Per the article ...

In some ways, however, Markovits pushes his thesis too hard. Yes, smug professionals sit atop our class system, but they aren't the only winners up there. There are also self-made oil billionaires, retail billionaires, real-estate billionaires and so on.

But in other ways Markovits doesn't go nearly far enough. When he squares off against the meritocratic elite, he keeps pulling his punches, assuring us that its members' educational credentials really are excellent, that their skills are real and that they work extremely hard.

A more resolute critique would zero in on the fraud and folly and hubris that always seem to accompany the deeds of the best and the brightest.

A fuller account of the last real-estate bubble and the global financial crisis would have been helpful here; or the story of the Wall Street bailouts, when one set of high-achieving professionals simply forgave the sins of another ...

or a comprehensive discussion of the 2016 presidential election, when the Democratic team of geniuses managed to lose to the most unpopular presidential candidate of all time.

So long as Dems refuse to acknowledge why working and middle-class voters went for Trump in the first place, Dems will continue to pay lip service to these voters -- and Dems will lose more often than they win.

Per the article ...

The book's most unfortunate blind spot is the past.

Markovits asserts that the oligarchic situation we are in today has "no historical precedent," by which he seems to mean there has never been a social order in which the people on top were there because they worked so hard and thus appeared to deserve what they had.

However, the idea that the economy rewards the able and the diligent " and that therefore the successful deserve their riches " is one of the oldest and most familiar of American illusions.

I bring this up because if we're going to do something about inequality, we need to recall that this country has confronted seemingly merit-based class systems before, and we have seen through their falsehoods, and we have taken them apart.

Until that day arrives, we have this book, which forcefully interrupts the comfortable bath of self-flattery in which our well-graduated professionals pass their hours.

We are so enlightened, they tell one another; we care so very much; we wish we knew whom to blame for our toxic, embittered society " and Markovits drags them to the mirror and bids them open their eyes.

America is in it's SECOND Gilded Age, which is what Thomas Frank is reminding us without using that phrase ...

And as we see now, with Democrats arguing what is the best way to beat Trump, we have yet to hear in concrete terms how to deal with class warfare ...

You know that Thomas Frank was the writer who coined the phrase "Party of Martha's Vineyard," right?

#3 | POSTED BY NULLIFIDIAN

You are right -- Frank coined the phrase.

I added the above 11-minute where Frank rips Democrats for throwing workers and middle-class overboard for white collar professionals who have helped create the massive inequality we're facing today.

I've been checking out all the lectures I can find by Thomas Frank the last couple of weeks -- and I'm totally on board with everything he says, I can't find anything that I disagree with him on.

No its not ...

#6 | POSTED BY ANDREAMACKRIS

Yes it is.

Post #8 has the wrong link.

Here's the correct link ...

#10

This thread deserves double digits.