Could even my success happen in this day and age? If I was in the same boat I was in during the early nineties, now, could do the same thing? According to this Economist article, it’s probably nowhere near as likely.
The most vivid evidence of social sclerosis comes from politics. A country where every child is supposed to be able to dream of becoming president is beginning to produce a self-perpetuating political elite. George Bush is the son of a president, the grandson of a senator, and the sprig of America’s business aristocracy. John Kerry, thanks to a rich wife, is the richest man in a Senate full of plutocrats. He is also a Boston brahmin, educated at St Paul’s, a posh private school, and Yale?where, like the Bushes, he belonged to the ultra-select Skull and Bones society.
Mr Kerry’s predecessor as the Democrats’ presidential nominee, Al Gore, was the son of a senator. Mr Gore, too, was educated at a posh private school, St Albans, and then at Harvard. And Mr Kerry’s main challenger from the left of his party? Howard Brush Dean was the product of the same blue-blooded world of private schools and unchanging middle names as Mr Bush (one of Mr Bush’s grandmothers was even a bridesmaid to one of Mr Dean’s). Mr Dean grew up in the Hamptons and on New York’s Park Avenue.
The most remarkable feature of the continuing power of America’s elite?and its growing grip on the political system?is how little comment it arouses. Britain would be in high dudgeon if its party leaders all came from Eton and Harrow. Perhaps one reason why the rise of caste politics raises so little comment is that something similar is happening throughout American society. Everywhere you look in modern America?in the Hollywood Hills or the canyons of Wall Street, in the Nashville recording studios or the clapboard houses of Cambridge, Massachusetts?you see elites mastering the art of perpetuating themselves. America is increasingly looking like imperial Britain, with dynastic ties proliferating, social circles interlocking, mechanisms of social exclusion strengthening and a gap widening between the people who make the decisions and shape the culture and the vast majority of ordinary working stiffs.
The Economist: Ever higher society, ever harder to ascend: 12/29/04
via dangerousmeta.
Do I hear echoes of the book “The Power Elite” here?
This is actually nothing new. This country and its ideals were founded on imperialistc and self perpetuation, in the guise of the “aemrican dream” of “equality”
I have called bullshit on what this country and even this world really stand for, a long time ago.
When people argue from extreme vantage points, the other side tunes out.
You just insulted Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. Not cool.
Pointing out that they and we havn’t lived up to their ideals would be more effective – and more accurate.
Oh, don’t get me wrong now my good hard rockin’ friend. 🙂 Franklin, Jefferson and the like have my respect for their amazing lifelong accomplishments that even today are still realize and felt, but the underlying reasons for why this country was founded are diguised in some righteous cause. Boil away all of the so-called history and you are left with a bunch of old rich white men who wanted to own their own land and not pay taxes on it. That is the only thing the revolution was about. That was their circle and to this day, although more more compl;ex and fitted with many more “layers” is still the sanme elite circle that you and I can never get into. Even if we had that kind of money.
The ideals I pointed out were just masks for what the real reasons were. When I hear about the very “foundations” of this country, I cringe and feel queasy because the true foundations of this country are bullshit. The disguises in which we worship, all great ideals are just that, disguises. They are not the true foundations of the country. A good example of one of these diguises as that “all men are created equal” but that was far from the truth. It should have read all white males of a certain age and class and religion and race (chinese men who worked the railroads could not vote, nor could jews) are created equal. The founding father set up rules to accomdate them and their interests. It took damn near 200 years before those rules were extended a little bit to allow everyone equal rights in this country.
So again, to hear people talk about what a great foundation we have, that our founding fathers were fair to everyone in in their ideals, just doesn’t fly with me. I have read too many telling books in this subject to come to that conclusion.
Again, Karl, I urge you to read “The Power Elite” and you will begin to see where I am coming from and it would real hit hard the original point of your post. It is actually quite disturbing and enlightening of how truly seperate the working clas is from the “elite” of the country. And how powerless we really are.
All of the founding fathers had much more to lose by participating in the revolution than thay had to gain by it. All of them. Many payed the ultimate price.
>>“good example of one of these diguises as that “all men are created equal” but that was far from the truth. It should have read all white males of a certain age and class and religion and race”
Did the founding fathers live up to their own high ideals? No. But that’s common knowledge. Most people don’t come anywhere near as close. What makes the founding father’s so special is that as a group they recognized their inadequacy in achieving their aims warned about the future. Read their letters to each other. They knew they couldn’t get to where they wanted to go – but tried their very best given the time they lived in. I say it again – read their letters to each other. Read “Founding Brothers”. An actual history book.
>>“the same elite circle that you and I can never get into”…
Tell that to President Bill Clinton – a person who has a personal story equal in pain and hardship to my own.
Cynicism keeps your mind closed to possibilities and keeps you in your place.