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Yep, and the parallels to Nazi Germany, where the same kinds of people supported the Nazi party, are hard to miss. Equating people who didn't finish college with the "working class" is missing the picture. By that defintion, Sean Hannity is working class.
In my last conversation with a Trump fan I know, what came across strongly was the petty bourgeois resentment and even hatred of the government employee, who is invariably portrayed as a leech who doesn't work for a living (though they do and have low salaries for their resumes.)
This dovetails with white supremacist urges. For petty bourgeois that want to trap people of color into low-paid service work, seeing Black and Latino people at government desk jobs makes them irate. Nothing will get them raving about "wasting" taxpayer money faster.
That's what a lot of Cletus safari pieces are missing that those of us who actually know Trump voters aren't: The anger that is stirred every time they see a Black firefighter or a Latino county clerk, that rage that these folks have secure middle class jobs on "their" dime.
When Trump talked about the "deep state" out to get him, that's the bone he was tickling. That, and anger at the D.C. high level bureaucrat class that is well-educated and stirs the constant jealousy over people that are more cosmopolitan and sophisticated.
Unfortunately, yes. The prominence of small business and petty bourgeois "entrepeneurs" in far right coalitions is not (merely) a question of number of participants. It is that "small business owner" operates as an aspirational image for others in the coalition who are not https://t.co/heVfjpAcCa
— Louis R\xf6mer (@lromeranth) January 10, 2021
In my last conversation with a Trump fan I know, what came across strongly was the petty bourgeois resentment and even hatred of the government employee, who is invariably portrayed as a leech who doesn't work for a living (though they do and have low salaries for their resumes.)
This dovetails with white supremacist urges. For petty bourgeois that want to trap people of color into low-paid service work, seeing Black and Latino people at government desk jobs makes them irate. Nothing will get them raving about "wasting" taxpayer money faster.
That's what a lot of Cletus safari pieces are missing that those of us who actually know Trump voters aren't: The anger that is stirred every time they see a Black firefighter or a Latino county clerk, that rage that these folks have secure middle class jobs on "their" dime.
When Trump talked about the "deep state" out to get him, that's the bone he was tickling. That, and anger at the D.C. high level bureaucrat class that is well-educated and stirs the constant jealousy over people that are more cosmopolitan and sophisticated.
1/ Thoughts on the Myth of the "First Mover"
This thread by @danrose stirred something I've been thinking about for a while - the myth of first mover advantage
To this day, most people assume Amazon Web Services was the first cloud computing service. This isn't quite true
2/ At its March 2006 launch, AWS was probably the 4th or 5th cloud service run by a Fortune 500 firm
HP launched its Flexible Computing Service in Nov 2005
Sun Grid went into beta in 2004
IBM launched "Linux Virtual Services" in 2002!
But AWS is the only one anybody remembers
3/ I'll focus on IBM here -
From the WSJ in *2002*: "Linux Virtual Services allows customers to run their own software on mainframes in IBM data centers and pay rates based largely on the amount of computing power they use"
https://t.co/mnKH8dF6IL
Sounds like the cloud to me!
4/ Origin stories of AWS often cite how Bezo's uncanny prediction of computing becoming a utility, like an electric grid
But Bezos didn't invent this analogy - it was widespread by the early 2000s. Here's Lou Gerstner saying the same thing in 2003
5/ So why did AWS succeed while IBM did not?
IMO there are no good explanations online. IBM LVS was quietly shut down in 2005-06. The exact date is unclear
Answering this became a personal project for me at Bernstein. I ended up cold-calling multiple former IBM product managers
This thread by @danrose stirred something I've been thinking about for a while - the myth of first mover advantage
To this day, most people assume Amazon Web Services was the first cloud computing service. This isn't quite true
I was at Amzn in 2000 when the internet bubble popped. Capital markets dried up & we were burning $1B/yr. Our biggest expense was datacenter -> expensive Sun servers. We spent a year ripping out Sun & replacing with HP/Linux, which formed the foundation for AWS. The backstory:
— Dan Rose (@DanRose999) January 8, 2021
2/ At its March 2006 launch, AWS was probably the 4th or 5th cloud service run by a Fortune 500 firm
HP launched its Flexible Computing Service in Nov 2005
Sun Grid went into beta in 2004
IBM launched "Linux Virtual Services" in 2002!
