My brief and to-the-point summary rejoinder is “au contraire” LOL.

The complicated version follows and is tediously long.

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I don’t hate nor wish to destroy the elite “class”, neo.

Not at all.

(Though I can see why you might suspicion such lol. One cannot, after all, write in such a way as to not be misunderstood. Ha!)

To what benefit would wasting such expenditure of emotional capital possibly be worth the effort?

I do despise – and pity – the striving elite …different emotions entirely (or motivations, if you will) from those based on “hate”.

(“The striving elite” being a subset of the inhabitants of this network/socio-financial class/strata/whatever, and certainly not all who live within its immediate and adjacent environs.)

So …I’m not a nihilist than lol.

My …belief (observation?) …is …the “elite” are as surely caged by the circumstances of their wealth and power as the celled prisoner by the condition and terms of his incarceration.

Perhaps more so, as the repentant criminal may someday be released and/or reformed and thus leave his past by something so simple as an act of will …while the inhabitants of this strata may be so constrained by the circumstance of their birth and wealth and power as to be unable to escape the equally rigid bars of their gilded confinement.

There can never be the freedom found in anonymity for the wealthy and the powerful; they are and will always be ultimately constrained by their circumstances. Maybe they’re aware of it. Maybe not. It’s all the same to me.

Hence …to some degree, I pity them (well some of them) …whether they’re judged as “deserving” of it or not (by anyone).

Hmm. Let’s stipulate it thus: I am able to understand – and commiserate (a bit) with – their predicament. Stuff happens.

Even though …I would [happily] see [some of] them gone (more accurately: greatly diminished) from power …and in such a manner as to give pause to their [inevitable] antecedents.

Continue to bear with me here.

The plundering and outright destruction of the middle class[/es wealth] and influence during the past 40 years was/is not in the best long-term interests of the republic, let alone in the best interests of the monied/political classes (whether it was done a’purpose, or coincidentally matters not: outcomes matter here, not original intent).

And just in case my motivation is in question: I don’t mind (in the tiniest iota) that some people have more (even much, much more) than others. Sincerely: I’m not envious of those with wealth (or power per se). Why would I care? I’m …happy …positively brimming at times with joie de vivre. Blessed maybe. Life is good. No complaints. Etc., etc. lol.

At the very least …I’m not so bitter by any stretch as to measure my happiness by wishing others to be punished or diminished for their status and station in life.

(And I greatly admire those of any class willing to honorably achieve any honorable goal which means so much to them as to have devoted their life to achieving it. That can be magnificent. Good on ’em.)

Nor do I have a problem with disabused nobility or “old money” …so long as it is – here is that word again – honorable.

But I find deplorable a donor and political class …an aristocracy (if you will) …

…who “mine” for their personal financial “enhancements” through active deprivation of the less connected and the less politically active …

…who blithely (and subsequently) demonize the less fortunate …

…after forcibly making them “the less ‘fortunate'” (via legislative means and taxing authority and judicial complicity) …

…and blaming them for some ephemeral as-defined-by-the-elites insouciance in being unwilling (or morally incapable) to equally break the laws that their representatives should legislatively be actively protecting them with.

And who did so by suborning the intent and history of the nation and our founding principles.

This isn’t just.

It is manifestly unjust.

It is another guise of evil.

The rise of the crony-capitalist economic pathology (out of the ashes of the good-ol’-boy network) may be one of many probable developments of any capitalist economy (oh: and I am unabashedly pro-capitalism at this juncture in history btw …that may change – as I predict it will – with the rise of robotics and the development of AI and genetic technologies) …but it is nonetheless still a pathology and it is execrably deplorable.

That is also an entirely accurate description of the generally donor class practitioners of crony capitalism and their pet politicians (of both parties): execrable.

Greed and malfeasance to this degree at the expense of justice is in no one’s interest, be it individual or societal or cultural.

And especially not in the context of the American Experiment.

To analogize (in an already over-long reply) I commend to your reading a simple summary of the rise of the Roman republic, especially those sections beginning Patricians and Plebeians.

