it’s meta + elites the whole way down.
- ny review of books
- ny review of books “worthy” reviewer
- elite author who writes for the atlantic, etc.,
still, the reviewer here does a solid job of being grounded and taking a critical look at the book and the author’s perspective. based on this review, i don’t think i’ll be buying the book.
honestly, i found the reviwer’s take here to be a pretty solid damnation of the perspective of a lot of liberals. i’ve found myself saying some pretty harsh things at folks i perceive as acting against their own and society’s better interests.
Promising to end endless wars and rebuild American industry, Trump offered false hope to those who had been left jobless by the global flow of capital and damaged in body or mind (or both) by the idiocies of imperial adventure. He played shamelessly to racist, misogynist, and xenophobic fears, but he also gave his dispossessed supporters a chance to vent their rage against the architects of empire and the meritocratic elite who dismissed them as “deplorables” clinging to religion and guns. His election shocked Democratic Party leaders into a panicky, incoherent, and ultimately unsuccessful effort to explain their loss as a result of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign. But the Democrats failed to provide any serious policy agenda, focusing instead on simply demonizing Trump.
…
Self-examination was not on the agenda; no one acknowledged how completely democracy had been undone by neoliberal policies and ideology. Instead it was time to sound the alarm: the barbarians were at the gates; civilization itself was imperiled.
meta
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