Sycophancy Should Not Be a Resume Enhancer

"What’s really going on, I think, is that the nature of class war has changed. The old virus has mutated. The old social and political divisions have given way to two new classes — rather as on the trains. Those in economy are most of us, paying for the comforts of those in first class. And those in first class are the new political class — all those who owe their advancement and their security and their pensions and their privileges not to their backgrounds or their talents, or even necessarily their political parties, but to the state and our taxes."

Minette Marrin.

I think she is on to something and though this author is British and writing in reference to Britain the same phenomenon is reaching the shores of the United States. As Americans, we reject largely, the idea of nobility. Particularly special status granted by birth right or favor. We, largely, reject the notion of special status by way of unearned and undeserved privilege.

Yet, we can see it and sense it in the halls of our governments, in the schools of our communities and in the offices of our civic leaders. It is exactly the disgust we feel toward such a system that is fueling the tea party movements. Everyday, ordinary Americans, incidentally the people who have made this country the engine of the world, are recognizing that the world of the ivy leaguer and the VIP by name is worse off than the world would be if ran by Mr. and Mrs. Smith of Main Street. They also see that they are the people solely responsible for funding this orgy of incompetence sure to bring about heir own demise. They are funding their own destruction and they want it to stop.

Americans will entertain the notion of nobility only so far. They accept the movie stars and their offspring living lives of opulence. Maybe because of the knowledge that so many have come from nothing and so many never will enter that stratosphere. Maybe, too, because they receive something in return, diversion and entertainment. They also have a sort of schadenfreude when they see through the tabloid windows that all is not perfect in the lives of opulence. On some level, too, exists a knowledge that their wealth and prestige is earned through some control of the consumer. We choose whether to dish out ten bucks for the latest Brad Pitt box office release or to pay $17 for the Miley Cyrus t-shirt.

We also accept our Bill Gates and Steve Jobs model moguls. Largely self made men or women who won the lottery of life through determination, skill, smarts, timing, intuition and luck. People who, in turn, have brought us products or services that have revolutionized our lives for the better. Again, we got something out of the equation. Millions of others road their backs to lesser but still beyond their dreams standards of living.

However, these new elites -- we gain nothing from their self imposed status. They ride our backs to comfort and prestige. They do not create wealth. Rather, they destroy it. They do not elevate citizens or inspire them to higher levels. Rather, they encourage and institute policies that insure the citizen's own permanent mediocrity in the name of equality.

What is worse, they divide people. They pit one group against another against another to keep the ire and attention directed anywhere but at their own ineptitude and their own lack of greatness. Like bulldozers, they make their way through our society destroying and devaluing everything they come into contact with. They rouse the rabble and on the backs of the poor they claim to represent they ride their first class seats and make permanent offices in their ivory towers.

Like a bolshevik street fighter in the early 1900's, I watch as the public grows weary with the gluttony of the political class. Everyday, more would welcome watching this new nobility stripped of their positions of prestige and be forced to survive in a world where sycophancy is not a resume booster. The world most of us choose to live in.

h/t to Samizdata http://www.samizdata.net/blog/