ELITISM, DEFINED
Thomas,
Respectfully, I disagree. I think you paint with too broad a brush.
Re: The intellectual elite in this country are the exact opposite. They are socially liberal, but economically conservative.
I think it is important to make a distinction between those who would have formerly have been called the intelligentsia and those who are the financial and economic elites.
The intelligentsia is left leaning, consisting primarily of the creative artistic leaders, Hollywood, Broadway, regional theater, musicians, etc. Also in this category would be a preponderance of very well educated academics and a smattering of malcontents like the remnants of the Socialist, New Left, civil rights, women's rights and gay rights movements. A very flexible and democratic mix of constituencies.
On the polar opposite end is right leaning financial elite who tend to be very traditional about social values, repressive of the desires of the rest of society who they desire to subjugate, profligate with society's common wealth when it is accessed for the benefit of the very few, and rigidly hierarchical in attempting to dominate the economic, social and political life of the nation. These are the enemies of democracy and quite antithetical to the idea of self-determination for any except themselves.
What this leads to is the great political divide of today. The finacial elite have hijacked a large portion of the media, and are using it to lie to, cheat, steal from and disinform the public. The title of John Stauber's excellent book sums up the dismissive attitude of these elites toward society in general: "Toxic Waste Is Good For You".
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This dichotomy isn't new. It played out dramatically in a hotel room in Mexico City in 1940, when Leon Trotsky was assassinated.
In the epic struggle for dominance in Lenin's U.S.S.R., the main battle was between the middle brow Stalinists, (the financial elite of their world) and the high brow Trotskyists, the intelligentsia of Russian culture. Excluding, of course the coarse aristocracy for the sake of a facile comparison. |
