Kim Spence-Jones 🇬🇧😷

It is high time we stopped misusing the word 'elite' to describe the cancer at the apex of our society. Elite should be reserved for top athletes and brilliant minds, people who deserve our respect.

Call the super-rich what they are: PARASITES.

Edit: some have suggested PREDATORS as a better term. They are both!

Jun 13, 2023 at 5:24pmWeb
Show threadDagnabbit, Pascaline! 💥Jul 6, 2023
@KimSJ YESSS! Exactly. They are not the elite, they are parasites and yeah, oligarchs would help to make things clear!
Show threadRyderJul 6, 2023
@KimSJ I’m going to say that top athletes don’t “deserve” respect. If I could run a little bit faster than Ghandi, I wouldn’t expect respect for that 🤷
Show threadKim Spence-Jones 🇬🇧😷Jul 6, 2023
@curry_ryder You may be right, but you don’t get to be an elite athlete without mental discipline and hard work, and that is achieved without stealing the work of thousands of other people. Certainly more deserving of respect than people who began their business empire by tax fraud or other law-breaking, or just an accident of birth.
Show threadOwenAug 9, 2023
@KimSJ I tend to use “deadweight”, partly because “parasites” has uncomfortably antisemitic overtones in some contexts. (Also I suspect the super-rich would find “deadweight” more insulting.)
Show threadKim Spence-Jones 🇬🇧😷Aug 9, 2023

@problemsdog I’ve never encountered anti-semitic overtones for the word parasite. Apparently I live in more of a bubble than I realised. 🫤

Deadweight doesn’t sound sufficiently actively evil, though. The ultra-rich really are actively sucking the lifeblood out of the world economy.

Show threadChuckAug 9, 2023
@KimSJ It still baffles me how a guy with a gold toilet and gold and marble Floridian retirement home can throw around the word as the most vicious of insults and his cult just accepts it as such. The word has been turned from wealth to educations and his people just hate anyone who's smarter than them ... and that's basically everyone.
Show threadMichael HeaneyAug 19, 2023

@KimSJ
I was taught at school debating club to “play the ball, not the man”; The system rather than the individual. So the few individuals that become grossly over wealthy is symptomatic, similar to a small selection of rogue cancer cells that form a tumour on the body which gathers resources and grows unnecessarily large, expands unendingly and damages the wellbeing of the entire organism.

There are a myriad of methods that could be employed to treat this cancer on society.

Show threadSelzeroOct 17, 2023

@KimSJ

Elite in its original form, yes.

Elite in a form that implies someone that is better simply by existing, and rides a system built on privilege to prove superiority, that is a different thing, and so the word has taken on a negative connotation in every bubble.