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Pete Privilege is ambitious to a fault, and not nearly as special and spectacular as he believes himself. Getting his ticket punched in the military much as many 2d Lt. types in Vietnam were doing, and all the clawing and sucking up, when well cataloged, is shameful. But read of it per the original exposition, (which is excerpted in the balance of this post). Properly transcribing embedded links into an excerpt is onerous, so figure out I had a reason for doing it, and follow the links for full impact:
[...} When he speaks about education and opportunity, Pete reminds me of my high school guidance counselor. That guy was a jerk. He didn’t want me to go to college when I did. He thought I needed discipline and suggested service work or the military. I didn’t need discipline, but freedom and respect. And money. Mostly, I needed money.
Similarly, Pete says college isn’t for everybody. I agree, in principle. That doesn’t mean I want him—or anyone of his class background, for that matter—deciding who is and isn’t suitable for management, government, and other professions reserved for the literate and educated.
Still, off to college Pete and I both went. After leapfrogging from Harvard to Oxford, Pete quickly (and now infamously) found a job at McKinsey & Company. Though I did well academically, no one taught me how to job-hunt. After college I felt lucky to get accepted by a temp agency. They set me up as a hospital janitor. [...]
[...] But my comrades on the “housekeeping” crew did not need more paperwork, or whatever else Pete is selling. They needed free health care, housing subsidies, and a labor union.
Those aren’t items on Pete’s agenda. [...] Recently The Intercept reported that his campaign was hiring workers through Amazon Mechanical Turk, a nefarious project to crush labor power forever by turning every imaginable job into soul-crushing, ultra-low-wage piecework.
When I look at Pete, I see the face of America’s rotten sham meritocracy, and I know I am not alone.
Like so many bourgeois strivers, Pete takes up space wherever he goes. He never wanted to be a journalist, but he still took a newsroom internship. One of his Harvard professors got him the gig. According to the Washington Post, the reporter Pete ended up working for had been “pushing for her station to find an African American intern—or at the very least, someone who actually wanted to be a reporter.” In short, he used his connections to deprive an aspiring black journalist of an opportunity that might have made their career. Why? Because he wanted to be president one day, and thought it would be useful to see how the media worked.
“I grew up surrounded by crumbling factories and empty houses,” Pete recently said in his endorsement interview with the New York Times. But does he know what it’s like for people who lived and worked in such places? I think not.
[...] I’m not the only person who has noticed how Pete tries, and fails, to slum it. Last month in Iowa, he touted himself as a Washington, D.C., outsider, “somebody who can actually walk from his house to the nearest cornfield.” Golly! Shawn Sebastian, an Iowan and Working Families Party member, tweeted in response that Pete was “the mayor of a small college town dominated by a massive private university. Pete’s dad was a Gramsci scholar and he went to private schools his whole life. Enough of this phony rust belt/rural signaling. Pete walks into wine caves, not cornfields.”
[...] When I surveyed my social media followers for their “Pete peeves,” they offered a laundry list of class cues. “He stands for nothing except his own career,” one person responded. Others noted the “self-righteous smirk whenever he’s criticized,” as well as his “vocal affect where he believes that taking a portentous tone makes his banal statements seem profound.”
[...] When I see Pete tense up and purse his lips, or take a hasty gulp of water when he feels pressured to explain some facet of his paint-by-numbers political career or his regressive, unpopular policies, it makes me want to barricade the street with burning tires and shut down a container port. If Pete is nervous, it means others like him are nervous. They fear that everything they have worked for in life—not in the proletarian sense, mind you, but in the sense of writing ingratiating letters and leveraging connections—is at risk. They’re afraid of the socialist movement. Good. It’s about time.
[...] When Pete was asked at the Vice News Iowa Brown & Black Presidential Forum what he would bring to a potluck, he was stumped. “Is it a breakfast potluck?” he asked. After a clarification from the hosts, Pete said he would bring “chips and salsa.” Chips and salsa! Thanks, Rhodes Scholar Pete. Such stinginess is typical among the upwardly mobile. How about we eat at a restaurant next time, and you can pick up the check?
While we’re on the subject of authenticity, it’s past time for a frank assessment of Pete’s most-touted qualification: his military service.
I’ve never met an enlisted veteran who talks about war or military life in the way that Pete does. I certainly noticed how, in the last debate before the Iowa Caucuses, he spoke of the plight of “enlisted people that I served with,” as though they were a separate species. Even for an officer, Pete seems especially smug.
[...] This goes for all of you, but especially for the presidential candidates. Stop talking down to the working class. Stop stealing our valor as veterans of poverty. Simply say, “I am a professor’s son. I am more conservative than my father was, and here’s why.” And then, Pete, you can start listening. Only then will you understand why your class act falls flat, even though you’ve ticked every box like the good student you always were.
If you did not: go Prep School, Ivy League, secure a Rhodes Scholarship, and step into REMF military ticket-punch acquisition (no Purple Heart, no combat rifle issued); if not born on third base and thinking you hit a World Series game seven walk-off home run; and if you vote for the twit; you are an idiot.
Hat tip to a reader for sending the link, (it fitting thinking here even if the reader might have a kinder regard for the self-inflated little climber).
____________UPDATE_____________
Bern Notice has posted again, disclosing another troubling aspect of the South Bend mayor's wine cave leanings; his real support base not having much at all to do with misguided Iowans. Instead: Billionaire backing and EVERYTHING that rides and guides that stagecoach, feeding hands getting licked and not bitten being the old saying springing to mind. Obsequious boot-licking toward the 0.01%; witty spiel and posturing for the unmoneyed electorate. Unctuousness for everybody, he's on that path. Smooth enough to not make too big show of the boot licking in wine caves and similar closed venues. Hungering for advancement; a lean and hungry look.
________FURTHER UPDATE__________
Between Trump and the three members of the Republican wing of the Democratic party; Biden bought into false touting of WMD hysteria; the mayor is an enigma that way; Trump showed restraint by doing only an assassination, so far, but in four more years a war with Iran becomes more likely with no Trump reelection worry. If the Israelis want a war with Iran let them fight it. We can watch. Trump seems deferential to a fault toward Bibi and Bibi's intentions. Who might see us to a best, peaceful course, of the three conservatives? Klobuchar. She's neither the loose cannon Trump and Biden each represents, nor Pete, who again, is an enigma.
Amy showed a little bit of Wellstone in her, back then.
Medicare for All, if that is an improvement you'd value, there is only either Warren or Bernie. True democracy for all or at least trying mightily to move there against massive DC institutional friction? Ditto. Best of the "same old" crowd? Klobuchar. And that overlooks Bloomberg poised to mislead those most easily misled by the last advertisement they'd seen on TV. Warren at least does not have this to harpy at her, should she, not Bernie, end up the nominee.
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FURTHER: Bern Notice originates with a strong Sanders supporter. READ THE LINKED POST ANYWAY. What the post does is give links to regular MSM reporting of the lil' mayor's proclivities to fit in with his wealthy donor crowd. If you believe those MSM outlets back Bernie, go buy the Brooklyn Bridge. Trump or somebody in his cabinet will sell it to you - and what a price, how could you refuse? (Get a piece of paper saying you hold title. What more would you want?) Follow the Burn Notice LINKS! It will be an eye opener.