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How Inbred Elites Are Tearing America Apart
MSNBC's anchor Chris Hayes pins Iraq, the economy, Katrina and more on elites says we all must get radicalized now.Salon / By David Daley
June 26, 2013 |
Twenty years ago, William Greiders Who Will Tell the People? documented the betrayal of American democracy by the elites by both political parties, by the press, by corporations and labor unions, and by a Washington regulatory complex so perfectly corrupt that it exists to serve only the monied interests.
Chris Hayes Twilight of the Elites (just published in paperback) might be the clearest story of Americas collapse since Greiders essential telling. The story, of course, has only gotten worse. In Greiders book, the elites were complicit in profiteering and rigging the system to their own advantage. But in Hayes story, the elites misled us into war, bungled the occupation, let an American city drown, and tanked the economy. Other elites in academia, athletics and religion didnt have such a great decade, either.
Twilight of the Elites is a story about inequality and myths: the myth of the meritocracy and the reality of the very uneven society that allows those, in the words of Ann Richards, who were born on third base to end up thinking they hit a triple and then find themselves protected when they screw up.
As Hayes writes:
Along with all the other rising inequalities weve become so familiar with in income, in wealth, in access to politicians we confront now a fundamental inequality of accountability. We can have a just society whose guiding ethos is accountability and punishment, where both black kids dealing weed in Harlem and investment bankers peddling fraudulent securities on Wall Street are forced to pay for their crimes, or we can have a just society whose guiding ethos is forgiveness and second chances, one in which both Wall Street banks and foreclosed households are bailed out, in which both insider traders and street felons are allowed to rejoin polite society with the full privileges of citizenship intact. But we cannot have a just society that applies the principle of accountability to the powerless and the principle of forgiveness to the powerful. This is the America in which we currently reside.
The anchor of MSNBCs All In every weeknight at 8 p.m. Eastern, Hayes has quickly become one of the countrys most essential public intellectuals. We met in his Rockefeller Center office last week before moving across the street for lunch. This is a lightly edited and condensed version of our conversation.
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http://www.alternet.org/media/how-inbred-elites-are-tearing-america-apart
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How Inbred Elites Are Tearing America Apart (Original Post)
Purveyor
Jun 2013
OP
tularetom
(23,664 posts)1. I hate what MSNBC has done to Chris Hayes
He doesn't look comfortable at all in a suit and tie.
And it appears that he has gotten the word to tone it down a bit for the prime time audience.
He's still great, but he was a hell of a lot better on his morning show.
cheapdate
(3,811 posts)2. Brilliant. We need more of Chris Hayes.
"But we cannot have a just society that applies the principle of accountability to the powerless and the principle of forgiveness to the powerful. This is the America in which we currently reside.
yurbud
(39,405 posts)3. wow--and he's allowed to have a show on TV?