{"id":1085,"date":"2022-02-22T17:24:58","date_gmt":"2022-02-22T23:24:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usa-ver2.com\/?p=1085"},"modified":"2024-02-05T11:39:16","modified_gmt":"2024-02-05T17:39:16","slug":"contempt-of-for-the-rulers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usa-ver2.com\/?p=1085","title":{"rendered":"Contempt of\/for the Rulers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In my post on Bureaucracy<\/a>, I mentioned briefly the fact that USA version 1 is increasingly ruled<\/strong> (as opposed to governed or managed) by a fixed “ruling class,” openly contemptuous of the rest of the country, and convinced of its own divine right to rule, despite the increasing evidence of its lack of competence. This post will be a slight expansion of that discussion, more focused on the social instability fomented by this class, rather than the bureaucratic misrule perpetrated by it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the earliest elaborations of this was by Codevilla in 2010 (here<\/a>, and later expanded into a book<\/a>). I wholeheartedly encourage reading all of his original essay, in which he lays out the sordid history of the governmental response to the 2008 financial crisis, which led to usage of the term “ruling class” in America. It was clear to him that “Republican and Democratic office holders and their retinues show a similar presumption to dominate and fewer differences in tastes, habits, opinions, and sources of income among one another than between both and the rest of the country. They think, look, and act as a class.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has not always been so in America – there were always people who were wealthier and more powerful than others, but the upper class tended to be as culturally and ideologically diverse as the rest of America. Today, however, there is a monoculture among the elite that has little to do with competence, expertise or even wealth and education. Codevilla: “What really distinguishes these privileged people demographically is that, whether in government power directly or as officers in companies, their careers and fortunes depend on government. They vote Democrat more consistently than those who live on any of America\u2019s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Streets. These socioeconomic opposites draw their money and orientation from the same sources as the millions of teachers, consultants, and government employees in the middle ranks who aspire to be the former and identify morally with what they suppose to be the latter\u2019s grievances.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ruling class also protects its own: Codevilla mentions the 1985 Laurence Tribe plagiarism incident at Harvard (admitted by Tribe here<\/a>) and points out that Tribe himself (who nominally wrote a book in which a passage was clearly plagiarized), his assistant Ron Klain (who actually “wrote” the passage and did the plagiarism), and Elena Kagan (at the time, Dean of Harvard Law, who convened an investigative committee which cleared Tribe in a sealed report) all emerged unscathed from the incident: Tribe remains a progressive legal icon, Klain is now Chief of Staff for President Biden, and Kagan is on the Supreme Court. On the other hand, any members of academia who dare to go against the prevailing culture and narrative will be smeared as “fringe” regardless of the strength of their scholarship and the eminence of their record (Codevilla mentions Singer<\/a> and Lindzen<\/a> in climate science, but other examples abound: Curry<\/a> in climate science, Bhattacharya<\/a> and Kulldorff<\/a> in epidemiology\/public health, Fryer<\/a> in economics, et al.).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps even more troubling (and here I am relying on personal observation) is that while previous generations of blue collar workers wanted to provide their children the education and support to (possibly, hopefully) move into the elite class, this appears largely not to be the case today. It is not merely that mobility into that class is seen to be unlikely, but rather that the elite is seen as so contemptuous, arrogant and dismissive toward the working class, that parents simply don’t want that for their children. Prosperity, yes, but not elite “ruling class” status. Unsurprisingly, this is seen by the elite as evidence<\/a> of their (in this case, the rural working class) “anti-intellectualism” (as opposed to, say, a legitimate skepticism of a ruling class that despises them, and has a rather abysmal recent track<\/a> record<\/a> of “expertise”).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Bureaucracy<\/a> post, I compiled a list of writers on this subject, which I reiterate here: Lasch<\/a>, Kotkin<\/a>, McWhorter<\/a>, Stoller<\/a>. I will also mention these additional (more recent) articles by Rod Dreher<\/a>, Richard Fernandez<\/a>, Martin Gurri<\/a>, Victor Davis Hanson<\/a>, and Mac Owens<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I wrote in my bi<\/a>o<\/a> for this site, I feel this cultural gulf between the ruling class and the working class keenly, being rooted in both groups in various ways. One might hope (and I still do) that people like me might be able to help persuade members of both groups to feel a little less contempt for the other, but I can’t claim any success at this point. I will say that I think that the working class actually understands the ruling class far better than the reverse – the bubble around the ruling class seems to be significantly more impenetrable than the one around the working class. My guess is that this has to do with media dominance by the ruling class (or ruling class “wannabes”).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why is this such a problem? As Codevilla says,<\/p>\n\n\n\n