Here is the crux of the thought process. YOU think you know better and should be able to tell the general public what is and what isn’t in their best interests. We/I disagree.
Common sense or not.
Now a case could be made specifically to vaccines that it could or does directly harm the general populace. But most other platform positions would need to be sold (like vaccines) to the populace first. We don’t live in nor would we want to live in a Nanny State but that is exactly how “liberal elites” think.
Depends on your perspective. Anti-vaxxers certainly seem to think so when they can’t enroll their child in school without vaccines.
And there are cases where we actually do know better, like vaccines, for a relatively uncontroversial one, but also in terms of climate and economics and healthcare. There really are positions that are objectively better. The opposition is based on ignorance, not knowledge.
Vaccines were sold to the public, and the public LOVED them. People lined up around the block to get this new life saving technology injected into themselves and into their children.
Then people decided that they knew better than the experts, they knew what was in their best interests, and that anyone who claimed to know better than them was a “liberal elite.”
Ah, so you know better than liberal elites what liberal elites think? I’d say that the limit of that should be that they think that policy should be based on knowledge and research, not ignorance and superstition. Any further reading of their minds is doomed to fail, as not only is it rather projecting, it’s also not describing a monolithic, nor hive based, mindset.
I think most of you attempting to defend the usage of the term aren’t liberal elites at all, even though some of you may think you are. K9, for example, is all knee jerk in his defense of knowing better.
As I said, among others, it isn’t the objective decisions or attempts at solving things with an objective reality what makes them ‘elitists’, it’s the subjective ones.
Well hold on. Yes, people stood in line line for the vaccine for smallpox which they first invented in the 1800’s. Then over time there were more and more vaccinations. For example in the 1970’s there were 7 vaccinations. Now there are 14 (Source). These new ones were for things like mumps, measles, and chicken pox which many people remembered just as a common diseases of childhood. NOT dreaded diseases like polio and smallpox.
Also many conditions that were almost non-existant years ago are now common today. For example allergies to nuts and wheat which has got many people to stop and pause to think, maybe we are over vaccinating?
And the pushback. If you act in anyways cautious your labeled “antivax” and refuse to have a discussion.
Excellent example. I suppose it would be elitist of me to point out that there is no evidence for your claim that vaccines cause allergies. I suppose peddling conspiracy theories such as the one you just suggested is an example of ‘different evaluations of the relative utility of a given choice set’ that Bone was talking about up-thread.
By all means, let’s have a discussion about it. But first, to save us both some time, provide a legitimate cite that shows there is a discussion worth having.
Serious question: Is Urbanredneck being elitist by suggesting that vaccines cause nut and wheat allergies? Or am I being elitist by rejecting his hypothesis because it has no scientific basis?
They could both be based upon science, they currently are not.
The problem is two fold. His is that he has provided no scientific back up of his assertion and yours while less based upon science is the outright rejection of what might be seen as a common sense hypothesis that NEEDS further study.
I dont have to quote a study to know that when I grew up I didnt know a single kid with a peanut allergy. Now schools have to set aside lunchroom tables specifically for those kids or else ban peanut butter and other items all together.
Was this caused by vaccines?
I dont know.
Again, I’m not the horrible antivax person that you imply that wants to bring back polio. I’m only asking questions.
This seems like some attempt at a gotcha. You haven’t presented what the “common sense” position is. You haven’t made any assertion, or identified an assertion. You haven’t delineated if you’re talking about the concept of vaccinations, particular vaccinations, or all of them. You haven’t identified what you see as objective in the missing assertions, nor what you view as subjective.
Without that, there’s no there there to respond to. That being said, I don’t think everything can be looked at through an elitist lens because it gets silly.
When you were a kid, nobody had peanut allergies, and Rush Limbaugh did not have a career as a radio personality. Now, Rush Limbaugh has a career as a radio personality, and people have all sorts of food allergies.
Does Rush Limbaugh cause food allergies?
I don’t know, but I have precisely as much evidence to back up my question as you have to back up yours.
This seems like a good example of the contrast between “liberal elitism” and whatever one wants to call its opposite.
A “liberal elite”, obsessed as they are with things like facts and evidence, would want to know what the facts are about the rise in food allergies in recent years and their possible causes, and the current knowns and unknowns on these issues. The would want to read, for instance, a recent report on the matter from the National Academy of Sciences by a committee of pediatricians and other distinguished experts in public health providing a number of evidence-based hypotheses for food allergies and analyses of the underlying factors. A “liberal elite” would also be interested in the results of the LEAP clinical trials on peanut allergies.
The alternative, which I suppose we can take to be the “non-liberal-elite” position, is to state that “I dont have to quote a study” to know things, and to implicate vaccines as a probable cause of peanut allergies based on zero evidence, through the time-honored means of Just Asking Questions™ based on zero information.
I leave it to the reader to judge which outcome is more likely to reflect reality, and which would be the preferred approach to making voting decisions.
I agree with you that bipartisanship would help. But let’s be clear how bipartisanship went away. For instance, McConnell not allowing bills to even be debated. Like Republicans who supported a program like ACA being pressured to vote against it to hurt Obama. We’ll see how big a smoking gun is required to force some Republicans to turn against Trump. They did come around against Nixon, they deserve credit for that.
Democrats in general are more for restricting money in politics, but given the current system are not going to unilaterally disarm, so you’ll be able to find many examples of them taking money too.
I wasn’t worried about your position on climate change, but rather that of Republicans in power.
