Was there a time when they weren’t?
Based on everything I learned about history from watching Blackadder, probably not.
I mean…
You know…
Like for a bit…
They were NEVER smarter. At most at one time they had more leisure time and access to books and tutors when reading and books were rare. That made them more educated, and they want to go back to that desperately.
I dont think much of our ruling class wants to go back to reading, looking at the way they… are.
they don’t want to be more educated than they already are, they want to be more educated than us. they’re doing it by destroying the public school system, keeping tertiary education prohibitively expensive, eroding trust in experts through anti-intellectualism, and promoting the spread of misinformation
Exactly. They want to be perceived as smarter (basically look down on the unwashed masses.) They don’t want to do the work to be more educated. Hence the hurdles they can put in front of the poors while they get to pay for fastpass to skip the line directly into the ivy leagues.
Remember during the French Revolution where, when told that her people were starving because they didn’t have any bread, Marie Antoinette wondered why they don’t just eat cake? Rich people have always been idiots who believe they’re smart. They live simple lives due to the luxury they enjoy, and wonder why poor people without such luxuries think life is so complicated.
not to defend french royalty, but she didnt say that, im certain she wouldnt have thought it either.
to think the rich are unknowingly oppressing their people is a stupid idea, they know where their cake comes from, and they want it because you can’t have it.
to think the rich are unknowingly oppressing their people is a stupid idea, they know where their cake comes from, and they want it because you can’t have it.
I don’t think it’s that far fetched to think that some of the people back then, who were born into aristocracy and have been separated from regular folks their entire lives, might not know that.
They’ve always been morons about something. Just seems now that they are morons about damn near everything.
Yeah, at least like their grandparents had interesting and clever schemes about money that made you feel like they thought it through even if they were largely incapable of anything else.
Currently it feels difficult to assume they think about anything.
We occasionally get lucid leadership. As a whole group though, our leadership class has always had some glaring idiocy going on.
it’s a function of the brain to decay into over-optimised depravity when its no longer functioning the normal environment in which it evolved
kinda like generative AI it starts creating a twisted reality that broken and dysfunctional
It’s like my mawmaw always said “shit gets real fucky when you stay inside.”
The ruling class are the ones with insatiable ambition and no morals. Intelligence doesn’t matter as much as willingness to abuse others.
The willingness to abuse others is low intelligence
nah these have nothing to do with another. they’re orthogonal properties.
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It’s almost like the state was built to protect capital or something…
Emotional vs intellectual
Checks notes: “All men are created equal…” Maintains slavery and women can’t vote.
Nope, they’ve always been morons.
They had a very narrow definition of what counted as “men” and used that to justify removing rights from people.
The ruling class uses the morons. It’s the perfect crime.
People need to understand we are cattle, from the bottom of the streets to the president.
I’ll believe that they’re stupid instead of just malicious when they actually start to lose their wealth and power. Until such a time, any dumb statements or actions can’t compare to the overall long term success of their campaign to horde more wealth and power.
The problem is that all the previous generations are the ones who came up with the unique schemes to start stealing back all the wealth. The current group just shouts “look over there!” Or “no I can steal 1 billion 776 million from you because its a patriotic number”
They are also to stupid to realize that losing some wealth would be the better choice than letting the world burn because some other guy sold them a shed with an underground bunker full of guns they will be shot with the moment they try to tell their security team they are the god emperor of the ashes.
Three assumptions:
- the owning (or “billionaire”) class is the ruling class
- over the years, more and more capital has been siphoned to the owning class (the rich get richer)
- this siphoning is a result of the way the ruling class has designed their laws
Combining all of this, the ruling class has ensured the ruling class got a lot richer. Doesn’t sound moronic to me. What’s moronic is falling for the “oh I’m just a dopey guy, I’m one of you, herpyderp” schtick they put on to court rural voters.
Become?
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The thing is, you don’t have to be smart to become a part of the ruling class. You just have to be somewhere in the triangle of smart, lucky, and immoral. To be a billionaire, you just have to be lucky and immoral.
Why the shock? It’s gone down this way every single time throughout history. Surround yourself with yes men and you lose your perception of reality shockingly quickly. People that challenge you from a place of truth and compassion are more valuable than gold.
I remember listening to Rush Limbaugh in the late 80s, when he first came on. He had a great tonality for radio, and was facile, and could drone on for hours, in a uniquely entertaining way. He set the standard for the legion of wannabe conservative talkers that followed. That smooth talking, speculative, non-stop patter is all Limbaugh. He’s the guy that did it best, and the one they all copy.
I had good Critical Thinking Skills, so he didn’t draw me in, and I was able to watch from the sidelines as he spun his propaganda. But others weren’t as able to resist him, and I listened as they called his show, and praised him for showing them the way, through conservatism. As his popularity grew across the country, and he quickly became the main tentpole for the Conservative Propaganda Machine, literally the recruitment and indoctrination arm, I wondered where the Republican Party, and America would be in 20, 30, 40 years time.
I figured we’d get a hold of it somewhere along the line, but I also thought about how bad things could get if they got everything on their Wish List, and that Worst Cast Scenario is exactly what has happened. The Dems let us down badly, as I also predicted was possible, even probable.
There are paths out of this, that puts America on a proper path for the rest of this century. America can be a place where people are helped to rise and improve themselves, their families, and their community, like China has done, or it can be a place where people are enslaved to profit.
The only problem is that is going to take strong Democratic and Citizen resolve, and it’s going to get pretty ugly, and very possibly violent, to purge MAGA from our government and society, and the current Democrat Party doesn’t have what it takes. Let’s hope that changes in 2026 and 2028, and we get enough courageous people in office who will exercise that level of resolve.
He’s one person that should have never been platformed I blame him for the rise of shitty sorry excuses of men that are now full on maga.
Oh, yeah, the damage he caused is incalculable.
I feel that it’s easier to show one’s whole ass with the invention of the internet than when it had to travel via newspaper.
You mean the ones who were dumb enough to be the figureheads. The smart ones are the ones you don’t hear about in the news, but spend their money to put forward the dummy who perpetuates the systems that made them wealthy.
R you saying this from an american perspective?
This idea is referred to as “Circulation of Elites” and suggests that every ruling-class has to be a minority group (E.G WASPs in USA, Normans in medieval england, “the rich” in general in most places), but they will always end up being displaced by another minority group. Because the key to securing power over, for instance, a country, is to be highly organised (only possible for a small, organised minority - never a/the majority group) and when in power, this group becomes complacent, so their grip over power slips and in comes the new elite minority ruling class
historically this is often identified/misidentified as Elites mixing, sexually/culturally, with majority groups or other groups. This is more usually a symptom but it could in some cases be the cause. The opposite - Inbreeding - is of course also bad, as is a refusal to learn new ideas (i.e refusal to mix culturally).
So… it’s like a law of nature. Whatever elites do they slip out of power sooner or later. American elite have probably been in power for a “healthy” amount of time tbh.
just in case it’s not clear, minority does not mean racial minority here. It’s literally any group that is small and organised - christians or atheists, rich middle class or gangsters.
Always were
