Thursday, April 27, 2017

The Week - Linker - Global elites headed for a fall and don't know it - No mention of Trump bringing jobs back, ending invasion, but some good points. Rigged system: elites bask in luxury as commoners languish. --tma






The global elite think they're sitting pretty. How wrong they are.

Democrats keep telling themselves that Hillary Clinton "really" won the 2016 election (or would have, had it not been for interference by Vladimir Putin and James Comey). Republicans keep patting themselves on the back about how much power they now wield at all levels of government. And centrists throughout the West are breathing a sigh of relief about Emmanuel Macron's likely victory over the National Front's Marine Le Pen in the second round of the French presidential election on May 7.

You can almost hear the sentiments echoing down the corridors of (political and economic) power on both sides of the Atlantic: "There's nothing to worry about. Everything's fine.

[...]

And this is how things appear at this historical moment: The world is run by an international elite that lives in a rarified world of seemingly boundless power and luxury. Though the members of this elite consider their own power and luxury to be completely legitimate, it is not. It is the product of a system that's rigged to benefit them while everybody else languishes in declining small cities and provincial towns, eking out a dreary existence, toiling away their lives in menial service-sector jobs or scraping by on disability checks while seeking out a modicum of fleeting joy in the dumbstruck haze of a painkiller high. ...