The shock of September 11, the protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the debacle following hurricane Katrina, the inability to control illegal immigration, the financial crisis, the massive bailout, the election of Barack Obama — all these events catastrophically undermined the implicit trust that the silent majority once placed in the competency of our national leadership.

For Gramsci, on the other hand, it was prestige. Cultural hegemony, according to Gramsci, did not have to be imposed on the people through threats and intimidation. It didn’t need to be imposed at all. Conquered subjects sought to emulate the prestigious language of their conquerors, while they simultaneously came to look down on their own native tongue as gross, defective, and inferior. In modern liberal societies the same principle has been at work, but with different players. As education became the ticket to worldly success, it naturally became a source of prestige. Prestige no longer came from conquest by arms, but from earning a Ph.D. In modern secular societies, the eminence of the intellectual elite allowed it to unilaterally allocate prestige to select ideas, thinkers, and institutions. Objects imbued with the magical glow of prestige did not need to be pushed on people — on the contrary, people eagerly vied with each other to obtain these objects, often at great personal sacrifice. That is why prestigious institutions, such as major universities, well-endowed foundations, and posh clubs invariably have far more candidates for admission than can possibly be accommodated — a selectivity that makes them even more desirable and prestigious. That is the beauty of prestige: It doesn’t need to lift a finger. It can just sit back and relax, confident that people will flock to its feet, begging for the crumbs from its luxuriant table.

To the pragmatist, it makes little difference what ideas free people use to justify and rationalize their rebellious attitude. The most important thing is simply to preserve this attitude among a sufficiently large number of people to make it a genuine deterrent against the power hungry. If the Tea Party can succeed in this all-important mission, then the pragmatist can forgive the movement for a host of silly ideas and absurd policy suggestions, because he knows what is really at stake. Once the “Don’t tread on me!” attitude has vanished from a people, it never returns. It is lost and gone forever — along with the liberty and freedom for which, ultimately, it is the only effective defense.

drsmooth wrote:Speaking of effluence, somebody help me with this zany piece from one The Hoover Institution's Lee Harris:

The Tea Party vs the Intellectuals

here's 3 representative snippets:

The shock of September 11, the protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the debacle following hurricane Katrina, the inability to control illegal immigration, the financial crisis, the massive bailout, the election of Barack Obama — all these events catastrophically undermined the implicit trust that the silent majority once placed in the competency of our national leadership.

For Gramsci, on the other hand, it was prestige. Cultural hegemony, according to Gramsci, did not have to be imposed on the people through threats and intimidation. It didn’t need to be imposed at all. Conquered subjects sought to emulate the prestigious language of their conquerors, while they simultaneously came to look down on their own native tongue as gross, defective, and inferior. In modern liberal societies the same principle has been at work, but with different players. As education became the ticket to worldly success, it naturally became a source of prestige. Prestige no longer came from conquest by arms, but from earning a Ph.D. In modern secular societies, the eminence of the intellectual elite allowed it to unilaterally allocate prestige to select ideas, thinkers, and institutions. Objects imbued with the magical glow of prestige did not need to be pushed on people — on the contrary, people eagerly vied with each other to obtain these objects, often at great personal sacrifice. That is why prestigious institutions, such as major universities, well-endowed foundations, and posh clubs invariably have far more candidates for admission than can possibly be accommodated — a selectivity that makes them even more desirable and prestigious. That is the beauty of prestige: It doesn’t need to lift a finger. It can just sit back and relax, confident that people will flock to its feet, begging for the crumbs from its luxuriant table.

To the pragmatist, it makes little difference what ideas free people use to justify and rationalize their rebellious attitude. The most important thing is simply to preserve this attitude among a sufficiently large number of people to make it a genuine deterrent against the power hungry. If the Tea Party can succeed in this all-important mission, then the pragmatist can forgive the movement for a host of silly ideas and absurd policy suggestions, because he knows what is really at stake. Once the “Don’t tread on me!” attitude has vanished from a people, it never returns. It is lost and gone forever — along with the liberty and freedom for which, ultimately, it is the only effective defense.

TV, you've referenced Gramsci here from time to time - is Harris here taking liberties with the fellow's views to provide cover for the angry teabaggers?

VoxOrion wrote:I just wrote a long post about tea partiers and the attempts to dissect or explain them and decided to keep the last sentence and remove the rest:

It's like both sides are engaged in some kind of quasi-intellectual mutual masturbation to pass time between elections.

