What We Have Here Is a Failure to Communicate
27th October 2010
Charles Murray follows up on his smackdown of the Crust.
The thesis of the piece is that a New Elite has come into existence that is more segregated from mainstream American society than elites of the past—not “elite” in the sense of wealthy bluebloods from Beacon Hill, but “elite” in the sense of the people who run the most important media outlets, the executives who run the nation’s leading companies and financial institutions, the academicians who teach at the leading universities, and politicians and administrators in senior positions in government.
What Mencius Moldbug calls ‘the Cathedral’ and what I refer to as ‘the Crust’. Welcome to the party, Dr. Murray. Took you long enough.
Some readers have responded by saying that there are lots of different “mainstreams” in American life, and the white working class doesn’t understand the black middle class or Latino farm workers or the New Elite any more than the New Elite understands them. Absolutely true. But only one of those groups shapes legislation, crafts regulations, litigates constitutional jurisprudence, and in other ways has the power to affect profoundly the lives of their fellow citizens. I don’t care if truck drivers can’t empathize with the priorities of Yale economics professors. I do care if Yale economics professors (or producers of the News Hour or the Secretary of Commerce or employers of thousands of workers) haven’t a basis in their own life experiences for understanding the priorities of truck drivers.