Friday, March 31, 2023

Hierarchies

One thing I've appreciated more and more with age is how much our elites tend to share the conservative view of the inviolate nature of "natural" hierarchies. For more liberal leaning (as self-identified) people, they make this sound more pleasing by calling it "meritocracy" so we can pretend this is about individual achievement rather than inherited privilege and other forms of luck, but "meritocracy" (both conceptually and certainly as a description of reality) is just the same bullshit repackaged.

The president's the top dog, no one can touch him.