Ronald Reagan did a great job in saving Social Security. If only there were Republicans around like him. I’m sure it helps that he wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth and a big salary when he was 2.
Thank you for that excellent example of conservative elitism. People don’t drain their IRAs to buy cake, they drain them to try to keep their houses when they are laid off and are worried about having food to eat. Or they panic and sell low.
The cushy prisons are where the white collar criminals are sent. California prisons not for white collar criminals were so cushy that a judge pretty much forced the government to release the non-violent (I agree with you, somewhat) to get somewhere close to capacity.
110,000 people died of measles worldwide in 2017. Cite.
There are more vaccines because we have developed them to prevent diseases. How many people do you want to be seriously ill or die because you don’t understand about vaccines?
If it is elitism for people who know something about a topic correcting the blather of people who don’t, I’m all for elitism.
Want to provide scientific support for any of your claims?
Not a good item to bring forward when implying strongly that conservatives will know better…
But I have to point also that you have harangued the “liberal elites” for not doing the right thing about climate change, forgetting that it is even less realistic to expect better solutions from the other elites, the ones that have allowed nonsenseto guide their inaction. And then that side is the same as the one that now claims belatedly that it has also the best solutions if they ever bother to talk about that issue.
I currently keep up mail correspondence with numerous prison inmates. While I haven’t been to prison myself, I assure you, based off of their accounts, whatever small “perks” they may enjoy in American prisons such as a gym, games, or library by no means compensate for the agony of confinement and not being able to leave. One describes it as “even the air feels recycled; not free.” It is ***not ***too cushy.
MUMPS
“Orchitis occurs in approximately 20–30% of unvaccinated and 6–7% of vaccinated postpubertal male mumps patients.”
As one of the 6-7% of vaccinated postpubertal males who contracted orchitis, I recommend you avoid having a 20–30% chance of this painful condition.
MEASLES
“The World Health Organization estimates there were 145,700 deaths globally from measles in 2013.”
The deaths were mostly in countries with poor nutrition or healthcare but should suggest that tthis disease is far from benign.
PERTUSSIS
"In the 20th century, pertussis was one of the most common childhood diseases and a major cause of childhood mortality in the United States. Before the availability of pertussis vaccine in the 1940s, more than 200,000 cases of pertussis were reported annually. "
DIPTHERIA
“The overall case-fatality rate for diphtheria is 5%-10%, with higher death rates (up to 20%) among persons younger than 5 and older than 40 years of age. The case-fatality rate for diphtheria has changed very little during the last 50 years.”
RUBELLA
“A rubella epidemic in the United States in 1964–1965 resulted in 12.5 million cases of rubella infection and about 20,000 newborns with Congenital Rubella Syndrome. The estimated cost of the epidemic was $840 million. This does not include the emotional toll on the families involved.”
These quotes are from www.cdc.gov. (Perhaps that will be dismissed as a purveyor of Fake Facts.)
I associate “liberal elites” with wealthy people who read the New York Times, clucking to themselves over the plight of the poor while they shop for furs, diamonds and other luxury items prominently displayed in Times ads (one featuring the young entitled snot who’s eventually going to inherit Daddy’s incredibly expensive watch comes to mind). I suppose that’s not as obnoxious as a wealthy person reading the Wall St. Journal*, sneering at stories about labor unions while drooling over ads for super-expensive sports cars, but it’s still loathsome.
Journal editorials commonly refer to “the chattering classes”, another term of disdain. I suppose that refers to news media, politicians and celebrities who yammer about things the Journal would prefer they stop yammering about.
So what have we learned so far about the label, “liberal elites”?:
a) Liberals who voted for Obama
b) Informed liberals
c) Liberals in politics
d) Rich informed liberals
e) Rich informed liberals in politics
f) As outed by Conservative Media
g) I reserve the right to call 'em as I see 'em (based on what they read, where they live, etc…) – Don’t lump me in.
h) all of the above (QED OP)
I’m not sure that people that use “liberal elite” as a put down really know what it means. They might have a feeling, but I am not sure that is really a defined one.
The same thing is going on for people that say that the are “into Bowie.” Yeah, you might think Fame and Lets Dance is cool, but you know nothing of the Low album or Tin Machine.
I was called some sort of version of “liberal elite” once, a little over ten years ago if memory serves me correct. I was the night administrator of a junior college in Texas, and I had to kick out some sort of Tea Party meeting in one of our conference rooms. They got out of hand and were getting really rowdy. The shit sprayed from the fan though when the basketball team came in there after a game, thinking it was the room that they were supposed to watch the game film in. I was called in, and had to kick them out for pointing fingers at the basketball kids and screaming "there is the problem with the country right there! I bet they all have niglets too on “FINANCIAL AID and WELFARE!!!”
When “niglets” came out of his mouth, I took the microphone away from the dude and told them they would all be leaving now or escorted off by the police. I was the PIC, and their access had just been revoked to the building. The leader of the rally guy, now without microphone, called me “liberal something”, I just can’t remember what it was. I want to say it was liberal douche, or liberal slime. I can’t exactly remember. There was a lot going on. I guess that sweet ass 35k a year I was getting paid for that shit was just too much for the tea party rally guy though. I was also told by the tea bag folks that I was going to need to “watch my back” and “they knew who I was.” They turned out to be impotent or something, because all this time later, I have never seen these guys again.
I feel like someone that would use “niglets” to refer to the children of black people would be likely to use the term “liberal elite”. So if you want my respect, don’t use “niglets” or “liberal elite” or “the south will rise again, son” or “Florida Garbage” or “cracker ass” to me in a sentance.