Elites

Read this post surrounding the "Tiger Mom" and Brett Kavanaugh.

It's hard not to wonder about how strongly a pervasive rot is taking hold at elite levels.  "Not all elites.." I guess, because there is no reason why going to Yale Law would make you a sociopath.  In fact, I had an advisee - a brilliant young man - who went to Yale Law.  I heard his voice on an NPR report where he was working pro bono for workers at a sushi restaurant who were forced to work inhuman hours and denied wages. 

No, it's not "Yale" or "Harvard" that's the problem.  Sure, it's a problem that both Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh went to Georgetown Prep.  That's a small, elite school that caters to an elite clientele.  So are we.  But we make an effort to expand beyond the narrow enclaves of the rich - so do the Ivies.  My main wish for my school is that our financial aid budget were much larger.  We have to take a certain segment of wealth, full-pay kids in order to make ends meet.  We probably do our best work, however, with those first-generation college students and students of color from disadvantaged economic backgrounds. 

What's striking about a segment of our nation's "elites" is how much they seem more and more like Versailles in 1788.  Like or hate the Bush family, there was a strong sense of national service at work in that family.  Dubya was a dumpster fire of a president, but one got the sense that he did care about the American people on some level.  That was the key to his "likability."  I really think he believed in the concept of "compassionate conservatism," he was just too much of a dope to realize he was getting played by brighter, more cynical operators.

This next wave of conservatives and elites...well, think Ted Cruz.  There really is something sociopathic about their disdain for other people.  Paul Ryan would at least try to fake concern for poor people.  But the new wave of "Conservatives" really seem to hate large swaths of people, AND they act on it. 

Watching the reactions to the Blassy-Ford/Kavanaugh dispute is in some ways no more than the predictable result of political sorting and tribalism.  Being a Republican is more important than being a woman or an ally of sexual assault victims.  You pick your political tribe before your common humanity.

But the Modern GOP has taken such extreme positions, they are increasingly forcing their adherents to adopt more and more deviant positions.  And that - hopefully, hopefully - is reducing the numbers of Republicans.  And what's more, it's reducing them to people like Donald Trump, the Man With The Golden Toilet. 

This can't possibly be sustainable.  If the GOP becomes solely the party of Elites and Racists, then our political system will be due for an even greater upheaval. 

This is where revolutions come from.