The mind of the American credentialed class, as revealed by the bookstore shelves

Given the upcoming election this week, I thought it would be a good time to look at how the credentialed class perceives the world. These are the folks who determine what appears in our media and, ultimately, what policies get implemented in Washington, D.C. Where can we find the folks who’ve bubbled to the top of our meritocracy? At the bookstore! The pictures below are from the Barnes & Noble in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, August 4, 2024 (folks in Florida, of course, are not at the heart of national policymaking, but I think this Barnes & Noble is representative of what bookstores nationwide offer to the righteous).

First, a few happy images:

(The Wealth of Refugees (Oxford University Press) is my favorite. There has never been a situation in which Country A has offered to pay Country B for some refugees. Canada doesn’t offer to pay the U.S. for a share of the flow across our southern border, for example. In fact, there are countries that are willing to pay fines to the EU rather than accept refugees, thus suggesting that refugees have a negative value. At market prices, in other words, our four-year-old minivan is worth more than all of the world’s refugees put together. The author (“Alexander Betts is Professor of Forced Migration and International Affairs, and William Golding Senior Fellow in Politics at Brasenose College, at the University of Oxford.”), who no doubt hasn’t been willing to pay to get a refugee in his/her/zir/their own household, apparently has a much more sophisticated way of establishing value than the market.)

Then some delicious schadenfreude about how badly Republicans are doing:

But the core of the political book section is mostly about fear. If we can’t get abortion care at any stage of a pregnant person’s pregnancy on every street corner in every state, that’s a “new [and bad] America”:

American democracy is under “threat” and/or very nearly already replaced by fascism or National Socialism (“Nazi”).

One thing that might help save democracy is making sure that peasants get all of their information from sources approved by the elites:

We also need to get rid of a frightening and dangerous religion, especially if practiced without supervision from city-dwelling Democrats, that threatens our national well-being:

The news isn’t all terrible because some brave souls are fighting back:

A restatement of Joe Biden’s wisdom, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t Black”:

Harvard professors share their wisdom at a $400,000 discount from list price and without the need to reside in a pro-Hamas encampment. From the Amazon page about this book:

They draw on a wealth of examples—from 1930s France to present-day Thailand—to explain why and how political parties turn against democracy. They then show how our Constitution makes us uniquely vulnerable to attacks from within: It is a pernicious enabler of minority rule, allowing partisan minorities to consistently thwart and even rule over popular majorities. Most modern democracies—from Germany and Sweden to Argentina and New Zealand—have eliminated outdated institutions like elite upper chambers, indirect elections, and lifetime tenure for judges. The United States lags dangerously behind.

The only way to preserve our democracy, in other words, is to eliminate most of its institutions because they’re “outdated”. (I guess the nomination of Kamala Harris, for whom nobody voted in a primary, is a decent first step.)

If a peasant were to vote for a conservative this coming week, it is because he/she/ze/they is a fool who has been taken in by a transparent grift:

My take-away is that fear seems to be the best way to motivate someone to buy a book or cast a vote. Peasants are promised almost nothing in exchange for a correct vote, but are threatened with catastrophe if they vote incorrectly.