THE FAILURE OF THE ELITES IS WIDELY APPARENT: Oliver Anthony Strikes A Chord Where The Right And Left Agree: Our Failed Elites.

It’s not that they refer to meat and cheese plates as charcuterie or that we have elites, Gabriel notes, but that the quality of our current crop has gotten so poor. “Elites of previous eras won world wars, established lasting peace, raised prosperity around the globe and transformed a backwater set of colonies into a global hegemon,” he adds. “Today’s crew can’t defeat third-world foes, police our cities, pay their bills, or keep the power on.”

I’d add they can’t even do corruption right. The elites used to be competent when it came to greasing their pockets, maintaining plausible deniability, and the illusion of playing by the same rules as everyone else. Now, every representative who plays Wall Street is a wizard and the White House can wave away obvious influence-peddling schemes with “well, everyone does it.” Long gone is any sense of circumspection or noblesse oblige, which is something that people without special privileges tend to notice.

Our tastemakers in the media and D.C. can pretend that people’s natural responses to those changes is an act of faux outrage at those new truths. They can howl about how only they get to be the populists’ rebel musicians, speaking truth to power. Or they can acknowledge that they’re not very good at being elites and that failure invites such populist sentiments as those Anthony articulates.

Don’t expect them to, though.

They’re awful, and so full of themselves at the same time.