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I've always loved how succinctly LBJ put it: "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking hi
by favorited 4y ago
I've always loved how succinctly LBJ put it:
"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
- Spooky23 4y agoEveryone should read Robert Caro’s biographies of LBJ. The destitution and most importantly shame that he experienced as a boy shaped him, both in the amazing way he was able to seize control of the Senate and defeat the racist reactionaries who mentored him, and in the negative way that he embraced and wielded unbridled power and corruption.
- civilized 4y agoCompletely unironically, I've been looking for a few thousand pages of biography worth reading.
- blinkingled 4y agoLol few years ago I got LBJ's from local library and made sincere effort to read through - it was humongous. I could not carry on after a week.
- thejman5200 4y agoI dont really care if George RR Martin ever finishes Winds of Winter. But I will be immensely disappointed if Robert Caro dies before finishing the last LBJ book. He already somehow wrote 3,000+ pages in 40 years and hasn't even reached LBJ's passage of Medicare, Civil Rights, and Vietnam. He's 87 but still working on it apparently.
- boppo1 4y agoWhat inspires a person to dedicate their lives to such an intricate biography of someone else?
- aphyt 4y agoLBJ did some great things and he did some bad things. I can see that understanding and explaining how someone who had a life of immense consequence came to do both would be immensely valuable. That explanation could help drive the culture towards considering how we can get the former and avoid the latter as much as reasonably possible. If one was successful in that project, it is possible that their work would be more impactful in the long term than the person that they are writing about. Also, some people are just compelled to do really deep work because they like it.
- gverrilla 4y agoDemand.
- throwoutway 4y agoIs there a high demand for 3,000 page biographies?
- Spooky23 4y agoCaro dedicated his life to the study of contemporary power. He’s a fascinating figure in his own right. IIRC, his wife is a scholar of medieval French literature/history and they do each others research.
- ted_bunny 4y ago"it was humongous" Yeah, I've heard that too.
- purephase 4y agohttps://www.amazon.ca/Lyndon-Johnson-American-Dream-Presidential/dp/0312060270 https://www.amazon.ca/Lyndon-Johnson-American-Dream-Presiden...
- zachrose 4y agoThe audiobooks are also good.
- favorited 4y agoI got a notification that the first one is on sale on Audible today for $8.
- colordrops 4y agoI was going to point out that class blindness is an intentional ploy but probably wkuld have been downvoted for being a conspiracist. You (or LBJ rather) said it much better.
- jimmygrapes 4y agoI like how you edited the actual words
- albedoa 4y agoGo on. What are the actual words?
- zimpenfish 4y agoWaPo from 1988[1], in a first-hand report by Bill D Moyers, says > "I'll tell you what's at the bottom of it," he said. "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." Which look to be the the same words to me. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1988/11/13/what-a-real-president-was-like/d483c1be-d0da-43b7-bde6-04e10106ff6c/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1988/11/13/w...
- dang 4y agoPlease don't post in the flamewar style to HN. If you have more correct information, that's great, but please tell us what it is so we can all learn. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dsfyu404ed 4y agoLBJ notably makes no distinction between looking down with sympathy or looking down with disdain. And as much as I hate him (actually, I really hate Kennedy more, LBJ got dealt a shit hand) I think that so long as the discussion is constrained to the purposes of getting people to empty their wallets that detail can safely be omitted.
- x86_64Ubuntu 4y agoNo one thinks that the segregationists of LBJs era were looking down in sympathy.
- dsfyu404ed 4y agoMy point is that it wasn't just the segregationists who were looking down.