That is all.

TenuredVulture wrote:OK, now I've skimmed the article. Long winded to be sure. Because he's saying the Tea Party isn't really an ideological movement, but a bunch of ordinary people who are scared and angry, who don't understand what is happening in the world, and worried that no one else really understands it either.

I really wish I could be so verbose.

America’s intellectual elite has become radically out of touch with the visceral sensibility of a large chunk of their nation’s population. This might not be a serious problem for liberal intellectuals, who, by and large, have long since ceased to have any interest in influencing the many Americans who have expressed sympathy with the Tea Party movement (according to various polls, as much as 40 percent of the population). But it poses a very grave problem for conservative intellectuals loyal to the Republican Party. Since the election of Nixon in 1968, the Republicans’ political successes have been predicated on winning over the bulk of those Americans who have come to look on “liberal” as a dirty word. Nixon called them “the silent majority.”... Alienated by the causes championed by liberal intellectuals, they have reliably voted the Republican ticket, often simply because Republicans were not liberals. They may still vote Republican in the future, but only for those Republican candidates who are willing to join the party — the Tea Party, that is. This puts conservative intellectuals in a terrible bind. If they hope to retain their influence on the Republican Party, they must either join the Tea Party, too, or else battle it out to the bitter end.

The bitter end strategy is fraught with peril, however. When conservative intellectuals like Brooks and Frum attack the Tea Party, they win accolades from liberal intellectuals, but they make no dent on the Tea Partiers themselves. Instead, the Tea Partiers simply look on them with the same contempt they have long felt towards liberal intellectuals.

....Conservative intellectuals, appalled by the Tea Party, will of course blame those who started the movement, while the Tea Partiers themselves can return the charge by claiming that they have been betrayed by those conservative intellectuals who in their hearts gone over to the other side.....

For better or for worse, the profound cultural changes in American life during the past half century are testament to the enormous influence exercised by our cultural guardians. Ideas, customs, and traditions that no longer find favor in the eyes of the cultural elite have been stigmatized as out-of-date and old-fashioned, while an array of progressive policies have received the imprimatur of elite prestige.

In fact, about the only segment of the population that has remained resistant to these progressive policies are the crowds that assemble at Tea Party rallies, holding up their handmade posters. It is the Tea Partiers’ indifference to the whole idea of intellectual respectability that renders them immune to the prestige pressure that molds and shapes the ideas and opinions of those who do care about being intellectually respectable.

....Gramsci came to recognize that snobbery is a powerful form of oppression. Those who establish a monopoly of prestige are no more willing to share their cosa nostra with others than those who have created commercial monopolies.

The only defense that the marginalized outsider has against this onslaught is to not give a damn. And the fact that the Tea Party movement does not give a damn about the current standards of intellectual respectability makes it problematic for the intellectual, who cannot take the same attitude. But it is also the characteristic that justifies the Tea Party’s claim to be revolutionary. ....It is....the revolt of common sense against privileged opinion makers.... it can only be carried out by men and women who are not constrained by the standards of intellectual respectability current in polite company. Again, it is precisely their status as marginalized outsiders that allows them to defy the monopoly of prestige possessed by the cultural insiders.....As the Tea Partiers see it, what is most needed right now are not new ideas — we have already had far too many of those. What is needed is the revitalization of a very old attitude — the attitude shared by all people who have been able to maintain their liberty and independence against those who would take it away from them: “We do not need an elite to govern us. We can govern ourselves.”

pacino wrote:there is a fraud going on in South Carolina. This guy did not legitimately win the Democratic nomination for Senate

VoxOrion wrote:Basically this its either a) legit, and just weird, or b) someone tampered with the voting machines.

I have so much trouble with the latter, the risk/reward is just not worth it. At the same time, I think Occam's Razor only barely favors a).

pacino wrote:

traderdave wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:Candidate May Have Lied About Heroic Death In Vietnam

"Chris Wilfred is the man for the job," Riggs continued. "God rest his soul."

This can't be true because if it is, well, I don't know how to react.

please click the link, dave

dajafi wrote:I haven't read the piece, but from doc's description it sounds like Harris is applying for a position that doesn't exist: theoretician of the Tea Party. Which is profoundly missing the point, as the Lilla analysis suggests. There's no governing vision or legislative program there, and the one thing I find admirable about the 'baggers is that they seem to resist most efforts to impose anything like that.

