NYT: How Anger Took Elites by Surprise

[TalkingDog]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/27/world/europe/27iht-letter27.html

And everywhere, this year of mass defiance wrong-footed those who were supposed to be in the know. The experts had thought the Arabs were getting richer and were too scared of their autocrats, that the Russians were apathetic and quite liked their neo-czar, that the Indian middle class was politically disengaged, that West Europeans were too old for outrage, that Americans didn’t care about the class divide and that the Chinese comrades were too effective at suppressing dissent.

But everywhere, the conventional wisdom was turned upside down by people who turned out to be angrier than their elites had suspected, and better able to channel that dissatisfaction into mass protest and even revolution.

The first surprise was the strength and near universality of the public discontent. Like Tolstoy’s unhappy families, the motivations of protesters in each country were unique. But there was a common thread to the uprisings and a common reason why the elites were taken by surprise.

The unifying complaint is crony capitalism. That’s a broad term, to be sure, and its bloody Libyan manifestation bears little resemblance to complaints about the Troubled Asset Relief Program in the United States or allegations of corrupt auctions for telecommunications licenses in India. But the notion that the rules of the economic game are rigged to benefit the elites at the expense of the middle class has had remarkable resonance this year around the world and across the political spectrum. Could the failure of the experts to anticipate this anger be connected to the fact that the analysts are usually part of the 1 percent, or at least the 10 percent, at the top?


/snip

[loudsue]

1. Ya think?

K & R

When you listen to the talking heads, it is so obvious to the rest of us that there is a huge disconnect between them and us.

[leveymg]

2. The Grey Lady can be awfully slow to catch on to some things

"Could the failure of the experts to anticipate this anger be connected to the fact that the analysts are usually part of the 1 percent, or at least the 10 percent, at the top? "

As if most would have ever been ever hired as "experts" and keep their cushy jobs as "analysts" if they expressed the slightest doubt that "greed is good" and "capitalism works" and "there is no alternative" (TINA) to privatization and cutbacks in public programs.

Doubt or (heaven help us) criticism of the status quo would make them dissidents or radicals, not experts and analysts.

[Demit]

3. The 'notion' that the economic game is rigged? 'Remarkable' resonance around the world?

Could the failure of this global editor of Reuters to identify the cause of the anger mean she's just a wee bit out of touch? She's more interested in going on about the technological means of organizing protest than she is discussing its root causes. She's evading on purpose. Doesn't want to know, it's distasteful to her. Bah. And bah on the NYT for picking this up. They're distancing themselves too. Might be afraid of losing all that Cartier & other high end advertising. So we know what their point of view is, who they're coming down on the side of. Very disheartening.

[malthaussen]

4. They decided to kill the goose

... that lays the golden egg, in pursuit of a Chinese goose that requires less feed. It may well have been an error on the part of our rulers. So long as they kept the people placated with bread and circuses, they had it as good as the Patricians in Rome. Better, in fact, because we're so stupid we pay for our bread and circuses, whereas in Rome they were free. The desire to make more profits has apparently lured the ruling class now to drive the rest of us to despair, with the thought that we will not have the courage/organization/ability to overturn what they fondly believe to be their stranglehold on power. I'm not surprised that they're surprised -- what will surprise me is if the rest of us succeed in doing anything real about the current state of affairs.

-- Mal