03-27-2019, 09:22 AM
It fits into my discussion of the taste of dictators -- ten boats? In my dream of success, one sailboat would be enough. McMansion meets dictatorial tastes? I can imagine her as a successor of Donald Trump, and then I reach for a barf bag.
This house is proof that great wealth does not automatically bring admirable taste. But this is not your ordinary rich person who got rich by offering real solutions to people's problems:
(Well, who expects nice people to fit in with the Trump Administration?)
![[Image: betsy_1.png]](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/frQWMBikDKXf5K3ccbxCK2uMbt0=/0x0:3180x2076/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3180x2076):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/11927993/betsy_1.png)
This would definitely not fit in in Newport, Rhode Island. But it does not fit Michigan, a state struggling with the transition from the best place in the world for an industrial worker (in which someone who worked in an automobile plant could buy a modest cottage on a lake with a small motorboat) to a post-industrial nightmare in which people just aren't doing so well. Everything is expensive except labor, and we all know what Karl Marx said of the proletariat: it has nothing to sell but its labor.
Asymmetry, flamboyance, and unreality are in bad taste in architecture. A double grand staircase leading to the lake from the second floor?
Cue Carly Simon's You're So Vain.
This house is proof that great wealth does not automatically bring admirable taste. But this is not your ordinary rich person who got rich by offering real solutions to people's problems:
Quote:Trump official and fellow rich person DeVos just rolled back Obama administration loan forgiveness rules for students defrauded by for-profit colleges. It’s unsurprising that she doesn’t want to forgive the student loan debts of those defrauded by for-profit colleges considering that she got her net worth of more than $1 billion from her husband’s company, the multilevel marketing giant Amway, which is often described as a cult. Meanwhile, her brother Erik Prince owns the Blackwater firm, which essentially sells mercenaries. As we can see, we are not dealing with nice people.
(Well, who expects nice people to fit in with the Trump Administration?)
This would definitely not fit in in Newport, Rhode Island. But it does not fit Michigan, a state struggling with the transition from the best place in the world for an industrial worker (in which someone who worked in an automobile plant could buy a modest cottage on a lake with a small motorboat) to a post-industrial nightmare in which people just aren't doing so well. Everything is expensive except labor, and we all know what Karl Marx said of the proletariat: it has nothing to sell but its labor.
Asymmetry, flamboyance, and unreality are in bad taste in architecture. A double grand staircase leading to the lake from the second floor?
Cue Carly Simon's You're So Vain.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.