Government is a machine designed to benefit a portion of the population. That portion may be the rich, the poor, an aristocracy, the military, the prince’s party. “The people” is a pious myth to disguise that bias. Every ruler rules “for the people.” What that means is “people like me.”
The United States was designed to benefit its landowners. These men were all recently self-made. None were aristocrats by birth; we had no peerage. Their success achieving eminence in the New World was their proudest achievement. They designed a government where, in theory, any man could enjoy a comparable chance. (Slaves and women were not people.) The economic grievances of our Revolution masked social grievances. It irked the American elite to be treated as inferiors to fops with hereditary titles.
Over two centuries, America’s citizenry broadened to include everybody. Meanwhile an unofficial aristocracy coalesced. Officially, it did not exist; a privileged rank was anathema to the American ideal. But unofficially, it was rock-solid, defined by wealth, property, education, institutional affiliations, hard to get into and not easy to get out of. I was born into this (unofficial) aristocracy, doomed to superiority no matter my accomplishments. I did not notice my advantage, of course – the ruling class never does.
The government of emerging America was designed by and for this patrician elite. Our leaders went to Ivy League schools or acted as if they did. However proud and selfish in private, in public they sought to appear generous, considerate, embracive of all, especially the less fortunate.
Meanwhile, a new elite was forming, defined by wealth and their exclusion from the patrician aristocracy. They spurned idealism in favor of acquisition. To hell with the Ivy League, the symphony, refined manners and exclusive clubs: for these newcomers, only money mattered: human worth was net worth. Invisibly, this new breed infiltrated, then overran, one of our two political parties, glorying in their offensiveness to their former overlords. Now was payback time for generations of condescension and slights.
This new elite was anti-democratic, anti-idealistic, anti-scientific, anti-collaborative, anti-generous. Like gangsters, their outlook was up-from-under, vindictive, us against them, anything goes. They were against law and order, reason, even decency itself, for these were shibboleths of the despised patricians. They were against the grammar that governs these paragraphs: only wusses and saps try to talk nice.
In power, under the bogus banner of Efficiency, the new elite is breaking all the old crockery quick as they can. I and my fellow patricians look on amazed, dumbfounded, incredulous. These hooligans do not believe in America! And you can’t talk to them because they do not believe in collaboration, civility, truth, logic, competence. The opposite of conservatives, these are anarchists. Can they be stopped? And if not, what!!
History has seen this show before, where resentment-fueled rancor rises to wreck a ruling class it hates. The warfare soon turns chaotic, murderous. A new order emerges from the breakage, a new ruling class, that designs a government to suit its desires.
As a citizen and old-fashioned idealist American, I rue our moment. As an observer of the human spectacle, I am enlivened by the shock. We are not who I thought, q.e.d.! We are not nice, deep down, but beasts. Big beautiful America may have been lacquer on rot, a delusion, no conclusion. We must rethink – in a rush. Who are we, what should we do, what is right or wrong? The Nameless One has shaken me to fresh realizations. In my dreams I hear knocking at the door. Who at this hour! Maybe they’re coming for me next!