But AWS is the only one anybody remembers
3/ I'll focus on IBM here -
From the WSJ in *2002*: "Linux Virtual Services allows customers to run their own software on mainframes in IBM data centers and pay rates based largely on the amount of computing power they use"
https://t.co/mnKH8dF6IL
Sounds like the cloud to me!
4/ Origin stories of AWS often cite how Bezo's uncanny prediction of computing becoming a utility, like an electric grid
But Bezos didn't invent this analogy - it was widespread by the early 2000s. Here's Lou Gerstner saying the same thing in 2003
5/ So why did AWS succeed while IBM did not?
IMO there are no good explanations online. IBM LVS was quietly shut down in 2005-06. The exact date is unclear
Answering this became a personal project for me at Bernstein. I ended up cold-calling multiple former IBM product managers
1/OK, let's take a little break from Coup Twitter, and think about an economic issue:
How can we build up the wealth of the middle class?
2/The typical American has surprisingly little wealth compared to the typical resident of many other developed countries.
This is a fact that is not widely known or appreciated.
3/Now, some people argue that stuff like Social Security or social insurance programs should be included in wealth. But I chose to focus on private wealth because I think having assets you can sell whenever you want is important to
4/For many decades after World War 2, middle-class wealth in America was on a smooth upward trajectory.
Then the housing crash came, and all that changed. Suddenly the rich were still doing well but everyone else was seeing the end of their American Dream.
5/Why the divergence?
Because the American middle class has its wealth in houses -- specifically, in the houses they live in.
It's the rich who own stocks.
How can we build up the wealth of the middle class?
2/The typical American has surprisingly little wealth compared to the typical resident of many other developed countries.
This is a fact that is not widely known or appreciated.
3/Now, some people argue that stuff like Social Security or social insurance programs should be included in wealth. But I chose to focus on private wealth because I think having assets you can sell whenever you want is important to
Yes, these numbers don't include things like Social Security, just privately held wealth. They're not an attempt to capitalize every possible future income stream.
— Noahtogolpe \U0001f407 (@Noahpinion) January 10, 2021
4/For many decades after World War 2, middle-class wealth in America was on a smooth upward trajectory.
Then the housing crash came, and all that changed. Suddenly the rich were still doing well but everyone else was seeing the end of their American Dream.
5/Why the divergence?
Because the American middle class has its wealth in houses -- specifically, in the houses they live in.
It's the rich who own stocks.
By corrupting global institutions, promoting hysterical data, publishing fraudulent science, and deploying propaganda on an unprecedented scale, Beijing transformed the snake oil of lockdowns into “science,” the greatest crime of the 21st century to
2/ The purpose of this letter is to request an expedited federal investigation into the scientific debate on major policy decisions during the COVID-19 crisis.
Downloadable PDF: https://t.co/gOX6sTSFbT
Archived Medium article:
3/ In early 2020, the public turned to the advice of scientific authorities when confronted with an apparent viral outbreak. Soon after, most nations followed the advice of prominent scientists and implemented restrictions commonly referred to as “lockdowns.”
4/ While the policies varied by jurisdiction, in general they involved restrictions on gatherings and movements and the closure of schools, businesses, and public places, inspired by those imposed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Hubei Province.
5/ SECTION 1 - LOCKDOWNS ORIGINATED ON THE ORDER OF XI JINPING, GENERAL SECRETARY OF THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY, AND WERE PROPAGATED INTO GLOBAL POLICY BY THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION WITH LITTLE ANALYSIS OR LOGIC
2/ The purpose of this letter is to request an expedited federal investigation into the scientific debate on major policy decisions during the COVID-19 crisis.
Downloadable PDF: https://t.co/gOX6sTSFbT
Archived Medium article:
3/ In early 2020, the public turned to the advice of scientific authorities when confronted with an apparent viral outbreak. Soon after, most nations followed the advice of prominent scientists and implemented restrictions commonly referred to as “lockdowns.”
