Now that billionaire Michael Bloomberg has thrown his hat into the presidential ring, we Americans residing in flyover country are enjoying a good laugh at his expense.
That’s because he thinks he’s sooooo much smarter than the rest of us. This attitude came to light when a 2016 video resurfaced (darn that internet) with inflammatory remarks made during an Oxford University forum in England. Bloomberg – who is an expert in, well, everything – told listeners they should enter the “information economy” and skip the skilled labor trades. That’s because farmers and machinists are too stupid to do anything involving thinking.
Specifically, Bloomberg told the crowd he could “teach anybody, even people in this room, no offense intended, to be a farmer. It’s a process. You dig a hole, you put a seed in, you put dirt on top, add water, up comes the corn. You could learn that. … Then we had 300 years of the industrial society. You put the piece of metal on the lathe, you turn the crank in the direction of the arrow, and you can have a job.”
Right. After all, how hard can it be to grow crops or craft machinery?
“Does he think his Caesar salad appears magically because he told a waiter he wanted one?” inquires Rick Moran at PJ Media. “Maybe he thinks his steak grows in his refrigerator. The guy doesn’t have a clue.”
This is kinda like telling Bloomberg there’s no “gray matter” required to run a business. You open an office, you sexually harass a few female employees, you charge a lot of money for your services, and voilà : Instant billionaire. After all, how hard can it be?
Bloomberg let his listeners know that the peasants who actually put the seed in the ground or the metal in the lathe lack the “gray matter” to keep up with the new economic realities and advanced technologies associated with modern life.
Yes, he really said that. Needless to say, his campaign went into full damage-control mode, claiming the remarks were taken grossly out of context. But as Breitbart’s John Nolte explained, Bloomberg’s denial is overwhelmingly weak: “Obviously, anyone who watches the original video, or who reads the full context of the transcript, knows Bloomberg was definitely not taken out of context – not even close.”
I find it SO diverting when politicians and elites let their true opinions slip through. It’s so helpful to us blue-collar peons when it comes to voting time.
Here’s the funny thing: Many of the elitist politicians (left and right) probably agree with Bloomberg about how much “gray matter” is required in skilled labor, but they’re wise enough not to say so. Those of us who work with our hands, of course, know there’s a tremendous amount of “gray matter” required to run a successful business.
But at the ground level, both the left and the right know these remarks were offensive in the extreme. Let me repeat: left and right. Democratic voters found Bloomberg’s outrageous remarks just as offensive as Republicans. Why? Because everyone – left and right – must eat, and even the most urbanized computer programmer in NYC knows his food is grown by the unsung heroes of America’s heartland, its farmers … who grow food even for ungrateful wretches like Bloomberg.
And of course, Bloomberg did not just insult farmers and skilled machinists. He also bragged about how many coal plants he’s closed and, by extension, how many thousands of people he put out of work (20,000 people over five years, by one estimate). Wow, what a guy.
In short, this elitist snob has contempt for anyone in the blue-collar trades, the very people without whose constant labors Bloomberg would be miserable. (And poor.)
Despite the staggering amount of money Bloomberg is spending on advertising (nearly half a billion bucks so far, including paying people to praise him on social media), it’s not working. Thursday night’s debate was a debacle for Bloomberg, who “played the part of a billionaire piñata” during which “every candidate took their turn, battering him senseless until there were Tootsie Rolls and Jolly Ranchers all over the stage.” How much “gray matter” was spilled in that process?
Bloomberg had his head (with all its gray matter) handed to him at the debate, demonstrating that entering a high-stakes arena filled with hostile opponents is not as easy as he thought. His performance was so pathetic that even MSNBC’s Chris Matthews described it as “the Roman Coliseum” or like “boxing in the 1950s.”
Bloomberg’s campaign team was reduced to selectively editing a debate clip to make him appear victorious, apparently in the touching hope no one would notice this blatant rearranging of the facts. (I don’t think a lot of gray matter went into this decision.) Those of us who work in the skilled trades due to our insufficient intellectual vigor are laughing up our blue-collar sleeves as a result.
Frustratingly for the left, Bloomberg has enough money and clout that he may well bully his way to become the 2020 Democratic nominee. If that’s the case, Americans will square off to vote for either Trump or Bloomberg for president.
Both are successful businessmen. Both are billionaires. But one has done everything in his power to uplift the American worker while the other holds those workers in sneering contempt. Hmm, whom to vote for?
Kayleigh McEnany, Trump’s 2020 national press secretary, may have said it best: “The Democrat Party is in the midst of a full-scale meltdown. Americans are watching the party of JFK be torn apart by anti-job socialists and anti-worker globalists who want to control every aspect of Americans’ lives. This train wreck is nothing compared to what they would do to our country. None of these candidates will be able to go toe to toe with President Trump in November.”
Contrary to what Bloomberg seems to think, those of us who work the blue-collar trades are not stupid. We have plenty of gray matter between our ears – certainly enough to see through the progressive lies about how best to lead our country.
