Saturday, July 29, 2017

Cut The Rope of Ivy Strangling The United States

I would imagine you, as I did, missed the announcement of Congressman John Delaney for the 2020 Democratic Presidential nomination.   Charles Pierce in sadly noting the official start of the next goddamned presidential race, not even a year after the last goddamned one ended (if it, indeed, has, Trump seems to not have understood this)..... anyway, Charles Pierce said he'd never heard of him either.  Looking up his bio at Wikipedia (one of the few things I could find about him) I note that he graduated from one of the major Ivies, Columbia with a law degree from the might-as-well-be-a-goddamned-Ivy, Georgetown.  That's enough to make me unenthusiastic about him.  We've been governed, officially, by Ivy League products since 1989 in an unbroken tangle of Ivy around the neck of the country.  And if you want to to face the fact about the Reagan presidency, it was largely run by Ivy league products like James Baker (Princeton) and even in other non-Ivy presidencies, they pretty much ran things.  As I had to point out to someone recently that includes the illegitimate regime we find ourselves in,  Trump is a product of the U. of Pennsylvania Wharton School, UoP is considered one of the lesser Ivies, not to mention Jared (Daddy purchased his place at Harvard) Ivanka, also Wharton School, Steve Bannon (Harvard).

When you look back, with a few bright spots like FDR the influence of Ivy League grad on American Democracy has been pretty dismal.  I certainly don't think the unbroken chain of Ivy League rule we've had can be seriously argued to have been good for the country or the world.

I think it's time to let a government of public school products to see if they can do better.  I doubt they could screw things up any worse than the Ivy elite have.  I'm serious about this, the culture of prep-Ivy-Ivy Equivalent (the overlord Kochs went to MIT).  I think it should be written into law that no one who has not graduated from public schools, from K through their highest grad degree, should ever be allowed to be Secretary of Education.  We've got to break the rope of Ivy that is hanging us.

My favorite wish is that Elizabeth Warren become president.  Other than having gone to George Washington University, she is a product of public education.  That's probably what's inoculated her from going Harvard while teaching there.   She certainly hasn't gone Harvard in public service.

Update:  See, also:

If you think Cory Booker is annoyingly opportunistic and self-promoting, aids to Second Term Congressman Seth Moulton are trying to talk him into running in 2020.  I would imagine they figure he'd have a leg up in New Hampshire, being from MA.   Here's a short description of him and the idea at Politico:

Moulton has three degrees from Harvard, and he did four difficult, decorated tours as a Marine in Iraq. But he’s still a neophyte in the House of Representatives, and in politics. This is the first office of any kind he’s ever held. In the wake, though, of last fall’s terrain-altering election, Ferson detected an opening. “This,” he told me, “is a moment in time where he is the exact right person to run for president.”

This conversation—reported here for the first time—is precisely the type of talk that’s currently causing disgusted eye-rolling among significantly more tenured Democrats in Massachusetts and Washington. They dismiss Moulton, albeit never for attribution, as gratingly ambitious, a grandstanding backbencher who has advocated for the ouster of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to make way for new, younger standard-bearers—like himself. They see Moulton’s message of country over party as not so much admirable as annoying. “It’s the supercilious, sanctimonious Oh, golly gee,” one longtime political observer of his district said of Moulton’s assertions of selflessness. Some of the opinions on Capitol Hill are even more scathing. “I don’t think I’ve seen a more opportunistic, duplicitous person serving in the House,” said a senior Democratic aide, blasting Moulton as somebody who talks bigger than he plays and who pillories Pelosi while almost always voting the same way. “He doesn’t do anything around here,” the aide said. Other members who are more supportive are reluctant to say so publicly—cautious about being seen as “giving him a bear hug,” as one Hill staffer put it, “while he’s knifing the leader.”

And there's more in the story.

This is one guy I would definitely never want to see as President.   I wonder, do political operatives talk guys like this into running to make work for themselves?

9 comments:

  1. "When you look back, with a few bright spots like FDR the influence of Ivy League grad on American Democracy has been pretty dismal. I certainly don't think the unbroken chain of Ivy League rule we've had can be seriously argued to have been good for the country or the world."

    You might just as credibly lament the unbroken chain of Christians. Time for one of my fellow Red Sea Pedestrians. AL FRANKEN FOR PRESIDENT!!!

    Oh wait, he went to Harvard.

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    1. I knew this would get your panties in a twist. You're the kind of phony lefty who gets nervous when the Ivy League ruling class is dissed. As I recall, it's the first thing you attacked me on.

      Your Alpha-Ivy daddy fetish is a real hoot. Simps, they'll never go for you, not if they were suffocating and your .... well, you know what Mink Stole said.

      Al Franken has sensibly given pretty much the Sherman answer to rumors of his candidacy.

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  2. As usual, you're preening self regard knows no boundaries.

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    1. No, I really did know that this would make you go all Margaret Dumont, it's what you always do when someone disses the Ivy Leaguers, you obviously have some kind of dom-submissive relationship with the Ivy type. Since no one is ever going to mistake you for one it's obvious who's on top in that relationship.

      Or maybe you've got the same kind of thing going with the Ivy class that Steve Colbert pointed out Scaramucci has with Trump's butt cheeks.

      Considering you spend most of your time at Duncan Black's, it's pretty funny that you figure I preen in self-regard.

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    2. You're constantly announcing how you push everybody's buttons. What else would you call it?

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  3. And by the way, numbnuts, I could give a flying fuck where anybody -- myself included -- went to school. The reason I make fun of you on this is because it is one of your most ridiculous crackpot obsessions. Period.

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  4. Boy keeps looking in the mirror, thinks it's a window.

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    1. When my mother's cousin, "aunt" Mary - well one of my mother's cousin Marys - thought that the TV was a window we knew she'd gone round the bend as she always predicted she would. Simels is way beyond that.

      I really can only think of one person who depends on cliches to frame their thinking on a more consistent level than he does, Susan Stamberg, the woman who can't open her mouth without a cliche coming out.

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    2. As I count, she had five or six cousin Marys. Irish Catholics, from Co. Cork. It's surprising most of them didn't have Josephine as a middle name.

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