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roomie.bsky.social
Loonie
@roomie.bsky.social
90 followers 230 following 12 posts
(she/her) we have nothing to lose but our chairs. radicalized after reading the power broker.

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roomie.bsky.social
So what I'm getting from this is Robert Moses was just a Mean Girl TM.
Text from book that says "To crack an especially tough opponent, Moses might invited him to a lunch at which he would be the only person present besides the Coordinator and his aides: then, if the guest tried to argue, he would be in the position of trying to argue along against a whole platoon of "informed opinion."
December 14, 2024 at 4:32 PM
roomie.bsky.social
While some anti-intellectualism came from a feeling of defensiveness and insecurity, other times it was because of a worry that it allowed the better off to control (or abolish) government in the pursuit of their own selfish interests.
At the heart of Manning's philosophy was a profound suspicion of the learned and property-holding classes. Their education, their free time, and the nature of their vocations made it possible, he saw, for the merchants, lawyers, doctors, clergymen, and executive and judicial officers of state to act together in pursuit of their ends, as the laboring man could not. Among these classes there is, he thought, a general dislike of free government: they constantly seek to destroy it because it thwarts their selfish interests.
November 17, 2024 at 4:15 PM
roomie.bsky.social
A concern from an illiterate delegate in 1788 on the ratification of the constitution, that continues to resonate.
These lawyers, and men of learning, and moneyed men, that talk so finely, and gloss over matters so smoothly, to make us poor illiterate people swallow down the pill, expect to get into Congress themselves; they expect to be the managers of this constitution, and get all the power and all the money into their own hands, and then they will swallow up all us little folks, like the great Leviathan, Mr. President; yes, just as the whale swallowed up Jonah. This is what I am afraid of.
November 17, 2024 at 4:05 PM
roomie.bsky.social
The second is about reformers who were very nice and had the right ideas, but were ultimately, unable to get anything done.
In his Autobiography, he recalled that the reformers were gentlemen who were very nice, very refined, who shook their heads over political corruption and discussed it in drawing-rooms and parlors, but who were wholly unable to grapple with real men in real life. They were apt vociferously to demand "reform" as if it were some concrete substance, like cake, which could be handed out at will, in tangible masses, if only the demand were urgent enough. There parlor reformers made up for inefficiency in action by zeal in criticizing...
November 16, 2024 at 6:47 AM
roomie.bsky.social
Reading Anti-Intellectualism in American Life and there are two quotes from Teddy Roosevelt that stand out. The first is fretting about the worship of men who have intellect, but no sense of moral responsibility.
"Oh, how I wish I could warn all my countrymen...against that most degrading of processes, the deification of mere intellectual acuteness, wholly unaccompanied by moral responsibility..."
November 16, 2024 at 6:47 AM