They are meant to be special, privileged. It is their default, as failure is the default of their less affluent contemporaries. A network of adults will nourish them, cultivate them, pass them on to other adults. It is a world of recommendations. It is a world of reputations. But in this world their lives can be derailed, overturned. If they cross a certain line. If they make a serious blunder, and are caught. By instinct they know to placate some adults more than others. Adults who wield power, and are willing to use it.
Joyce Carol Oates, Fox
Oates is speaking about students at expensive private schools. They are nurtured and groomed to be the elite. Their admittance and permanence in that class hinges entirely on their capacity to absorb, retain, reproduce, and enforce the behavioral and linguistic norms of the elite. These norms are designed to be abstruse and counterintuitive in order to weed out as many people as possible. They are also—and in this the new elite differs from the way elites were historically—highly mutable.
Every society has an elite. That is not in itself bad. Egalitarianism is rooted in a fantasy, and not a particularly smart one. Historically, an elite was one by birth. This is “unfair” but the positive side of this unfairness was that the elites did not exist in a state of abject terror that their elite status would be taken away. Today, you get expelled from the elite for one wrong word uttered years ago. Like everything else, status has become highly fluid. People live in fear of losing theirs.
Terrified elites are destructive. They flail about, embracing every fad that makes them look exceptional and deserving of their status. Everything new eventually becomes not new. This requires more fads to be invented because the inner circle isn’t stable. It gets redrawn all the time, and ideological obsessions, newspeak, and boutique beliefs are the crayons used to redraw it.
We threw away the idea of birthright aristocracy because it was “unfair” but the system we created in its place is hardly any more fair. Access is still barred to people who can’t empty themselves completely in order to adopt any shape that serves as a ticket to entry at any given moment.
That people who do manage this kind of fluidity are highly neurotic is a given. The human brain appreciates stability and routine above all. The need to throw away all certainty and wipe off all content in order to retain your membership in the elite is psychologically destructive.
The whole point of having a birthright elite was to have a class that was rooted in tradition. It had to maintain the cultural legacy of society because that maintenance work was its reason to exist. Today’s elites do the exact opposite. They erode, take apart, and destroy. Having an elite that works to unmake the culture instead of preserving it is the only thing we gained by pursuing fairness.
Clarissa's Blog 
Was society really that much more stable back when elite status was born with instead of more earned like today?
Seems to me we have this rosy picture of the past that does not really hold up to deep scrutiny. There were more wars, instability, and insecurity in nearly all metrics in the traditional past.
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War is an event of a completely different order today from what it was historically. It makes no sense to compare a 19th-century war with today’s war. Even in the last decade war changed completely with the normalization of drone warfare. Numerically, there were more wars in the 19th century but which ones of them saw a complete destruction of several cities with hundreds of thousands of civilians dead within just a few months?
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Military technology changed. If they’d had massive bombs and artillery, they’d bomb out probably more cities in the 19th century. People were brutal back then.
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A couple of thoughts and an answer to Ed’s first comment.
First to answer Ed, yes things were more stable back then. Oh there was more conflict, but the conflict was on a much smaller scale. In addition unlike modern day, you had people who were responsible and could and would be held to account. Be it by their peers, or by being hung by those who they were supposed to be in charge of. In the modern world our so called leaders want the power but no responsibility, if they cause terrible destruction, they can simply resign and skip off into the distance leaving the citizens to bear the consequence. Oh I am by no means stating it didn’t occur in the past, but there was a bigger chance that the so called elite would get their comeuppance one way or another.
Now my thoughts on this. The thing is when humans live together we have to have someone with authority, otherwise things spiral out into unending feuds that drag family after family into the bloodshed. There must be someone to set the boundaries and enforce the law. Note : (The law should be a mix of the laws set down by God, and common sense law by man. When the law is used as a weapon by evil rulers things go horribly wrong.)
The elite and I hate using that word in this case, but it will serve for the moment. Were supposed to have been groomed for rulership. They were supposed to have been groomed to keep a population stable and happy, maybe not prosperous, but to do their best to keep things from going off the rails. Under a good ruler, the wicked are punished, corruption is uprooted, and the law is pruned of the parts that cause issue, and the ones needed are enforced. Under a good ruler, a people tend to be satisfied. Even if they aren’t prosperous, they aren’t being ground into the ground, and for most people that is enough.
