Mark Blyth - Why People Vote for Those Who Work Against Their Best Interests

I had never listened to or read the anti-austerity scholar Mark Blyth before yesterday, he has a lot to say that is interesting.  It's important to understand that it's not all a matter of people being suckered by FOX and Sinclair and Breitbart, a lot of the problem is the failure of the supposed alternative. 

His passage about the analysis of the locations mentioned in the stolen John Podesta e-mails, in which Martha's Vinyard is the most often mentioned location, followed by the Hamptons,  New York City, San Francisco, LA and DC as an indication about where and which people such people as Podesta really think about is a good nutshell presentation of why our political system has failed the large majority of the American People. 

His beginning point, that the title Why People Vote for Those Who Work Against Their Best Interests being a title chosen for him but which he rejected as condescending and typically presumptuous by those of us who figure we can determine better than "People" what their best interest is is worth taking seriously even as I don't think it's entirely wrong.  The problem isn't that they would be better served by better policies, it's that since the 1970s even the presented alternative has bought into the system that screws them.   I have found it ridiculous for, for example, a bunch of affluent blog rats on allegedly lefty blogs gassing on about stupid people who don't know what's good for them to stink a bit too much of the Fabian archives and, at the very least, is exactly the kind of thing that keeps people from voting for people who such blog rats favor.  You don't have to know a lot to tell the difference from people who pay you at least the compliment of trying to openly gull you and people who totally dismiss you with conceited, condescending disdain and derision.   At least the hucksters and cheats are paying them the compliment of trying to gull them.   I think a lot of the problem is based on exactly that kind of thing, not unrelated to the problem exposed by the John  Podesta e-mails.   Podesta should be retired from Democratic campaigns of the future, I'd have said that on the basis of his brother's business and his record if I'd never heard about his obsession for places like The Vinyard and the Hamptoms. 

I had a call to take care of a sick family member this morning so I haven't been able to write a full post.  I might be able to write one later.