4/ While the policies varied by jurisdiction, in general they involved restrictions on gatherings and movements and the closure of schools, businesses, and public places, inspired by those imposed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Hubei Province.
5/ SECTION 1 - LOCKDOWNS ORIGINATED ON THE ORDER OF XI JINPING, GENERAL SECRETARY OF THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY, AND WERE PROPAGATED INTO GLOBAL POLICY BY THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION WITH LITTLE ANALYSIS OR LOGIC
@DorisMatsui thank you for taking this stand. I just saw a report from @CNN that James Clyburn said Democrats might wait until after Biden's first 100 days to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate. I think this is a mistake for several reasons. /1
First, the armed insurrection incited by the President is an immediate national security threat. Each day he is in office increases the threat.
Any talk of waiting undercuts the immediacy and seriousness of this threat. /2
Second, the Senate should be given the opportunity to act immediately. If Republican leadership fails to take up impeachment proceedings immediately, that failure is on them. This president has demonstrated that a single day with him left in office is dangerous, every arm /3
of the Democratic party should move as quickly as possible to reinforce this idea and to ensure it has done everything possible to remove him as a threat to our democracy. /4
It's one thing for Republican leadership to once again refuse to hold him accountable, it's quite another for Democratic leadership to accede to *their* desire to move slowly. /5
We cannot ignore yesterday's insurrection and every day that the President remains in office is a threat to our democracy. That\u2019s why I am cosponsoring an impeachment resolution to initiate the process of removing the President from office immediately.
— Rep. Doris Matsui (@DorisMatsui) January 7, 2021
First, the armed insurrection incited by the President is an immediate national security threat. Each day he is in office increases the threat.
Any talk of waiting undercuts the immediacy and seriousness of this threat. /2
Second, the Senate should be given the opportunity to act immediately. If Republican leadership fails to take up impeachment proceedings immediately, that failure is on them. This president has demonstrated that a single day with him left in office is dangerous, every arm /3
of the Democratic party should move as quickly as possible to reinforce this idea and to ensure it has done everything possible to remove him as a threat to our democracy. /4
It's one thing for Republican leadership to once again refuse to hold him accountable, it's quite another for Democratic leadership to accede to *their* desire to move slowly. /5
Picking up on @henryfarrell's comments here, one implication of my work on democratic breakdown is that the US should harshly punish GOP leaders who attempted to keep Trump in power despite losing the election and fomented insurrection to advance that effort. 1/n
I wrote a book a decade ago that used game theory to explore the ways democracies die and what that tells us about how and why they sometimes survive. 2/n
One implication of the formal model in that book is that normative commitments to democracy may matter less than expectations about the benefits and costs of trying to subvert democracy. 3/n
It's great when all the major players (ruling party, opposition party, and military) believe democracy is good in itself. If they don't, tho, then what matters most are their beliefs about how easily they can seize power and how costly it would be to try and fail. 4/n
I think it's pretty clear that many key players in the GOP don't see democracy as a good in itself ("we're a republic, not a democracy"). So that shifts their attention to their ability to usurp power and the costs of trying and failing. 5/n
1. Short thread - on the various claims we're seeing from Republican politicians over the last few days that the Democratic push for accountability is "divisive." Damn right it's divisive - that is what it has to be.
— Henry Farrell (@henryfarrell) January 10, 2021
I wrote a book a decade ago that used game theory to explore the ways democracies die and what that tells us about how and why they sometimes survive. 2/n
One implication of the formal model in that book is that normative commitments to democracy may matter less than expectations about the benefits and costs of trying to subvert democracy. 3/n
It's great when all the major players (ruling party, opposition party, and military) believe democracy is good in itself. If they don't, tho, then what matters most are their beliefs about how easily they can seize power and how costly it would be to try and fail. 4/n
I think it's pretty clear that many key players in the GOP don't see democracy as a good in itself ("we're a republic, not a democracy"). So that shifts their attention to their ability to usurp power and the costs of trying and failing. 5/n
