Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cogito who wrote (130407)	2/9/2010 12:29:14 AM
From: Win Smith	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 540821

Ok, a couple bits up from the Atlantic. First, on the ridiculous "condescending liberals" column, we have this from Michael Kinsley: politics.theatlantic.com . Concluding bit: Only a hard core of "birther" zealots still believe that President Obama is not an American citizen, but many more are perfectly happy to believe that Medicare is not a government program. Not one in a hundred could tell you in even general terms what Obama's health care reform plan consists of, but that doesn't stop them from having strong opinions about it, which they offer to pollsters, who are the enablers of this particular bad habit. There is nothing condescending about telling your fellow citizens that they are being stupid or selfish. That is treating them as equals. Condescension is telling people that they have "bedrock common sense" simply because they're Americans and--on this occasion--agree with you. In a society where the only snobbery with any real power is reverse snobbery, being condescended to is something to brag about, something to exaggerate or exploit--or to imagine. Conservatives are, bye-and-large, the ones who have deplored the "culture of grievance" in which everyone becomes, as was said about John O'Hara, "a master of the fancied slight." Meanwhile, they encourage grievance and resentment when it suits their political purposes. If you had a friend who was wrecking his future by making bad choices, it would not be "elitist" to tell him so. It would be treating him as an adult--and as an equal. In the end, which is more condescending? To tell citizens that they are behaving like children or like fools, or to praise them for their "bedrock common sense"? Yeah, well, trolls from PfP lecturing "liberals" on condescension is pretty weird anyway, I guess they figure endless derision of people insufficiently adherent to conservative dogma is morally superior to the imagined condescension they feel so aggrieved by, or something. Meanwhile, on the topic of Palin and her latest, we have this from Andrew Sullivan: andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com . He's impressed, though not in a happy way.