America's Ruling Class of the early '20s


Posted On: Friday - December 17th 2021 8:01PM MST
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The political cartoon above was drawn by Elliot Banfield whose work is often published in Claremont Review of Books. Writer and frequent Peak Stupidity commenter E.H. Hail has a very interesting analysis of this depiction of America's current elites here on his Hail to You blog.

It's great to read another post by Mr. Hail (been too long!) I'll leave it at that here and ask the reader to check out his take on the types of people represented there in the balloon and possibly comment.

I've always wanted to take my family up for a balloon ride just once. As a non-member of the Ruling Class, I will forego the champagne and just bring a six-pack of Miller High-Life instead.

I also always liked this song. It's by The 5th Dimension from 53 years ago. They weren't Ruling Class, but they did clean up at the Grammies.



Lastly, for the kids, I had a favorite book back in my childhood from the Time-Life "Yearling" series called The Twenty-one Balloons. I highly recommend it for 9 to 12 y/o boys.

Comments:
Hail
Sunday - December 19th 2021 12:21PM MST
PS

RE: Bill H

"Everyone - media, political and especially the clown in the White House - is in full panic mode over this latest variant"

It all seems laughable to those who can see. The worrying thing is there are lots of people who either are worried or LOUDLY pretend to be worried. A permanent "flu-like virus" emergency. There are "variants" of flu viruses born every day.

I don't see many people around me seem so worried.

To hardline Pro-Panic friends and well-wishers I say this: "Listen, idiots, it's winter, which is flu season. There is no catastrophe here. Just get over it."

Never in the past did any regime, anywhere, adopt a strategy of a permanent war against flu-viruses, making supposed flu-fighting experts into a major branch of government (in effect), and basing their legitimacy around flu viruses. It's one of the dumbest and worst kind of policy quagmires I can really imagine. We warned them...
Hail
Sunday - December 19th 2021 12:10PM MST
PS

The topic of Tucker Carlson's 2018 book came up in which he used the imagery of a ship ("Ship of Fools") at sea, manned by what he saw as the US elite, and gleefully and obliviously navigating straight towards a waterfall.

https://hailtoyou.wordpress.com/2021/12/16/americas-ruling-class-early-2020s/#comment-48091

Peak Stupidity reviewed "Ship of Fools" in 2019 so this may be of interest.

The weakness of the Carlson book cover art is that it puts real politicos' faces on the cover rather than personifications of general elements. Just a few years earlier and likely Paul Ryan's face would've been on the cover The name Paul Ryan has not come up even once in 2021. No one remembers his name. No one even knows if he is dead or alive (except playing the odds that at his age he is still alive).

The individuals generally don't matter, but putting real faces on screen/paper is always good for sales, to get people to hate. A lot of people have made this comment about "AOC," and similar for the smug and odious perfect personification of the terrible immigration system, Ilhan Omar (in a big-blue area of Minneapolis recently, I saw billboards proclaiming: "SEND HER BACK.....to Congress!" with her grinning visage on the one side).

Discussion of the Carlson cartoon vs the Claremont cartoon:

https://hailtoyou.wordpress.com/2021/12/16/americas-ruling-class-early-2020s/#comment-48091
Hail
Sunday - December 19th 2021 12:08PM MST
PS

Thank you for the link!
The Alarmist
Sunday - December 19th 2021 5:27AM MST
PS

Do take them on a ballon flight ... it’s a great experience.

That song reminds me of the quite pretty Marilyn McCoo.
MBlanc46
Saturday - December 18th 2021 8:47PM MST
PS Indeed, in the US importing cheap labor has a long history. Opposing it is nothing new, either. The nativist movement of the 1850s was a response to the large influx of Irish fleeing the potato famine and Germans escaping the aftermath of the 1848 revolution. That’s when voter registration began. I only wish that we were as well organized as our forebears. One major difference to today: Germans and Irish were Europeans and soon became Americans. Asians and Africans and Amerinds never can.
Moderator
Saturday - December 18th 2021 7:07PM MST
PS: Ahha, "Where Eagles Dare", that's where your handle comes from. Yep, agreed.

Mr. Blanc, yes, the robotics/automation is new, but that bringing in of cheap labor has been a (not always successful) thing that went on in the late 1800s and early 1900s and then we can go back to slavery. (I don't know if it was the INTENDED goal of that earlier big immigration wave...)

Like you wrote, they don't think they need us anymore. It sounds like some old Sci-Fi books except the population had naturally decreased and eugenically too. That's not at all what we have now. Lots of people screwed up!

Bill, I have not at all been keeping up, and after reading that Joe Biden line, I am SO GLAD. Holy crap, will people ever get wise to this BS? "Overwhelming the hospitals" ,eh? With bouts of hysteria and senility, sure, I guess I could believe that.

Bill H
Saturday - December 18th 2021 9:09AM MST
PS Everyone - media, political and especially the clown in the White House - is in full panic mode over this latest variant. This panic fest seems even more extreme to me than the original was last year. Maybe it only seems that way because of all the evidence that I, as a rational person, have of how fake it is.

But I don't recall anyone last year saying anything quite as radical as Biden's, "We are looking at a winter of severe illness and death on unvaccinated, for themselves, their families, and the hospitals they'll soon overwhelm."
MBlanc46
Saturday - December 18th 2021 8:41AM MST
PS I suppose that it’s never been a whole lot different. The people at the top want to be at the top in order to serve their own interests, not ours. But I imagine that they used to believe that they needed us. To grow their food, work in their factories, and fight their wars. But now they have robots and billions of Third Worlders to do the work still needs to be done, and do it for considerably lower wages. So now they’re looking for ways to eliminate us.
Broadsword Calling Danny Boy
Friday - December 17th 2021 10:50PM MST
PS Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo – Juliet Oscar Echo – Bravo India Delta Echo November…….
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