[brianjlogan]

Lots of historical precedent for an intellectual elite ignoring the perception and needs of the common folk leading to an uprising.

I'd imagine every great(in scale/importance) uprising/political tumult had some aspect of "but they're ruining everything!"

Everything for intellectuals and people with ties to the system that was functioning for that minority.

Coal miners don't care that international students aren't coming to the US anymore. That's not an important factor for them.

Edit: My point here is that you don't need hindsight to see how this aligns with historic precedent.

[Arodex]

The Confederates' common folks tried to burn the USA to the ground to save their inalienable right to own slaves.

Who will listen to the "perception and needs" of the racist, misogynistic common folks who want to impose their religious liberty (by banning abortion) and and elevate their financial situation (by pushing downward brown and black people)? (The GOP, that's who.)

And don't you tell me it's a minority, when less than a week after the Supreme Court made the VRA null in practice, half a dozen states are rushing to eliminate any black representation. The whole GOP in those states (who already found a way to practice slavery through their carceral system - yes, there are black people picking cotton under the guard of armed white people on horses right now, today) is unanimous in erasing any power from black people. It is their first and foremost priority right now, despite everything else going on.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Confederates' common folks tried to burn the USA to the ground to save their inalienable right to own slaves

Something I learned at The Old Slave Mart Museum in Charleston [1] is that Southern slaveowners were almost all terifically leveraged. Slaves were purchased predominantly with borrowed money (from, I might add, the North). And slaves were expensive, making up a significant if not dominating fraction of estates' assets.

For Southern elites, therefore, abolition was an existential question. It meant bankruptcy and poverty, with insult added to injury in their creditors being Northerners. To my knowledge (and I'm no expert in this) the question of abolition paired with debt forgiveness was never seriously discussed by the Union.

So yes, Confederate racism absolutely condemns its common folk. But even a moderately well-read Southern commoner would understand that abolition meant financial crisis, taking out their communities' largest tax payers, donors, consumers and employers in one swoop.

I didn't walk away from the Museum sympathetic to slavery. But I did become more sympathetic to the South; in particular, to their bewildering decisions to continue prosecuting a war they were so very obviously, from a history textbook's perspective, losing. (To be clear, slavery is wrong. The South seceding was stupid. Not suing for peace after Gettysburg and Vicksburg stupider still.)

[1] https://theoldslavemartmuseum.org

[Arodex]

And yet once the South lost and slavery was banned, the financial crisis didn't happen...

It also doesn't explain what happened after the civil war: the KKK and Jim Crow. The only possible explanation for these is...

[Zigurd]

We need to finish Reconstruction. That sounds idealistic, even pie in the sky unrealistic. But we could certainly measure progress in that direction: US incarceration rates are insanely high, and the prison industrial complex is modern slavery. We would know victory when we put fewer people in prison than China, for example.

That's not the only symptom, or the only measure of progress. But it would be a good start.

[Levitz]

Calling out the GOP for imposing racism, sexism and ideology in a thread about US universities is certainly a choice.

[Arodex]

Are you equating sone teenage students shouting during a conference by some bozo on tour with every middle-aged political representatives from a single party rewriting the law to kneecap the fundamental civil rights of a third of their population?

[Levitz]

No, because I don't misrepresent reality to an absurd degree nor do I bring up unrelated stuff.

That seems all too nonsensical.

[registeredcorn]

I was puzzled if I was the only one wondering what in the world any of this had to do with MIT enrollment rates. Haha.

[noosphr]

The French revolted because bread was too expensive then guillotined more than half of their best and brightest.

I guess democracy was a mistake and we need to get back to inbread monarchy instead of the blood thirsty unwashed masses.

[Arodex]

Democracy is a mistake, which is why we have Republics, with rules and constitutions. Not "anything you can get a slim majority to vote for, once".

[noosphr]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_First_Republic

[ZeroGravitas]

Grad students outnumber coalminers 70:1, if they're roughly half international which another comment claims, that's still a big difference.

[slg]

The way "coal miners" are discussed would also likely be something that puzzles historians. There are approximately 45,000 coal miners in the US, that's roughly equivalent to the combined enrollment of Harvard and MIT. There are more university students in the relatively small city of Cambridge, Massachusetts than there are people mining coal in the US and yet we have to pretend the latter are a constituency worth considering.

[metalforever]

I am a programmer that comes from a family of coal miners. They don't actually consider that constituency, its just a game to win a swing state.

[stevenwoo]

But supporting industry of coal mining/coal power plants gets money to tilt or buy senators and their votes - college students are too sparsely distributed to have an equivalent effect in USA. It only took one senator to give us an completely unregulated supplements industry.

[JumpCrisscross]

> yet we have to pretend the latter are a constituency worth considering

The Clines, Justices and even Manchins have money. The miners are almost irrelevant.

[Ar-Curunir]

The professors, graduate students, and staff (not admins) are all working class. They are not some kind of elite in society.

The median professor makes less than, say, an electrician. I am a professor in a good school, and I could probably triple my pay by going to industry.

This propaganda needs to stop.

[mnbpdx]

Yeah, I agree:

"academic/intellectual/educated person" != "owner class"

I feel like that's the big misunderstanding between working class libs & working class conservatives.

I'm (working class liberal who went to college) not the one oppressing you (working class conservative). We make basically the same money and hold the same power, lol.

Clever of the (actual) conservative elites (1%, billionaires) to shift the blame to the intellectual class, when we don't own shit. We just piss you (working class conservatives) off at Thanksgiving with "new ideas" so we're an easy target.

[dxdm]

There is historical precedent for uprisings. Those are usually messy and do not tend to leave most people doing the uprising better off.

Much more precedent for new elites putting themselves into a position of power while purporting to be channeling a popular uprising on behalf and for the benefit of the "common folk", who again do not end up better off for it, often quite the opposite.

It's sad and frustrating to see this play out again and again. As you say, you don't need hindsight to see how it aligns with history.

[exitb]

> intellectual elite ignoring the perception and needs of the common folk

Isn’t that what the common folk chose? Was some of that not clear before the election?