…To right their wrongs the plebeians went on what today would be called a general strike. In 494 BC they marched out of Rome in a body and threatened to make a new city. This strike terrified the patricians. They agreed to cancel all debts and to release people who were in prison for debt. Furthermore, the plebeians were granted the right to be represented by new officials, called tribunes. The tribunes had the right to veto the act of any magistrate which was unjust to any citizen…

History repeating itself (in a sense), the American middle class finds itself in a similar situation, despite being the ultimate bulwark (and military force: the elite seldom send their sons and daughters to war in effective numbers) against the destruction of the wealth and power of the elites by the ever-recurring dark forces of a jealous and envious barbarism.

The elites are idiots to think and act otherwise. Why wouldn’t they recognize that? – Dunno. Beats me.

(But by which alone they prove themselves unfit to weild the power they possess; they don’t recognize that a strong, prospering middle class is necessary for their own well-being and survival.)

All said to reiterate: I don’t hate them …but I have substantive reasons for believing them unsuitable for the power they have misused in the pursuit of purely personal gain.

And I want them deposed, and am willing to entertain any tool, however otherwise flawed, that presents itself in the accomplishment of those aims.

I retain enough belief in the resilience of the practice and “idea” (if you will) of America and a faith in both common and elite Americans, to be reasonably confident that – like the Jewish song lyrics “We survived Pharaoh. We can survive this” – reforming (or replacing) the entrenched GOPe will be survivable despite any unexpected twists and turns.

Which does not make me any sort of a fatalist about the future. Quite the opposite.

Last. I don’t disagree with your assessment in any way that we were already on an orderly path to co-opt the GOP (via the rise of the Tea Party), and that Cruz would have been a more precise (better!) instrument. Not at all. I’d been cautiously optimistic about it for a while (too).

But you don’t go to war with the army you wished for. You go to war with the army you have.

The GOP’s behavior before the passage of Obamacare and after has been highly consistent on that topic. Highly.

Also, you didn’t answer my question: did you know they repealed it, and that Obama vetoed it?

The problem with hating the “elites” and wanting to replace them is this: they will be replaced by new “elites.” Politics is politics. Politics is power. Do you really think that destroying the ones you are angry it will mean they will be replaced with something better? I do not, and the rise of Donald Trump as a protest to those “elites” is the sort of thing that is just more evidence of it.

I have always advocated a slow person-by-person process of primarying the ones we don’t like and trying to win elections, but not tearing the whole shebang down in the process. People say “that hasn’t worked,” but maybe the reason it hasn’t worked has nothing to do with those “elites.” It WAS working very slowly, and we had a good chance of actually getting the presidency this time, which would have given the right a lot more clout. But instead, Donald Trump.

It is this impulse that disturbs and worries me.

I’m still not sure that I couldn’t be – even if inadvertently – lumped in with a group I’m not sure I have much in common with, but …meh. I’ll at least try not to snivel about it going forward.

…my initial reaction was because I’m quite, quite unhappy with the GOPe – I will not pine after they become an historical footnote (I think it is inevitable) – and I do use terms and phrases like “elite”, “political aristocracy”, “crony-capitalists”, “the establishment”, &tc. to describe “those people” …and I’m [vocally] quite on-board with changing/transforming the GOP from within or without (and have been for around a dozen years or so, since some time in the early Bush presidency).

I admit I can at timed be quite a bit less effete in expressing my disdain (well: perhaps more accurately open hostility) for the, ahem, “elites” who use the party as personal fiefdom and financial sinecure …but still, you’ll forgive me for saying I have quite the desire to see the insouciant rapscallions beggared (at least), with perhaps an appropriately heated admixture of viscous coal-derived byproducts and the appropriated plumage of the current descendants of archeopteryx applied to their impeccably tailored habiliments and exposed epidermis, and then summarily transported from the immediate vicinity via, umm, perhaps a stout oaken rail slung between two hardy bearers would suit.

…but that’s just me.

