hypocritexposer
Well-known member
I thought this next generation perspective was interesting.
http://www.scoop44.com/2009/02/17/ivy-league-depression-politics/[/quote]
Ivy League Depression Politics
By Markus Kolic • on February 17, 2009
My Harvard friends like to joke about the impending depression. “We should really learn about subsistence farming,” the hipster across the hall says, “and the art of the banjo. Ha ha ha!” There is, of course, a problem with this: namely, in the not unlikely event of a real, genuine-article depression complete with rampant unemployment and social collapse, Harvard grads are going to be just fine. In an economy where the average American worker can’t pay for prescriptions and lives one paycheck away from home foreclosure, your average Harvard man is maybe considering cutting back on renovations at the summerhouse – unless of course his portfolio perks back up.
But Barack Obama, I hasten to add, is also a Harvard man. The Obama for America presidential team was well known in campaign circles for its preponderance of Ivy League grads; today among Obama’s high-level White House appointments are the former President of Harvard, the current Dean of Harvard Law School, at least five Harvard College grads and (per the Harvard Crimson) over twelve Harvard professors. More broadly: Obama’s staff, administrative team, and social circles all carry Ivy League imprimaturs and the faint scent of East Coast New York Times squash-club elitism. Now, I don’t mean to doubt their egalitarian liberal credentials – some of our best redistributionists have come out of places like that – but I do doubt their ability to empathize with, or even understand, the worries of working- and middle-class Americans who are already staring right into an economic abyss. Of course it’s much too early to know, but I fear a scenario in which the Obama administration wastes its popularity and political capital by failing to grasp the nature and consequences of the economic situation.
http://www.scoop44.com/2009/02/17/ivy-league-depression-politics/[/quote]