The Real Game: Warring Elites

[galeno]

It appears that the USA has too many "elites". Just like my little country of Costa Rica.

www.zerohedge.com/economics/elites-battle-future-america

[uncleharley]

That link is a great read!! I love this paragraph; "The warring elites will have to choose an economic side soon: either go with the Fed's plan for an ever-more unequal future America in which inflation stripmines the bottom 90% while the technocrat class and its billionaire owners become ever-wealthier and the world loses confidence in the predictability of the U.S. dollar's value, or the debt and phantom capital of the Fed's sand castles are wiped away and the dollar is re-anchored to the nation's economic foundations of improving productivity via newly enforced competition, transparency and accountability and the resilience of a reshored industrial base"

[Chahta]

I would tend to agree. But the “elites” are not so much businessmen and billionaires. They are doing what they are supposed to do. It is politicians that are elites, bloodsucking from the rest of us.

[galeno]

All we want is to SURVIVE when the next disaster hits.

My wife and I believe that a SIMPLE 2 fund portfolio with a 50/50 split between passive indexed world equities and (unhedged) nominal world bonds is the best vehicle for survival.

"When the USA gets a cold Costa Rica gets pneumonia."

My chronic insomnia is due to 4 things:
1. My children
2. Covid-19
3. Impending financial collapse
4. Climate change

[galeno]

I respectfully disagree. The USA has been a "capitalist corporatist oligarchy" since AT LEAST the USA civil war. Maybe even before.

Up until 1971 the gains in productivity were shared fairly with the working class.

When Nixon HAD to take the USD off the Gold Standard that's when ALL the productivity gains started going to the shareholders and the top managers.

Sept 2, 2021 13:12:52 GMT Chahta said:

I would tend to agree. But the “elites” are not so much businessmen and billionaires. They are doing what they are supposed to do. It is politicians that are elites, bloodsucking from the rest of us.

[uncleharley]

I have to agree that the nations politicians are largely doing what they think benefits their party and harms the opposition rather than doing what is good for the country. Unfortunately we do not have elections very time one of these jerks pokes their head up. Sorry for the rant.

[galeno]

I said.

"The USA has been a capitalist corporatist oligarchy since at least the USA Civil War."

HL Mencken said.

"The American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects, and what they thus lost they have never got back."

[richardsok]

Sept 3, 2021 19:18:14 GMT galeno said:

I said.

"The USA has been a capitalist corporatist oligarchy since at least the USA Civil War."

HL Mencken said.

"The American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects, and what they thus lost they have never got back."

     MENCKEN ? !     Wow.
     
     Despite his brilliance as a wit, a reporter and an essayist, you don't read many quotes from him these days.   Openly pro-German and anti-Brit during the early years of BOTH World Wars and later, when the USA joined in, he never repudiated his earlier opinions -- he merely became discreet.  A unvarnished racist & anti-semite and (as your quote implies) pro-Confederate.

     What redeems him, IMO. is his blistering contempt for most " -isms", the whole governing & capitalist class (including FDR) and all stuffed shirt, grasping,  loud-mouth frauds in high office.

     The man wielded his typewriter like a straight razor. Sorry we'll never know what wet work he'd have done with Trump or Biden.

     He'd be reviled today -- if the public knew who he was.

         (Sorry to divert.   Won't comment further.)

     
     

     

[acksurf]

Sept 3, 2021 20:58:59 GMT richardsok said:

Sept 3, 2021 19:18:14 GMT galeno said:

I said.

"The USA has been a capitalist corporatist oligarchy since at least the USA Civil War."

HL Mencken said.

"The American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects, and what they thus lost they have never got back."

     MENCKEN ? !     Wow.
     
     Despite his brilliance as a wit, a reporter and an essayist, you don't read many quotes from him these days.   Openly pro-German and anti-Brit during the early years of BOTH World Wars and later, when the USA joined in, he never repudiated his earlier opinions -- he merely became discreet.  A unvarnished racist & anti-semite and (as your quote implies) pro-Confederate.

     What redeems him, IMO. is his blistering contempt for most " -isms", the whole governing & capitalist class (including FDR) and all stuffed shirt, grasping,  loud-mouth frauds in high office.