(Plus he probably uses a buncha ten dollar words, and might wear an ascot. They'd burn him as a witch.)

allentown wrote:A ludicrous Jenkins editorial in today's WSJ accusing the President and Congress on unduly beating up and shaking down poor, little BP. Also criticizes President for the 6 month moratorium on deep-water drilling. Let's see, we know BP broke many of its own safety rules and overruled Halliburton and Transocean experts in order to complete the well a day sooner and save a few $mill. We know they had a poorly maintained primary safety device, hear rumors of an under-staffed rig, know their spill plan was a joke. We also know the other oil companies working in the deep Gulf have similarly vacant spill plans and that the MMS supervisors are in the pocket of the industry and even signed inspection reports written by industry. We have an expert commission picked to find out exactly why things went wrong and how to prevent a recurrence. Given all that, we certainly wouldn't rationally want to halt deep water drilling until we know it can procede safely. We certainly wouldn't want to secure the necessary big, big $ from BP to fund the cleanup sometime soon, like before they decide it's getting too expensive and use the bankruptcy ruse to carve out a separate subsidiary to incur the cleanup costs and insulate the rest of the company. Nope, this is just politics and unwarranted meanness to poor BP.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... Collection

The cynical among us think it’s a group of peasants with pitchforks controlled by an underground cabal of Glenn Beck, wealthy donors and the guys who killed JFK. But the worst thing I can say about the Tea Party I work for is that it can make lots of noise but can’t win without professional help. I love the irony of helping run this organization from the St. Regis Bar

But questions about this multibillion-dollar program are piling up.

For one, Wall Street banks are charging larger commissions for selling Build America Bonds than they do for normal municipal bonds, increasing the costs to the states and cities. For another, the new bonds may be priced too cheaply, enabling quick-footed investors to turn a fast profit as the prices climb, but raising interest costs for taxpayers.

Those imbalances have caught the eye of the Internal Revenue Service, which is asking municipalities whether the bonds are being priced and sold correctly. Alarmed by the uncertainty, Florida, which has sold more than $1.6 billion of Build America Bonds, has retreated from the market.

As if all this were not enough, Wall Street banks — which have pocketed hundreds of millions of dollars in fees from the program — are now releasing research reports warning that states’ financial woes may make the bonds less attractive. Some banks are even telling investors how to bet against Build America Bonds.

.....

Another clear winner has been Wall Street. Banks have collected nearly $700 million in fees for helping to issue the bonds. (That number is low because fees are not reported in a third of the transactions.)

For banks, Build America Bonds are more lucrative than traditional municipal bonds. Weighted by size, municipal issuers paid $6.55 per $1,000 of Build America Bond sold in June, compared with $6.08 for traditional municipal bonds.

Bankers argue that the fees are fair because Build America Bonds are new. Over time, they say, the fees have fallen.

Even as it sells the bonds, however, Wall Street is thinking about how to play both sides of the new market. In an April 29 report to clients, a Citigroup analyst wrote that investors who are tuned in to the “widely known municipal budget struggle” can now use derivatives and other financial mechanisms to sell short Build America Bonds.

VoxOrion wrote:Based on the discussion earlier this week dissecting the Tea Party, I thought you guys might find this interesting. I'm not going to get to read the whole thing before work but wanted to link to it anyway.

Feature story from Playboy (SO DON'T BOTHER CLICKING AT WORK), written by Anonymous, a Tea Party consultant.

Rogues of K Street: Confessions of a Tea Party Consultant
.

Unlike most of the tired, airbrushed conservatives living in D.C., the homegrown activists I work with are the real deal.
They may not read much, but they all know their Ayn Rand.

Jon David and Maura Flynn filmed the [competitive Illinois gubernatorial primary Tea Party candidate Adam] Andrzejewski TV spot....In addition to being one of the best directors I’ve seen, he took the stage before Sarah Palin at the Nashville Tea Party convention to sing his song "American Heart," which is like Lee Greenwood’s "God Bless the USA" only better.

David’s song makes you want to waterboard a terrorist and then f*ck a bald eagle. Under a cherry tree, on an American flag blanket.

drsmooth wrote:It's entries like that that suggest this piece was written by a recent college grad rather than a hardboiled beltway bandit.