I’m hardly leftist of course (been there, done that, the irrepressible typically naive youth with blinders on, young-skull-full-of-mush, salad days, ya-da ya-da), and so thought your description of those who frequently resort to use of those terms in a derisive manner in re: the GOPe was rather painting with an over-broad brush.

Before re-reading the article.

My bad, n’est-ce pas.

…btw the reference to “the man” brought back several fond memories of that “useful idiot” period: I’d quite forgotten that one. It’s been a long time.

the mexicans smashing police cars and holding flags an beating people up, are labled Trump Protesters

one video is Donald Trump Protestors vandalize police car

many people will think that these protestors are donalds people NOT people who are agianst him

its getting real dirty as the establishment is getting their armies of morons, useful idiots, feminists, and such to win by other means.

Clinton was with Jeff and people know about that scandal, so now there is a new person in which the information is turning out to be what? oh yeah, another person in a long line of hoaxes from tawana brawely onwards…

Trump lawyer calls ‘rape’ lawsuit a HOAX and says there’s no proof accuser exists as he claims her address and phone number are fakes and ‘clearly there’s some kind of collusion going on’

AS usualy the brits can publish what US press uses abuses and refuses…

Donald Trump’s lawyer says there’s no indication that a lawsuit plaintiff who claimed Trump raped her when she was 13 is a real person

‘Based on our investigation, [there is] no evidence that the person who has made these allegations actually exists,’ attorney Alan Garten told DailyMail.com

Garten cites ‘false’ address and phone number and says whoever wrote the lawsuit ‘clearly has some legal background’

The billionaire had already ‘categorically’ denied the legal claims, made by a ‘Katie Johnson’ in a bombshell $100 million lawsuit
[edited for length by n-n]

Police clashed with protesters outside Donald Trump’s rally in Costa Mesa, California Thursday night
One group of protesters was filmed trying to flip over a police car outside the Pacific Amphitheater where he spoke
Hundreds of demonstrators flooded the streets, hurling rocks at motorists and forcefully declaring their opposition
One Trump supporter was seen bloodied after being punched in the face, while about 20 people were arrested
The Republican frontrunner was campaigning on Thursday ahead of the state’s June 7 presidential primary
He is vying for votes in the primary election to narrow the gap to the 1,237 delegates needed to win the nomination
Trump leads Kasich and Cruz in the California polls, with an estimated 45.7 per cent of voters, according to Real Clear Politics

About five police cars were damaged in total, police said, adding that some will require thousands of dollars’ worth of repairs.

“Dump the Trump,” one sign read. Another protester scrawled anti-Trump messages on Costa Mesa police cars.

Consistent behavior, both before and especially after Obamacare’s passage would have convinced me that Republican’s vote against its passage was a vote in principle. Of course some votes where but only wishful thinking imagines that leopards change their spots. It’s possible that McConnell and Boehner marshalled uniminity among Republicans out of civic duty but when their behavior before and since is considered, it’s much more probable that the determinitive factor was their donor’s expressing their desire to stay with the status quo. Their actions regarding illegal immigration are a conclusive demonstration, that the fulfillment of their donor’s wishes are foremost among their considerations. BTW, I never suggested that congressional republicans did not sincerely try to repeal Obamacare. I only suggested that the majority’s rationale for doing so was for self-serving reasons.

Nor have I suggested that Trump will give his supporters what they desire, only that it’s possible that he’s sincere on his major issues. While acknowledging that the truth may be otherwise. What I posited was the demeanor that many voter’s want to see. I didn’t say that Trump demonstrates it in a logically persuasive manner.

parker,

I agree that Trump cannot articulate how he will accomplish his promises. However, Reagan demonstrated that success starts with the right attitude. “Whether you think you can or think you can’t… you’re right” Henry Ford

I’m ONLY suggesting that Trump, for all his faults, has that part right and while that is no guarantee of success, without it any success is due to good fortune. Even the incompetent sometimes get lucky.

I often agree with you, but our hostess at 12:26 hammers down the nail that sticks up.