…and the unpersuaded yahoos:
…maybe that is what defines an elite: the lip-curled reproach to anything that has come before this privileged and smug generation—tradition, faith, heroic self-denial—and the illusion that their disdain is somehow a broader and more enlightened “love.”
For the most part, the “yahoo” non-elites do not begrudge the gentry their private jets, their private clubs, and their private schools. They do, however, begrudge them the superior dismissal of their values, and the constant attempts to control how others get to live their lives.
The ineducable masses begrudge the hectoring about their taste for “gas guzzlers,” from people who ride in limos. They dislike being dismissed as “provincial” or “parochial” by people who only associate with others of the same neighborhood and mindset. They are weary of being portrayed as less compassionate, less well-meaning, gosh darn it just lesser people because they believe in giving an equal-opportunity hand-up, rather than an impossible-to-sustain equal-hand-out.
The elites don’t want to be called “elite.” But they reinforce the perception with every tax-shelter they pursue, every privilege they grasp, every tax bill they can’t be bothered to pay until they’re forced to, and when they pretend that middle-class wages are undertaxed, greedy, ignoble, selfish, and unfair.
I wouldn’t mind quite so much if they were really, you know, elite, instead of someone who managed to get a piece of paper from Harvard or Yale.
One factor that’s repeatedly left out of this: The “ineducable masses” have a higher level of college grads than historical norms. Tie the following paragraph to a someone who can have the opinion “You aren’t so smart” about any random talking head that’s doing the lecturing.
“The ineducable masses begrudge the hectoring about their taste for “gas guzzlers,” from people who ride in limos. They dislike being dismissed as “provincial” or “parochial” by people who only associate with others of the same neighborhood and mindset. They are weary of being portrayed as less compassionate, less well-meaning, gosh darn it just lesser people because they believe in giving an equal-opportunity hand-up, rather than an impossible-to-sustain equal-hand-out.”
Journalists in particular. The number that appear to have a love of the particular field they cover, and thus care enough to know and use the proper minor jargon, etc. is quite low. And they are the ones doing the hectoring.
That is, the mass of clueless journalists doing the hectoring. It is more palatable when the journalist has a freaking clue, but that’s rare enough to be negligible.
It seems to be part of the nature of the job that they remain clueless. Read any newspaper article of something you have personal knowledge of and the the cluelessness jumps right out at you. They have to get a story out and the chance of them finding a source quickly at random that actually knows anything is quite small. But they go with what they get… and that’s the good ones that aren’t also trying to add their own bias.
One factor that’s repeatedly left out of this: The “ineducable masses” have a higher level of college grads than historical norms. Tie the following paragraph to a someone who can have the opinion “You aren’t so smart” about any random talking head that’s doing the lecturing.
To the elites, it doesn’t matter if the people they disagree with also have college degrees if those degrees weren’t earned at the “right” schools. I think they’ve been so miseducated that people are awakening to the idea that an Ivy League degree is like the Emperor’s New Clothes. Without that insular snobbism, their claim to superiority has no basis.
Look at who is running not only the government but so many of those companies that have driven the country off of a fiscal cliff and you’ll find a disproportionate number of Ivy League grads. If they were so smart, why aren’t they doing a better job for everyone instead of just themselves and their cronies?
“To the elites, it doesn’t matter if the people they disagree with also have college degrees if those degrees weren’t earned at the “right” schools.”
I agree completely. But it is far more galling to the hoi polloi this way. It’s one thing when you have a mostly agrarian country with a tiny slice of college grads considering themselves “Elite”. They have a solid chance of really being the best and brightest, and having a better grasp on topic X. But we’re sitting here with a level of education such that teachers are often required to have Masters of Education degrees. That is, there’s a whole lot of people that aren’t “Elite”, but have a fair expectation that they’re reasonably well-informed. And still condescended to.
…and they still can’t win on “Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader.”
I’ve never met a truly brilliant person — and I have met about a dozen people with Nobel Prizes, some before they won and some after — who is contemptuous of those with less formal education, or formal credentials of any sort. They will listen to the plumber as respectfully as they listen to the President of the NAS or the United States. Each idea is judged on its merits alone, without the slightest reference to who proposed it.
But then, they’re brilliant, and perhaps can afford to do this. I think when you’re not very smart, you have to rely more on stereotypes (“Anyone with a law degree from Harvard is brlilliant about everything!”) and prejudice (“Anyone woman who competed in a beauty pageant to pay her tuition must be a dumb bimbo”) to decide what to think.