THAT’S WHY IT’S SO POPULAR WITH THE INTELLIGENTSIA, WHO THINK THEY SHOULD BE HIGHER UP IN THE CLASS SYSTEM: Downton Abbey Is Downright Un-American. “In a certain sense, Downton Abbey is quite realistic: It portrays the lives of the servants as the upper class imagined them. But I would almost rather they had ignored the servants entirely instead of erecting this Potemkin village of happy servitude. . . . Americans of all people ought to know better. After all, the reason most of us are here is that our ancestors were the sort of people who became servants, rather than employed them — and they didn’t like it one bit.” Ah, but the people who rule us now feel differently.