The smug style in American liberalism

vox.com

4 points·kobayashi··5 comments

Note though you have to divide it into two camps: there is a "smugness" associated with Hillary Clinton and a "smugness" associated w/ critics of Clintonism such as Thomas Frank and those aren't the same thing.

Note the Republican establishment also is "smug" towards Trump voters.

Practically both sides of the establishment "use" voters by pushing a few hot button issues. For instance, the Keystone XL pipeline was neither going to destroy the Earth nor was it going to revitalize the US economy. While people were arguing about that, they were not talking about any real environmental or economic issues. (Looking at the oil price drop recently, I wonder if the government saved Transcanada a huge amount of money by stopping Keystone XL.)

> there is a "smugness" associated with Hillary Clinton and a "smugness" associated w/ critics of Clintonism such as Thomas Frank and those aren't the same thing

That's just internecine strife between the centrist and radical wings of the party. Contempt for those who don't embrace the same precepts they do is common to both.

This is true for the right wing too. For instance, I remember Rush Limbaugh talking in 2008 about how he wanted the Obama administration to fail, which unfortunately is a matter of our people failing, our armed forces failing, our businesses failing, etc.

Dup checking seems like it should've caught this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11545169

I was under the impression that HN warned about submitting dups, so I didn't search for any duplicates. Regardless, HN also allows for resubmissions if something doesn't get "enough" burn during previous submissions. I think this might thus qualify for a duplicate submission.

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