"Superior Credentials": The Politics Of Resentment, Bobo Style

Amusing reading from David Brooks. How the decades are defined:

Think back on the recent decades of American history — the way the hippies defined the 1960s; the feminists, the 1970s; the Christian conservatives, the 1980s. American history is often driven by passionate outsiders who force themselves into the center of American life.

Huh? Whuh? Who?

The public is not only shifting from left to right. Every single idea associated with the educated class has grown more unpopular over the past year.

The educated class believes in global warming, so public skepticism about global warming is on the rise. The educated class supports abortion rights, so public opinion is shifting against them. The educated class supports gun control, so opposition to gun control is mounting.

The story is the same in foreign affairs. The educated class is internationalist, so isolationist sentiment is now at an all-time high, according to a Pew Research Center survey. The educated class believes in multilateral action, so the number of Americans who believe we should “go our own way” has risen sharply.

We haven't dived head-first (Krauthammer-style) into the comments yet, but we did dip our toes into the first one.

Republican like you and Democrats like Obama are the same to most of us. You really think that your superior credentials grants you social wisdom and intelligfence. It doesn't.

[...]

If you don't leave us alone, if you do continue to bother us; we will remove you from power and replace you with those who don't have your credentials. I can hardly see where Sarah Palin or Dennis Kucinich or Ralph Nader can do worse than you have done. And, we don't really care whether they wear the proper school ties. We really don't care.

[...]

Get the federal government back to where it only does what the Constitution demands -- and nothing more. Get the government out of our lives. Keep your bankers, and the politicians they own, in your cities. Leave us alone and the rest of you republicrats and demopublicans can continue to pretend among yourselves that you matter to the rest of us.

What the Constitution "demands":

promote the general Welfare
This, and the next part of the Preamble, are the culmination of everything that came before it — the whole point of having tranquility, justice, and defense was to promote the general welfare — to allow every state and every citizen of those states to benefit from what the government could provide. The framers looked forward to the expansion of land holdings, industry, and investment, and they knew that a strong national government would be the beginning of that.

An obviously pointy-headed explanation. Keep your damn thinking & reason in "your cities." Shove your "proper school ties" up your urbanite asses, Brainiacs, & LEAVE US ALONE!!!

Also from The NYT, someone who isn't grinding the axe of resentment, but taking a (Dare we say it?) rational, fact-based look at These United Snakes & our economic future. We are so screwed.