I knew one day I’d have to watch powerful men burn the world down – I just didn’t expect them to be such losers | Rebecca Shaw
I knew one day I’d have to watch powerful men burn the world down – I just didn’t expect them to be such losers | Rebecca Shaw
Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg’s desperation to be cool as they suck up to Donald Trump is so cringe it makes my skin crawl
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This being a weekly columnist in The Guardian, a newspaper whose journalists are almost all upper middle class people who went to very expensive private schools (curiously callled "Public Schools" in the UK because theoretically anybody can send their children to one, if they can afford it) as are the editors and the board - so they're almost all from roughly the top 11% of the UK population wealthwise - I expect that her real problem with these present day overlords is that they're neither posh nor English.
If they had the kind of "proper" manners, soft discourse, cultivated look of detachment and posh dress sense that are taught at the "right" schools, they would be alright.
You don't see this kind of critique there against posh English super-rich (especially not "old money"), even though they're just as sociopath as Elon and Zuckerberg.
The Guardian definitely hates the Tories though so this doesn't hold up.
They criticise posh politicians, what they seldom, if at all, criticise are their puppet-masters.
And don't get me started on the shameless subservience they show to the Royals, who last I checked were the richest family in the country.
If it's English old wealth The Guardian are pretty much silent about it.
My friend youre not far off but not speak so confidently if you don't know Britian. The richest family isn't the monarchy, they aren't top three. And the royalty as much as I personally hate them, is still the monarchy, so they aren't bashed too much on mainstream media. That's more tabloid kinds of news
I've lived in Britain for over a decade, so maybe your own confident judgment of my lack of familiarity with the place is a little off, unless you think a decade there, speaking the language, following the local press, meeting people at all social levels in various contexts and even being a member of one of the political parties there, is not enough to "know Britain".
I just don't keep up with Most Rich List of the country, not even when I lived there much less now that I don't so don't really know the exact order at the top right now. Further the wealth of the Royals is subject to much controversy since how much it is depends on things like whether the Crown Estates are considered part of it or not, since the income on those goes to the Treasury but it then gives them part of that money (so they get almost £100 million per year).
Last I checked (when the Queen was still alive) the Royal Family where personally filthy rich AND had exclusive use of very expensive properties owned by the State AND even got a couple of millions every year as a stippend.
Compared with, for example the Dutch Royal Familiy (a country were I also lived for almost as long as Britain), it was like night and day.
Also if you need more examples of how Wealth in Britain is linked to the Monarchy, look up just how wealthy the Duke Of Westminster is (mainly due to how much of London he owns). You can also go down the list of hereditary peers in the House of Lords and check their wealth.
I mean, one needs to very purposefully and very strongly be closing their eyes to not see how a large part of the wealth in Britain is in one way or another in the hands of people linked to the Monarchy (again, a situation which is a veritable night and day contrast with The Netherlands and their Monarchy).
I expect that her real problem with these present day overlords is that they're neither posh nor English.
If they had the kind of "proper" manners, soft discourse, cultivated look of detachment and posh dress sense that are taught at the "right" schools, they would be alright.
This is pure fiction. It sounds like an american projecting an accurate understanding of the NYT onto the guardian without having read it.
Since I'm an European, lived as an immigrant in the UK for over a decade and was a regular reader of The Guardian for most of that time and even for some time afterwards, your ad hominem missed the target by a huge distance.
Your post says a lot more about you given that you've jumped to such a conclusion about me from what you read and chose an ad hominem as "counter-argument" than it says about me.
Its kinda rich hearing the English of all ppl complaining about burning the world down. Probably pissed their copyright on it expired
so they’re almost all from roughly the top 11% of the UK population wealthwise
And yet the Guardian is more left-wing than any American paper. I don't care who writes something. I care what they say.
I expect that her real problem with these present day overlords is that they’re neither posh nor English.
My real problem with these billionaires is that they got their money from being lucky, not from being smart. They think they are smart and they we should pay attention to them but the things they actually do and say prove themselves to be losers whom we shouldn't pay attention to. The "cringe" accusation is all too real. Musk destroyed $44 billion in wealth by buying and destroying twitter. That capitalism enables such a thing to happen may be a flaw in capitalism. Zuck bet billions on a ridiculous "Metauniverse" that is just incredibly stupid by all accounts.
HELL NO I don't care what Musk and Zuck have to say about anything at all. They are narcissists who want attention but don't deserve attention nor respect. That goes 10x for Traitorapist Trump
The Guardian is indeed more to the left than any American mainstream newspaper (though not some smaller publications). Still center-right (for example they overtly support the LibDems and New Labour whilst detesting traditional - leftwing, pro-Worker, pro-Union - Labour, and are big fans of privatisation), but relative to the mainstream US Press, they're indeed to the left of it. This is because the Overtoon Window is so far to the Right in the US and UK compared to the rest of the World.
I also entirely agree on your points about the "merit" of those billionaires.
The point I was trying to make above is twofold:
- Judge people on their actions, not their "style". Judging people on style is in my world the kind of thing teenagers and superficial intellectually lightweight adults would do. Sadly an excessive concern with keeping up appearances and presenting the right image (whilst empathy or ethics are second plan) is a very English upper class thing and The Guardian is very much a bubble of people who were born in that world and close to it, so they'll tend to resent those who don't share such "values". In my eyes, not maintaining appearances like wealthy English people would is the lesser of Musk's and Zuckerberg's sins, if at all sins - it's what they do that damns them not their style.
- They are being "two weights two measures" about it, or in other words, hypocrites. They do not apply the same standard to their very own ultra-rich as they do to foreign ultra rich (and, believe me, having lived in the UK I've observed that there is a very large fraction of extreme sociopaths amongst their own ultra rich, though they do indeed tend to present a posh gentleman façade all the while destroying the lives of tens of thousands and subverting what little real Democracy there is in Britain). Criticising foreigners is a far lower barrier than criticizing locals in the UK, because a large fraction is not most of the English commonly have the idea that they're superior to other people merely for being English.
So a center-right English newspaper which is basically the voice of the English upper and upper middle class criticizing rich foreigners for essentially not presenting themselves the same as rich English, is totally the wrong vehicle and angle of criticism of people who definitely deserve being criticized, but for their actions not for their lack of proper presentation whilst they do them.
I don't like where you're going with this, but I agree with the core issue of 'paper media' being kinda pretentious and self-indulgent. They're in their own reality bubble, and the contrast with (for example) how humble some of the best journalists on YouTube or newer upstartes are is quite stark.
Well, I try to make it clear I'm not defending Musk or Zuckerberg.
I just generally think judging people on their style or lack or it is the simpletion young-teen take on people and that it's on their actions (which in the case of these two are pretty damning) that people should be judged on.
The Guardian, being a product of the Society it is in and the quite narrow slice of that Society it tends to represent (possibly because they're very much a bubble were people from a narrow range of origins in that Society almost invariably select their peers to come work with them), ends up doing the whole judging on image and words and putting it above judging on action often, probably because the upper classes in England are very much all about presentation first and foremost (the English Gentleman stereotype is all about presentation and not at all about taking others in consideration when chosing what one does or doesn't do) to a level that in most other Societies would be seen as fake and hypocrite.