Thread by @KrisAtLarge

let's talk about an irony—or maybe it's just a delusion: the fact that pampered elitist gasbags like @mtaibbi and @jonathanchait, people seeded into a high social bracket from the start, who have more money and power than 99.9% of humanity, think they're "working class".

(1/x)

or at least people like @mtaibbi and @NateSilver538 like to affect a pose of being true representatives of working-class spirit, not like those Internet basement-dwellers and "woke mind virus" people.

now, that's an old right-wing pose. @RonaldReagan pretended the same.

(2/x)

@RonaldReagan was a Hollywood celebrity—albeit a withered and ludicrous one—and additionally he'd avoided military service, taking advantage of the fact that #WWII sent lots of leading men overseas, which meant that actors who stayed behind (like Reagan) got more parts.

(3/x)

and yet the entire *lie* that @Peggynoonannyc and the @GOP crafted for the country was that @RonaldReagan, Hollywood substar, was in fact the true representative of the "working class"—because he wore a cowboy hat, loved cops and soldiers, and was really racist.

(4/x)

this *stereotype* of "working class" as consisting of nothing but cops and racists is exactly the same idea of "working class" that's endorsed by the leisure-class "influencers" like @NateSilver538 and @mattyglesias. to them, "working class" is something from a magazine.

(5/x)

it's a vague pictorial image of sweaty oil-drillers and farmhands and horses and cowboy hats and free-flowing racial slurs. @NateSilver538 and @mtaibbi and the rest of these clowns are superficial and trivial people; their ideas of "working class" come from movies and TV.

(6/x)

and above all...the @NateSilver538 &c. idea of "working class" is based on *cops*.

the police are not "working class" for this simple reason: they produce zero. they are a purely *destructive* social force, existing only to take away liberty and lives. they don't "work".

(7/x)

they do expose themselves to being shot at, but that's the inevitable reward of giving cops an unlimited licence to kill: people try to kill them back, and sometimes succeed. but not as often as the @PortlandPolice (or @tedwheeler or @NateSilver538) would like to pretend.

(8/x)

statistically, American policing is one of the safer jobs—especially when you take into account the fact that cops have fixed it so that they "die in the line of duty" even if they simply get #COVID19 and die—you know, the way @NateSilver538 wants us all to get Covid.

(9/x)

and in exchange, cops get to assault and murder anyone they think looks funny, and then @NateSilver538 and @jonathanchait (not to mention all @GOP politicians and most of @TheDemocrats too) call that "justice", when a cop extralegally murders someone in the street.

(10/x)

and then @NateSilver538 calls that "working class".

consider this: Nate Silver probably talks to A LOT of cops, and is extremely fawning and obsequious and uncritical of them. you may have noticed that Nate Silver is not very bright.

~Chara of Pnictogen