     The man wielded his typewriter like a straight razor. Sorry we'll never know what wet work he'd have done with Trump or Biden.

     He'd be reviled today -- if the public knew who he was.

         (Sorry to divert.   Won't comment further.)

     
     

     

Not so sure about that.  I see Mencken quotes frequently - several favorites:

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

[galeno]

Me too. Frequently. I didn't even know who he really was. But I see and love his quotes.

"Not so sure about that. I see Mencken quotes frequently - several favorites"

Back to the topic.

Whenever a country starts having bizzare troubles (e.g. CR and USA) you can bet that a big part of it is too many elites fighting for a limited amount of well paid power positions.

[richardsok]

Sorry, but I must respond one more time.

I've had H L Mencken's books on my shelves for decades. I admire his brilliant writing and his acid wit. The stories of his youth and early newspaper days in old Baltimore -- of old-time Irish beat cops, Bible-thumpers, Maryland oysters and home-brewed German beer -- are wonderful. I agree, also, there's a real delight in discovering some of his quotable quips that skewer braying jackasses in high office. Prohibitionists, do-gooders, local school boards and small town vanities were all grist for his mill. And, yes, on an INDIVIDUAL LEVEL, he could be kind and encouraging to young Black or Jewish writers and support their efforts to get published.

Here is my favorite quote of his:  "If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl."

However -- I don't shock easily -- But I draw the line at a racist and bigot who could see the "good side" of fascists and Nazis, and who could generally agree with Hitler's attitude toward Jews and who railed against British/Zionist "propaganda". 

When his massive diary was finally published, the Associated Press wrote ....


apnews.com/article/e64e97725923bb7b64aa8e054aabe4b2

[galeno]

I read the article. Thank you Captain Richardsok. You just created a new admirerer of HL Menken. I agree with ALMOST everything he SAID. And 100% with what he DID.

apnews.com/article/e64e97725923bb7b64aa8e054aabe4b2

[bf22]

Sept 4, 2021 17:43:03 GMT galeno said:

I read the article. Thank you Captain Richardsok. You just created a new admirerer of HL Menken. I agree with ALMOST everything he SAID. And 100% with what he DID.

apnews.com/article/e64e97725923bb7b64aa8e054aabe4b2

Sad... 

[Chahta]

I guess I am not following very well. Mencken appears to be somebody to NOT be admired by today's standards. I do not think there is any good side to a facist or Nazi that Mencken referred to. I will exclude any modern day political figure that get those monikers applied, stupidly. At best he appears to be very disturbed.

[richardsok]

Sept 4, 2021 22:25:50 GMT Chahta said:

I guess I am not following very well. Mencken appears to be somebody to NOT be admired by today's standards. I do not think there is any good side to a facist or Nazi that Mencken referred to. I will exclude any modern day political figure that get those monikers applied, stupidly. At best he appears to be very disturbed.

Perhaps I'm being too harsh on him, but Mencken's difficult to discuss because I don't want to whitewash him either.  At the very least he had  a tendency to "look the other way" about Germany and found (or thought he found) some moral equivalence betwn the Germans and the British Empire.  It's not that he praised Germany, it's that he found ugly things to say about British hypocrisy.    He criticized Nazis for spoiling American good will between the wars; that is to say, he was critical of their TACTICS, but was silent about their vices.
     The distinguished historian, William Manchester, who know him well, wrote that while Mencken was decidedly not a Nazi, he had a rosy/romantic vision of the  German people that no longer existed.   Which is odd, given his razor-sharp views of America.

[galeno]

Today's standards are absolutely HORRIBLE!

"I guess I am not following very well. Mencken appears to be somebody to NOT be admired by today's standards."

[Chahta]

Sept 5, 2021 1:44:01 GMT galeno said:

Today's standards are absolutely HORRIBLE!

"I guess I am not following very well. Mencken appears to be somebody to NOT be admired by today's standards."

I agree that many of today’s standards, PC being one, are worthless (and possibly horrible) to me. But finding good in Nazis or anti-semitism or racism defies any logical thinking in today’s world.