Those who are able to climb up the ladder will find ways to pull it up after them, or selectively lower it down to allow their friends, allies, and kin to scramble up. In other words: 'Who says meritocracy says oligarchy.' Chris Hayes More Quotes by Chris Hayes More Quotes From Chris Hayes It's no accident that there is a nexus between Trump, Roger Stone and Infowars and Alex Jones. It's very much an Infowars presidency in many ways. The President is a conspiracy theorist. He has reliably touted conspiracy theories. It's a core part of how he processes the world epistemically. That is deeply, deeply dangerous, and disturbing. Chris Hayes conspiracy president world Americans like to humiliate wrongdoers...We like, in short, to punish. It makes us feel good. By every conceivable metric - arrests, prosecutions, duration of sentences, conditions of imprisonment - the United States is by far the most punitive rich democracy. Chris Hayes rich democracy feel-good Generally the impulse to find justice through punitive measures can be a kind of quicksand. What James Whitman, the scholar I cite in the chapter of my book, talks about as an urge to level down, I think you see that everywhere. We're going to be a punitive society, so we might as well level out that punitiveness. Bankers and college swim stars and everyone face that same kind of wrath. Chris Hayes college book thinking The desire to punish is a desire that emanates from a place of equality and justice. The lesson I feel that we have to confront is that that impulse is so easily transmuted into something corrosive and corrupt in how it's actually put into practice. That's the danger. It's not that the impulse is wrong or unjust or not totally righteous. It's that the ways in which the system that operates, the system that we've constructed tends to not deliver the promise of equity we might want, when we look to the system to provide it. Chris Hayes desire justice promise We have different expectations for different groups of people. We tend to modulate the degree with which we're forgiving or punitive depending on how well we know folks, or how much we consider them peers, or how much social capital we've invested in them. That has to do with race, class, gender, and socioeconomic status. We have a tendency to bend over backwards to forgive folks we think of as part of "the us." The question of who we define as "the us" is a lot of what constitutes how we punish who we punish. Chris Hayes expectations people thinking The central question for American politics right now is how did the country that elected Barack Obama elect Donald Trump. There's a lot to what Ta-Nehisi says about the racial reaction and backlash. And the power and the force and ultimately the success. The man who was selling this racist conspiracy theory about the first black President's birth: that's what launched him into a political career that ended up getting him elected the President of the United States. That is an absolutely remarkable fact. Chris Hayes political men country Twilight of the Elites main thesis has been borne out far past what I could ever have imagined. The major idea was that these series of elite failures created this crisis of authority which was fertilizing distrust in the pillars and institutions of American society. In the absence of that authority there's this vacuum which is easily filled by authoritarian solutions, and I think that's exactly what happened. Chris Hayes twilight past thinking As Donald Trump`s fortunes continue to slide, he`s increasingly dragging the fortunes of senate republican`s weapon. Chris Hayes republican slides weapons To me, the biggest lesson I`ve learned up till now with two weeks to go before the election, and the thing I have to keep, sort of, taking myself back to kind of parse, is just how powerful a personality can be when it is as not worried about norms or shame as a normal person. Chris Hayes powerful personality two All the people that you see on television defending Donald Trump have not been drafted into it. Chris Hayes trump people television It`s basically a united [Republican ] party behind [Donald Trump] and Cruz`s numbers in Texas were plummeting and he was facing a possible primary challenge and this cements that this is the party of Trump. Chris Hayes texas party numbers The [Donald's] Trump war on the press continues. Tonight, the national cost of a conservative media bubble, now featuring alien conspiracy theories. And about those Obamacare headlines. Chris Hayes obamacare media war In Utah, where the states` Mormon GOP electorate is especially unfavorable to [Donald] Trump. Chris Hayes trump utah states After campaign financial reports show more money spent than raised in the month of September. Report adds to growing speculation that Donald Trump is not in some very deep psychological sense, actually running to be President of the United States, so much as he`s running to build up a fan base for Donald Trump. Chris Hayes united-states president running With the advent of Trump Tower Live, the campaign`s new nightly broadcast, streamed over Facebook, rumors are once again, swirling of a potential Trump media empire to be launched after the election. Chris Hayes rumor media towers Like one of [Donald] Trump`s sons said this is a huge step down for him to run for president. Like he`s not doing it - let`s just be clear. Chris Hayes president running son Donald Trump isn`t doing anyone any favors by running to be the most powerful person on the planet, right? Chris Hayes favors powerful running The other theory of the case - and it`s not just one that people opposed to him politically believe, but also people who share the Republican Party`s beliefs or conservative, but don`t like Donald Trump, is that he`s fundamentally a narcissist who has become addicted to the attention, is sort of compulsively driven by attention, and this has given him an outlet for that attention, and crucially doesn`t actually care about the party that he is nominally representing. Chris Hayes party believe people There is a sense in which, like, it could be the case that the incentives of running for president and the incentives of getting maximum attention for yourself, sometimes align, and at a certain point, they stop aligning, and you just keep going with the incentives for maximum attention for yourself. Chris Hayes president running attention The degree to which I try to be honest that there's some Donald Trump in all of us. The seduction of the promise of order, the politics of white fear, it's not just some other group of uneducated white people who are susceptible to those appeals. It's everyone. And not just white people, frankly. All Americans have this susceptibility to a politics of fear and order that I think we have to be really honest about. Chris Hayes people promise thinking
