Sunday NY Times piece on British Snobbery, for all you little plebs and gits

Started by CountDeMoney, December 06, 2014, 11:40:30 PM

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garbon

At any rate, what does that have to do with aging empires (or lack of them)?  Like Yi, I'm curious to see proof of mongers's assertion.
"I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off."
I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.

jimmy olsen

Quote from: mongers on December 07, 2014, 04:21:46 PM
Guys, you do realise that this is Your future?

As nation/empires grow old the joints stiffen up, relatively inflexible class divisions assert themselves.

Remember the American Dream, that anyone can make it ? We know social mobility as been a major casualties of the last 30-40 years of accumulated power and concentration of wealth seen in USA.
These class divisions were even stronger in Britain a hundred years ago at the height of the Empire.
It is far better for the truth to tear my flesh to pieces, then for my soul to wander through darkness in eternal damnation.

Jet: So what kind of woman is she? What's Julia like?
Faye: Ordinary. The kind of beautiful, dangerous ordinary that you just can't leave alone.
Jet: I see.
Faye: Like an angel from the underworld. Or a devil from Paradise.
--------------------------------------------
1 Karma Chameleon point

CountDeMoney


garbon

"I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off."
I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.

CountDeMoney

Quote from: garbon on December 07, 2014, 07:10:56 PM
Poverty is freedom? :unsure:

Poverty is a choice.  In America, nobody's forcing you be poor.  You just choose not to make enough money.  :yeah:

garbon

Quote from: CountDeMoney on December 07, 2014, 07:13:45 PM
Quote from: garbon on December 07, 2014, 07:10:56 PM
Poverty is freedom? :unsure:

Poverty is a choice.  In America, nobody's forcing you be poor.  You just choose not to make enough money.  :yeah:

My parents chose not to be poor and look where they are now. :)
"I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off."
I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.

CountDeMoney

Quote from: garbon on December 07, 2014, 07:14:45 PM
My parents chose not to be poor and look where they are now. :)

They chose...wisely.  My premise stands.

Razgovory

I've given it serious thought. I must scorn the ways of my family, and seek a Japanese woman to yield me my progeny. He shall live in the lands of the east, and be well tutored in his sacred trust to weave the best traditions of Japan and the Sacred South together, until such time as he (or, indeed his house, which will periodically require infusion of both Southern and Japanese bloodlines of note) can deliver to the South it's independence, either in this world or in space.  -Lettow April of 2011

Raz is right. -MadImmortalMan March of 2017

Sheilbh

Quote from: Martinus on December 07, 2014, 04:23:16 PM
Good piece. I used to be much more of an anglophile in the past. I prefer Germans and Americans much more these days.
I think it's a pretty poor piece. The NYT used to have Sarah Lyall in London who was a brilliant journalist. This is just a string of cliches. It'd be like an article about the German economy that never went any deeper than Teutonic efficiency :lol:
Let's bomb Russia!

Martinus

Quote from: CountDeMoney on December 07, 2014, 07:13:45 PM
Quote from: garbon on December 07, 2014, 07:10:56 PM
Poverty is freedom? :unsure:

Poverty is a choice.  In America, nobody's forcing you be poor.  You just choose not to make enough money.  :yeah:

Just as trust is a choice. You either have your parents choose to set up a trust fund for you or not. :P

Syt

I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
—Stephen Jay Gould

Proud owner of 42 Zoupa Points.

CountDeMoney


Jacob

Quote from: Razgovory on December 07, 2014, 06:10:18 PM
No, this is a British obsession that doesn't make much sense to Americans.  We were much more stratified in the past.  The American obsession is race.  Class warfare gains very little traction here in the states.  You see some folks try to stoke it and more people who accuse others of stoking it, but it's essentially a non-starter.  The issues of race cut very deeply into the US though.  That's where the bad feelings and riots come from.

Not disagreeing that race isn't the bigger issue in the American national psyche, but I'm not sure "little traction" is an accurate description re: class warfare. Terms like "poors," "rednecks," "white trash"; the obsessions with Ivy League and where you went to college, single mothers, welfare; and a whole bunch of the cultural markers associated with what music you listen to, what car you drive, or what neighbourhood you reside in all makes Americans seem pretty invested in class.

Ed Anger

Stay Alive...Let the Man Drive

Jacob

Quote from: Razgovory on December 07, 2014, 06:25:44 PM
Being poor.  I'm not saying that social mobility is great, but it doesn't manifest as classism.  A very large portion of those who are poor are white and often vote conservative.  They are extremely resistant to the idea of social liberalism.  You go to any trailer park in the Midwest and odds are they are solid Republican.

Do people scoff at rural white trailer trash? And conversely are there classes of people - including wealthier ones - the rural trailer trash generally have a low opinion of?