Yesterday I drove to get groceries. Listening to NPR for ten minutes and it is an interview with a husband and wife psychotherapist couple discoursing on how to deal with the stresses they conjure in their minds about being cooped up with family and friends.
What struck me was how tone deaf both they and the NPR interviewer was. "Take this time to talk about those difficult subjects you have been putting off." Sounds like an invitation for domestic violence rather than an effective coping mechanism. "Rekindle that old spark." Back when you were young and healthy and before being parents with young children, and before unpaid bills and before caring for elder parents, and before Covid-19 job losses, etc.
For the 20% with savings and secure jobs and family support networks and trust funds and sterling credentials, Covid-19 is an irritating nuisance with menaces. For everyone else, it is perilous, dangerous, and destructive. And the Mandarin Class seem entirely unaware of the difference.
The two therapists went on to recommend using the quarantine to focus on the future. "Talk about where you want to travel after the quarantine is lifted." Half of Americans don't take a vacation in a year. A third have had no vacation in two years. I listened to these nice privileged orchids chattering on, and a subtract of "Let them eat cake" kept running through my mind.
These are the Marie Antoinettes of the Mandarin Class. No clue about the real, hard, healthy, wonderful, messy, holy, disappointing, and joyful lives of their fellow Americans getting by.
The reporter asked what they had been doing during the quarantine. They had taken up Tai Chi. That's it. Let's celebrate an ancient Chinese martial art while we are quarantined from a plague originating in China and made far worse in its spread due to the intransigence and silence of the Chinese Government.
MARIE friggin' ANTOINETTE levels of Mandarin Class narcissism, self-absorption and bubblehood. Whatever happened to the Public in National Public Radio. National Privileged Radio more like it.
But puerile complaining about the idiocy of NPR and the Mandarin class is not much fodder for deep thinking. Canaries in the coal mine at best.
Then, this morning, I see this news article. The Cuomos’ Corona Protocol, Week 3 by Christina Cuomo. Wife of media personality Chris Cuomo. Sister-in-law of the Governor of the State of New York. Mandarin Class hanger-on.
It is truly not possible to post any portion of this column without appearing cruel to the author. It is Marianne Williamson without the logical gravitas. It is Gwyneth Paltrow without the grounding in hard sciences. It is Joy Reid without the grounding in knowledge. It is Hillary Clinton without the self-awareness. It is Nancy Pelosi without the salt-of-the-earth homeliness.
Click through if you must for an intense exposure to grade A cognitive pollution used as a means of demonstrating luxury beliefs affordable only by the financially secure or sinecured Mandarins.
Impossible to believe there is a cognitive or social environment where these people not only survive but appear to thrive.
Then there was this:
Holy shit this is brilliant!!! pic.twitter.com/lZ8PNQy51D
— Zara-Blue Exotic 🐅 (@FitnessByBlue) April 24, 2020
OK, a cheery Australian way of making the point - you tall poppies; get stuffed.
Three strikes and there is a post.
And even as I am writing this post, I see 2 different ways of being an American; 2 different ways of being a human being by Adam Ford.
Rejection of the Mandarin Class, reinforced skepticism of self-nominated experts; reinvigorated opposition to anti-democratic authoritarians; rejection of the nudgers, fake news and press release journalism of the mainstream media; defunding of the arrogant, ignorant, intolerant PoMo, critical theory, Marxists of the faculty lounge. Perhaps these will be beneficial side-effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.
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