Tag Archives: book reviews

Regular readers of Balladeer’s Blog know that I often write about the way that the callous, comfortable elites love to blame the rest of us for the problems they have created in the world.

The way the corporate media and Democrat “educators” (LMAO) distort history one might think that there was once an age when the poor and the working class ruled the world and caused colonialism, wars and all the other plagues that were really caused by the Powers That Be among the rich and politically connected. The people who STILL run things, in other words.

The elites and techno-fascists of Silicon Valley love to lecture and talk down to the poor and the working class as if those elites had to “overthrow” the rule of the underclasses so they could try to “save” the world from destructive policies implemented by … the classes that have never held any political or economic power. (?) How would that have worked, exactly? Seizing the world they always controlled from the people who never exercised any control over it?   

ANAND “DICE” GIRIDHARADAS

At any rate Anand Giridharadas has released Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing The World. It’s his new book dealing with the way in which wealthy leftists pretend to be saviors while obscuring their role in causing all the problems they loudly rail against. Giridharadas reflects the genuine revolution in thinking that is marking the 21st Century because – like me – he approaches the issues from a left-wing background but grows increasingly critical of the political left’s hypocrisy and abuses.

To quote from some reviews: 

“Former New York Times columnist Anand Giridharadas takes us into the inner sanctums of a new gilded age, where the rich and powerful fight for equality and justice any way they can — except ways that threaten the social order and their position atop it. “

“We see how they rebrand themselves as saviors of the poor; how they lavishly reward “thought leaders” who redefine “change” in winner-friendly ways …”

“We hear the limousine confessions of a celebrated foundation boss; witness a former American president hem and haw about his plutocratic benefactors; and attend a cruise-ship conference where entrepreneurs celebrate their own self-interested magnanimity.”

“As always, guilt-stricken rich white people who want to think of themselves as “progressives” are shown to be fools.”

“(T)he problem is that affluence begets arrogance, including a we-know-what’s-best attitude where these overprivileged people act as if they’re missionaries and the rest of us are ignorant savages in need of their “enlightened” supervision.”

“This kind of preachy liberalism — folks who imagine themselves to be neo-Platonic archons because their Daddy could afford to send them to Harvard — offends me as an expression of snobbery.” Continue reading →