Yesterday I sat at a dinner event with some members of our ruling overclass, including a wealthy and powerful septuagenarian Washington lawyer and her husband, a D.C.-area doctor and hospital administrator. (I will not name names, but we are talking about the very highest levels of swamp creatures here. If I had been carrying an elven-blade, it would have been glowing blue.)
I was struck, especially, by the lawyer’s lofty disdain for the Dirt People scurrying like ants so far beneath her; the aura of high-caste entitlement and contempt for the sans-culottes was perceptible from the moment she began to speak, and never wavered throughout the evening. I heard about the garden parties she and her husband had given, that were attended by members of Congress and Supreme Court Justices. I learned what a capital — saintly! — fellow their friend Anthony Fauci is, and how bravely he endures the wholly undeserved contumely of yahoos, rubes, and fascists. I was told how unlikely it would be ever to see anyone really notable in Wellfleet, as everybody who is anybody is, of course, in Martha’s Vineyard or Nantucket. I was advised that the recent problems with our little town’s management stem from the fact that it is run by the low-born types whose families have lived here for centuries, rather than letting the wealthy and better-credentialed retirees who have come here more recently take over. I also heard — at barely endurable length — about the special wonderfulness of Rep. Jamie Raskin (D).
A bit later, there was general agreement that, if Donald Trump wins this election, we had better “blow the bridges”.
The experience, as you can imagine, was pungent. (I still have a whiff of sulfur in my nostrils.)
We have a problem, and as far as I can see, it isn’t going away; indeed, I expect it will get sharply worse in the wake of next month’s election. The problem, simply put, is that although the bedrock principle of the American political formula is “consent of the governed”, we have now reached the point where whichever faction comes to power will govern entirely without the consent of half the population.
This was not always the case. Once upon a time — within my own memory — there was enough commonality on social, political, and moral axioms that those out of power would subordinate their dissatisfaction to the importance of playing the game, and would look at political setbacks as little more than a bad year for the home team. “Next season” was never too far off, and meanwhile we could live with the opposition temporarily in power because we knew that, despite some differences about policy, we more or less agreed on the fundamental axioms of American life.
Now, things are different. For the losers in the next election (whichever side that is), being governed by the victors isn’t going to feel like like losing a round; it will feel like being subjugated. It’s going to be like having their homeland pillaged and their altars desecrated by a despised and unholy enemy before whom they will be made to kneel. And that is going to get worse, not better, as time goes by.
The two factions, the Cloud People and the Dirt People, each have power, but very different kinds of power (the power of the latter is still mostly latent and unorganized, but it is real). Clearly, we can’t live together, and neither is willing to be ruled by the other — but we can’t get away from each other, either.
I know Nothing Ever Happens™, but this is unsustainable, and I believe we are approaching a crisis. Something has to give.
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Arnold Toynbee describes this as a schism in the body social. In a healthy society, he says a “creative minority” has “charm” and leads by example. The “uncreative minority” follows by “mimesis.” When the “creative minority” loses its creativity and charm, the uncreative majority stops following and mimesis ends. A schism opens in the body social. The now uncreative minority then resorts to force. As this happens in the body social, there is a corresponding “schism in the soul,” so that the members of the leaderless majority retreat into futile fantasies. Volume 6 of his Study of History reads like a guide to the present.
P.S. I would love to read a post with your tips how to get through this sort of ordeal with decorum and self-respect intact.
Actually, I was wondering the same exact thing as Professor Smith: how do you get through these dinners without blowing a gasket? It seems like you have to go through these travails seasonally.
Malcolm, what misfortune placed you at a party with these sorts of boors?
It was one of a series of (usually very enjoyable) “pop-up” dinners put on at Wellfleet’s community/cultural center (an old church building on Main Street) by a talented local chef.
I was there with my lovely wife Nina, and didn’t want to create a scene (which would have accomplished nothing positive at all).
Living in a place like this — which is a beautiful place to live, for a great many reasons — those of us on the Right (and there are more of us here than you might imagine) have two choices: either pick a pointless fight any time people casually assume that everyone shares their Blue-team opinions, or just “keep schtum” and have an otherwise very pleasant life. (Those of us on the Right — which includes all the flinty, practical people who build things and fix things and catch the fish and grow the oysters and keep everything running — can spot each other at once. We know who we are, and we have plenty of opportunities to commune.)
We bide our time, do what we can, and keep our powder dry. If things really do go sideways, the balance of power out here on this remote sandspit is going to change very rapidly, and we all know it.
P.S. The question I didn’t answer here is this (and it is the question, sadly, of the ages): at what point is the life I described simply too passive? Exactly how bad do things have to get before civility for the sake of preserving cherished bourgeois norms becomes a fatal, or at least a moral, error? Are we there yet? If not, will we know when we are, before it’s too late?