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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   32245 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023

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People I don’t like, of course.

I’ve no doubt that there exists a class of rent-seeking nouveau riche with a taste for Continental aesthetics. Many of them surely endorse high immigration, humanities educations, and the perennial pastime of scoffing at proles. By merit of their wealth, they no doubt wield outsize influence on the course of the Democratic Party.

But how many of them are there, really? How much of the Democrat platform hinges on these elites, rather than on the modern sensibilities of America’s middle class?

Those are some fair points. I won’t contest that stereotypical Democrat beliefs owe a lot to the opinions of an actual elite. What bothers me is the insinuation that believing such things implies upper-class status.

My intuition is that most of these thought-leaders, the journalists, creatives, and academics—most of them shouldn’t be rated as an “upper class.” They have their own elites, but most will never be household names. They won’t handle more money than a company accountant or direct more people than a blue-collar floor manager. Organized religion is a good comparison. Most local preachers don’t qualify as an elite, even though they hew closely to an elite-approved doctrine. But gosh, it sure is nice to dunk on the whole edifice whenever Joel Osteen does something distasteful.

I think such a bait-and-switch was pretty explicit in Maiq’s post. He’s using everyone’s favorite punching bag, Hillary, as a stand-in for the whole outgroup. Weak men are superweapons, I guess.

How much of the Democrat platform hinges on these elites, rather than on the modern sensibilities of America’s middle class?

That's sort of what I'm getting at. Anti-elitist rhetoric is fairly central to populism, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the object of that rhetoric are actually elite or upper class in any meaningful sense, as opposed to merely being political adversaries. (It doesn't help that Americans are simultaneously obsessed with success and embarrassed by it, so we'll do tremendous backflips to explain how we're just a working Joe despite making six figures and living in a house that arguably qualifies as a palace). Urban professionals may have different values than suburban small business owners, but identifying them as upper class seems like a stretch.

If we take the sort of people who get jobs in the media or accademia as representative (a dangerous assumption I'll admit) I would say that the class "rent-seeking nouveau riche with a taste for Continental aesthetics" represent the bulk of the DNC or at the very least it's public face.

I wouldn't describe those as rent-seeking, neither in the traditional, landowning sense nor a more modern position atop the stock market. "Nouveau riche" doesn't seem right, either, for a class which is effectively trading off earning potential for a chance to be a Thought Leader. At least by the time they get that PhD, academics have given up hope on being the financial elite.

No, I'm talking about the Pelosi-type. Relatively new to wealth and power, perhaps immigrants or their children. Heavily invested in a neoliberal worldview. Played the American system to its full effect, especially including the stock or real estate markets. Little incentive to rock the boat with progressive zeal, and very little concern for the potential downsides of neoliberal policy.

When people talk about coastal elites, are they talking about Sanders, or are they thinking of Soros?

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