Under a wicked ruler, the opposite is true. The number of laws explode and the enforcement of them is almost random. The wicked are rewarded and corruption seeps in everywhere tainting everything. The people tend to be in disarry as they are stolen from and attacked from every direction. Misery is the lot of those under wicked and evil rulers.
My point is this. You will almost always have a mix of good and bad rulers, and even today this is the case. However one of the things that have gone off the rail is that the so called elite are no longer being groomed to be good rulers and leaders. Instead they are being taught to hate their own people and nations, they are being taught it is not just ok to loot the people you are suppose to rule over and serve, but that you are a fool if you don’t.
A leader, a ruler, an elite, is supposed to serve their people. Yes they are rewarded greatly for their service, but there is supposed to be a balance. Right now it is seriously out of balance and needs to be corrected.
I feel I should mention that I do agree with this statement of Clarissa,
“The whole point of having a birthright elite was to have a class that was rooted in tradition. It had to maintain the cultural legacy of society because that maintenance work was its reason to exist.”
Well most of it. I don’t agree that this was the only reason for its existence, but it was certainly part of it.
Most of you lot know my opinion. I think we are close to the Rapture and the Great Tribulation. Paul said this about the last days. 2nd Timothy 3:1 and 3:13 “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.” “But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.”
He also told us what the people of the time would be like. 2nd Timothy 3:2-7 “For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy. Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.”
This might be on just the so called elite, but over the last two decades or so we have seen an absolute explosion of people worldwide be they rulers, or teachers, or young men and women who absolutely fit all this to a T. In fact is has been getting worse and worse over the last few years. Its almost as if people no longer want to hide their wickedness.
So I believe we are near the end of the Age of Grace. I believe the saved will be raptured soon, and Satan will be allowed to rule openly and without restraint for 7 years. It will be the worse period on Earth before or after.
So if any of you are unsaved, now is the time. God is a holy God, and because he is holy, he cannot by his very nature allow a single sin to enter heaven. We were born of a sin nature due to Adam and Eve breaking God’s commandments back in the Garden. Can any of you state you have never once lied, never once had thoughts of hatred in your hearts, never once cursed, never once gave offence, and on and on and on. No not one of us. The second you sin, you are barred from Heaven. Thankfully God knew mankind would fall, and is merciful by nature. He prepared a way for us to escape, a way to return to him.
We are human, there is nothing we can do to remove our sins. Jesus was and is God, he came down to earth and was born as a human, being both human and God. He lived a perfect life without sinning even once. He walked willingly to his death, it was bad. (Tucker Carlson had an interview a few weeks ago about the Shroud of Turin, the researcher went over every wound and mark.) He died and rose again on the third day. His sacrifice was acceptable. And with it was given an offer to all those who believe.
He offers his blood payment in your place. Simply believe, have faith and trust him. He was willing to die in your place, his blood to pay for your sins if you would but believe. He paid it all at the cross. It is that simple, just believe and have faith.
Believe that he died and rose again as stated by the prophets, and that he payed for your sins if you are willing to accept his payment for you.
We don’t have much time. If not the Rapture, and the Tribulation, maybe old age, or an accident, or a disease. None of us are promised our next breath, and if you die without your sins being covered by the precious blood of Jesus you will go to hell. No ifs or buts about it. So please choose Jesus while there is still time.
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In WWI, the gentleman class sat in the trenches and died in the trenches. Today’s leisure class says, “I travel with the British (or whatever) passport” and doesn’t even understand what the concept of “your own country” means.
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Afrikaaner nationalists wanted their own country and especially not to be British subjects, until the memory of the Boer war and the apartheid ended. Then they all emigrated to Australia.
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Very well said.
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At one time in the West, the elite was a warrior caste, a hereditary arristocracy, busily line intermarrying each other. The Catholic church limited the latter somewhat, as did the emerging wealth of the industrialists much later — Churchill was produced by a descendant of the Duke of Marlborough and an American heiress ;-D
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I’d take a Churchill over Keir Starmer any day.
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Beautifully written. Sending this to friends.
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The word elite is negatively tinged for most people because they intuit how phony the current elites are.
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Exactly. It’s not the elite I object to. It’s the clowns that are currently occupying that position that pisses me off. Ketanji Jackson Brown and Claudine Gay would not be considered elite in any rational universe, but here we are.
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