the question and offered cherry-picked examples of conservative elitism in a mere attempt at “whataboutism”? Because that’s certainly not what I think I did. What I think I did was quote and agree with the idea that the conservative “liberal elite” moniker was a fabricated attack meme that was an unspoken synonym for “educated”, knowing that many of said conservative followers are already contemptuous of education because it tends to be associated with uncomfortable facts that they don’t like, everything from universal health care to social justice and equality issues to the reality of climate change and questioning their religious beliefs and their promotion of pseudo-theocratic public policies that they wish to impose on everyone in the name of “religious freedom”. I can’t speak for other posters, but my reaction to the kind of post you describe would be to cite facts showing it to be wrong, or else, if I was feeling impatient, just ignore it altogether.
Again, that isn’t the theme, as I just noted. And I never said that there aren’t any liberal elites. Of course there are “elites” of one kind or another in all segments of society, representing all ideologies. That isn’t the point. The point is whether this “elitism” that conservatives are touting is something real, something that for some reason is intrinsically tied to liberal ideology and therefore quite common among liberals, and if so, what is that intrinsic causative factor?
My position is that I find no such factor for alleged liberal elitism (a common factor of being educated is something I associate with being well informed, not being “elite”, and being informed is in an important sense the exact opposite of being a disconnected elitist), but that there is a substantial commonality between being very wealthy and being born into wealth and being disconnected from the realities of the everyday life challenges that most of us face. That kind of elitism found among the wealthy in their guaranteed secure lifestyles in protected gated communities far from the violence and poverty of much of their own country is true elitism, the kind that usually (with some exceptions) tends to make for very poor political leadership. That’s why the examples I cited were so easy to come up with, and so egregious. Every single Congressional Republican who currently blindly supports Trump in defiance of all the facts is guilty of it.
From that article:
This matches my experience of the term – it’s a term used by aggrieved midwesterners to describe what they think coastal (or non-coastal) big-city people think of them. In reality big-city folk don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the midwest at all, much less disparagingly.
Being dismissive, even if it is not ill-intentioned will usually be taken as insulting snobbishness. I was born in Ithaca, lived in NYC as a youngster and have lived in other urban areas for most of my life. But even I get my nose slightly out of joint when New Yorkers start crowing proudly about how great their city is ;).
I thought “liberal elite” meant Jews.
We do, but nothing compared to how Texans crow about how great their state is. Even liberal ones. Even atheist ones.