My wording in this title is a provocation part. But there is a serious point for that.
American political debates use the term “elite” in a rather poor way. Its use is pejorative rather than descriptive. The elites are the bad guys. And good elites are not really elites. We all know this and perhaps that it is inevitable in a political culture so rooted in imaging and ideology, if not always reality, of the popular rule and the power and the valuation of the ordinary American.
But the elite, in a more descriptive and non-evaluative sense, may have been the greatest revelation of this live subject experience that we have been a part since the end of January. Law firms, universities, large companies, news publications and one million other examples. We were all surprised, discouraged, dismayed, how you want to call it, by the submission of prominent and powerful. Even those who have not adopted a posture of submission have generally adopted silence. I hear him from the journalist after journalist. The kind of people they went to for quotes – many of these people no longer want to give them. And, beyond the moral evaluation, we know why: they have things at stake. A rogue president has a great unexploited and illegal or unconstitutional power but always usable to come after anyone who puts the head. Trump’s challenges were much more led by ordinary Americans.
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