Back in the good, old days, the elites did what they wanted and the peasants did what they were told. Any uppity serf who dared dissent quickly found themselves on the wrong end of a noose. The lords of the manor didn’t have to worry about “public relations” — “PR” back then was short, sharp and fatal and delivered without mercy by the m’lud’s retainers.
Oh, how the modern elites must yearn for such simpler times. At least ever since the Parisian mobs got a bit antsy about the opulence of Versailles, when they were starving to death, the elites have at least had to pretend to give more than a rat’s ass what the peasants think.
But pendulums inevitably swing back and the new elites are hardly even bothering to pretend, any more. Because they’re better than you — and they know it.
If there’s a defining feature of modern progressives’ self-image, it’s the idea that — by dint of their supposedly superior education, their association with like-minded members of global elites and their immersion in the various rites of the contemporary secular religion — they are more knowledgeable and virtuous than you, the inferior classes.
At the same time, the left’s self-image is founded on the notion that they’re for the “oppressed”. And if the oppressed are by definition morally superior, then the last thing the left will admit is that they’re the oppressors now. When your entire worldview is predicated on power — who has it and is thus bad, and who doesn’t and is therefore supremely virtuous — the last thing you’re going to admit is that you’re the one with all the power.
There’s been a social revolution in this country and the wider West in the past 50 years in which, by a remarkable inversion, the left — which used to represent the interests of the outsiders, the disadvantaged — is in almost total control of the institutions of the establishment.
They are the masters now. And like masters through most of history — from tribal chiefs to Roman patricians, absolutist monarchs and totalitarian tyrants — their superiority is such that the rules they make don’t apply to them.
Why else do you think we’ve been treated to a cavalcade of Covidian politicians and their hangers-on openly partying maskless in fancy restaurants, visiting salons and beaches, while sternly lecturing we peasantry that none of those things are allowed?
Why else do you think Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez sees no problem with flaunting a “tax the rich” designer dress, maskless, while her attendants are dutifully masked?
Why else do you think the elite openly swan about the world in fleets of private jets and limousines, only to whoop it up at exotic resorts, from where they finger-wag the rest of us about the dire consequences of our own consumption?
The ultimate demonstration of the gulf between our leaders’ alarmist prescriptions and the reality of life for the rest of us can be witnessed in an energy crisis that is pushing up fuel bills for hard-pressed working people, thanks in large part to policies that have prematurely reduced gas production, inexplicably killed off nuclear power in countries like Germany, and made our fragile economy dependent on wind power when the wind doesn’t blow and solar power when the sun don’t shine.
The Australian
“We have to save the planet!” they shrill. But by “we”, they mean “you”.
“They” get to enjoy all the luxuries of a fossil-fuelled, energy-intensive lifestyle, while salving their pampered egos that “they” are saving the planet. It’s “you” who has to pay. Never “them”.