The recent election has made me reflect on a time in my life when I was awakened to a truth about myself that I had never realized. Great Britain annoys me. Now most of my life I admired the British. They were the land of Shakespeare, Milton, Tolkein, the land of common law, the ones who planted liberty in the colonies that made up the original United States. Of course they betrayed that heritage as laid out in the list of grievances from the Declaration of Independence. For most of my life, I only skimmed that part of the Declaration, so enthralled was I with the timeless rhetoric of the introduction, and the courageous challenge of the conclusion.
Then in the late 90’s I found myself working for a company that was bought by a British company. Actually, bought by one and then traded to another, but no matter. Suddenly all the company communiques (Do they have newsletters in England?) were filled with details about Lord Hoohaw and Sir Umptysquat. Many Americans seem to have a fondness for Queen Elizabeth, Princess Diana, and the other female British royals—not so much the males it seems—but these newsletters grated on me like sandpaper on fresh pine. Why was that? Let’s start with the US Constitution. No citizen of our country refers to America as the mother country or the fatherland. We may love our vast horizons, our beaches, our mountains, even our deserts and wide open spaces, but that is a bonus. To become an American citizen you pledge to support and defend the Constitution, not a monarch, not even a country, but a document—our founding set of laws codified in some 4500 words, about 15 pages including 25 amendments (although the 21st merely repealed the 18th ). Article 1, Section 9, Clause 8 states:
“No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”
In fact, it annoys me every time someone addresses a former office holder by the title appropriate to their highest attained office. So, calling somebody President Bush or President Clinton, or even Senator Huffenpuff after they’ve left office, strikes me as offensive. I greatly prefer the attitude of a former President, Theodore Roosevelt, who wrote on his 3rd trip abroad in 12 years:
“I have enjoyed it greatly, yet the more I see, the better satisfied I am that I am an American; free born and free bred, where I acknowledge no man as my superior, except for his own worth, or as my inferior, except for his own demerit.”
Why does our recent election remind me of this? Both during and, especially, in the aftermath of this election, there has been much talk of “the out of touch elites” (by Trump supporters) and the “deplorables, garbage, or ultra MAGAs” (by Harris supporters). At the end of this essay, I’ll discuss terms, but, instead of elites, I think the more appropriate word is aristocracy. Our last president without an Ivy League degree was Ronald Reagan. For nearly 40 years, our Presidents and Supreme Court Justices have come exclusively from Ivy League universities. Likewise for many of the opinion writers and “experts” cited by them. A typical cabinet meeting might as well be a Skull & Bones reunion. Over the last 40 years, these people have formed their own society at the top of the urban hierarchy in trendy urban neighborhoods. The only time they see someone from outside their Ivy League alumni circle is when they need a plumber or a gardener.
In America, you can be poor, even homeless, but you can never be a peasant. In America, there is always the possibility of bettering your condition. Not the likelihood, just the possibility. In America you can become Stephen King, Beyonce, Kanye West, Al Sharpton, or Arnold Schwarzenegger. In a European country, you are always a peasant as John Lennon sings in Working Class Hero. In America, you can be a failure, and, if you’re born poor are more likely to be, but you can never be a peasant. Americans may have sympathy for you if circumstances or fate conspire against you, but, deep down, the American belief is that you are responsible for the circumstances of your own life. The new American would-be aristocracy does not believe that, but the average American does. That is one of the fundamental divides in this country. The “elites” believe compassion requires them to take care of the poor, the addicted, the petty criminals because their circumstances inevitably led them to that tragic circumstance. The “deplorables” believe that most of the time your circumstances are due to your hard work and talent, or your fault for not working hard enough, or sacrificing, but instead taking the easy way out with drugs or government handouts. That’s why the “elites” think the “deplorables” are racists and bigots, and the “deplorables” think the “elites” are snobbish jerks who want to make life worse for those poor who strive to better themselves. Can you see how they fail to understand each other?
Now, some clarity on terms.
Elite—no, rather Aristocracy—in the standard American phrase, the “elite” were born on third base and think they hit a triple. They think the poor can’t help their miserable conditions, so they need to be taken care of. In their worldview, to think otherwise is to believe the poor need to be crushed. The typical urban aristocrat views the government as the dispenser of compassion. The rural American views the government as “force” in George Washington’s terms, not compassion. When a hurricane strands their neighbors, they gather their resources and set out to rescue them. They see the government instead put up barriers to that because the “peasants” might do it wrong (accidentally of course, not their fault, they just don’t see the nuance that the experts see). The rural American sees the government as taking his money in taxes and giving it to the degenerate who’s likely to break into his house and steal from him or shoot his child on the street in a robbery.
Capitalism—no, rather Free Enterprise. Capitalism is a slur invented by Karl Marx. Perhaps it applies to currency manipulators like George Soros or stock traders like Warren Buffet, but it does not apply to Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, or Elon Musk. The latter are people who build things, and yes, they need to accumulate capital to do it, but the system that allows them to do that is freedom. Free enterprise allows you to create things that people want and to get them to willingly part with their money to make their own lives better. It’s not wrong for you to make a profit off that. You build a successful electric car company, profit handsomely, and build a rocket company. You use your better rockets to put up a satellite network that supplies rural areas with high speed access to the web, rather than spend $3 billion in taxes to run cables to Coyoteville, Wyoming.
Musings of a Restless Mind 