When Angelo Codevilla’s essay on America’s ruling class came out in The American Spectator, I read it with interest. Good stuff. But then, according to later reports, the essay went viral, and I started hearing political candidates referring to our “ruling class.” The essay was such a hit that they rushed it into print as a small book, which I dutifully bought, and read again. Really good stuff. I am convinced that one of the reasons it caught on is that it is a bit of writing that has tremendous explanatory power. When you live in a culture that resembles what the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party would have looked like had Lewis Carroll taken a few hits of acid before setting himself to the task of composition, if there is one thing that you want to encourage more of, it would be essays with explanatory power.
With the election today, we are at a transition point. Codevilla’s use of the word “class” is on target and telling. Class does not refer to industry, education, ability, or intelligence level. It refers to an indefinable “other kind of thing” that allows members of the ruling class to decline to engage with arguments and perspectives that are beneath them, even if the accepted upper crust assumptions are demonstrably crazy. In times of upheaval, like the present time, all that gets overturned, and in the melee that follows, the thing to watch for is the formation of the next ruling class. And those with a satellite dish have a front row seat.