Selling Austerity With Chutzpah
Dear Pedro,
Their ability to sell austerity to white males, whose jobs are disappearing and social usefulness is being undermined, is a tribute to the "good" education the 1 percent got from their privileged schools. But it's also a damning statement about what was happening in the schools the rest of us went to, let's say, the bottom 80 percent. Why didn't we learn to defend our self-interests? So when I argue that we all need schools that prepare the ruling class ("the people") to rule, I can't get nostalgic about the "good old days." They weren't good for us. We need what they got.
Alas, the rich learned to be individualistic, to celebrate their own self-interests without any qualms, and—this is where it hurts—to join together, to pool their resources to overwhelm the rest of us when there was an opening for such ruthlessness. They may even have had liberal-minded teachers (I would guess so), but they set their own course differently.
And they even learned the best trick of all, to make the 80 to 99 percent think that they were undeserving, while
Their ability to sell austerity to white males, whose jobs are disappearing and social usefulness is being undermined, is a tribute to the "good" education the 1 percent got from their privileged schools. But it's also a damning statement about what was happening in the schools the rest of us went to, let's say, the bottom 80 percent. Why didn't we learn to defend our self-interests? So when I argue that we all need schools that prepare the ruling class ("the people") to rule, I can't get nostalgic about the "good old days." They weren't good for us. We need what they got.
Alas, the rich learned to be individualistic, to celebrate their own self-interests without any qualms, and—this is where it hurts—to join together, to pool their resources to overwhelm the rest of us when there was an opening for such ruthlessness. They may even have had liberal-minded teachers (I would guess so), but they set their own course differently.
And they even learned the best trick of all, to make the 80 to 99 percent think that they were undeserving, while
