Tuesday, May 26, 2020

The Best And The Brightest

I don't want to discount the obvious aspects of nepotism and pure corruption, but when you read stories about how when Jared needs to learn something he like googles it and then calls his friends, and when an emergency requires expert people to, say, distribute lifesaving equipment, he also calls his friends, it's in part because he honestly believes that he and his friends are the smartest and best people in existence, and therefore the best people to accomplish any task. I'm not sure who he thinks writes the wikipedia pages where he learns most things that he thinks he knows, but one learns not to question the gifts that others are perpetually bestowing on us. The universe just works that way, to our benefit, and not everybody is smart enough to read AND understand the holy tablets of knowledge on the internet put there just for Jared.

I used to think elites, however defined, thought they were better than us in some kind of abstract noble bloodline sense. They didn't have to be more beautiful or smarter, because they were just better in a way that didn't even need to be defined. Our betters are just better, you see? Advanced formal dinner party cutlery skills were knowledge enough, and if they needed an expert they would call one, whose job it was to serve them.

But now I see that they truly believe they are all supergeniuses, and that other people must be inferior in all ways. The good families are the smartest and the people who go to school near Boston are the smartest, except for any African-Americans who snuck in the door, of course. It's a weird merger of nobility and educational meritocracy. They don't even need to win the rigged meritocracy game, but they do, because it's rigged, and that they can rig it is just proof yet again of their superiority.

Not many people know this - whatever "this" is - but Donald and Jared do.