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Pity the Postmodern Cultural Elite- by Victor Davis Hanson
pajamasmedia. ^ | July 18, 2010 | - by Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on 07/19/2010 7:19:00 AM PDT by dennisw

2) Nature. The cultural elite class tends to romanticize nature, since it has little contact with it. Energy Secretary Steven Chu cheaply announces that California farms will dry up and blow away, with no clue how the tomatoes in his salad or the lamb chops on his plate are grown, cleaned, shipped — and land in his mouth.

The more we don’t clean and eat the fish we catch, the more we don’t know an apple from a cherry tree, so the more we idolize something like a three-inch Delta smelt and shut down 500,000 acres of icky distant irrigated land to ensure the minnow-like, but beloved, fish has enough oxygenated water in the California delta.

I think that instead of SAT camp or a summer tutorial in estuary biophysics, it would be far better to assign Jason to apprentice with Mott’s septic service or Wright’s tree-trimming.

3) Muscularity. An elite is often characterized as staying fit entirely by the workout, the gym, the jog — never by chain sawing, digging, climbing, or hammering. Yet here too arises contradiction. The elite, being largely progressive, champion the muscular classes to the degree they can stay distant from them. Having good abs by crunching is far different from having big arms by using a five-foot long pneumatic drill. Expect the more cerebral our jobs, the more paranoid we will become about diet, fitness, and appearance, and the more we will romanticize, fear, and separate ourselves from those who work with their muscles. Yet get off a Massey-Ferguson after 11 hours, and one does not care how one looks — only how many grape stakes the disc took out. Not so after coming home from running a foundation or a newsroom in Washington. Much of modern elite neuroticism derives from the combination of not working physically with the desire to look as if one did.

4) Gender. Here I am worried, as I have expressed previously, about the marked differences in the way our cultural elite express themselves. Hollywood offers an instructive example. Why can’t any of our actors talk like a Humphrey Bogart, Glenn Ford, Lee Marvin, Henry Fonda, James Stewart, Bill Holden, or Gregory Peck? I’m not asking for Jack Palance or Fess Parker, just a normal male mainstream voice. I know there are Al Pacinos and Robert De Niros, but they too seem to fade before the new wave of DiCaprios. Elites talk (and probably sound) like the freedmen in Petronius’s Satyricon.

Today’s male’s voice is often far more feminine than that of 50 years ago. Sort of whiney, sort of nasally, sort of fussy. Being overexact, sighing, artificially pausing, all that seems part of the new elite parlance. In terms of vocabulary, the absolute (“he’s no damn good,” “she’s a coward,” “he ran the business to hell”) is avoided. Pejoratives and swearing resemble adolescent temper tantrums rather than threats that might well presage violence.

5) Logic. There is little logic among the cultural elite, maybe because there is little omnipresent fear of job losses or the absence of money, and so arises a rather comfortable margin to indulge in nonsense. The idea that taxes cause scarcity, and subsidy abundance is a foreign concept. The notion that entitlements create dependency is considered Neanderthal. Tough penalties supposedly do not deter crime. Abroad, military preparedness or deterrence pales in comparison to “soft” diplomatic power and clever talking. Borrowing trillions is “stimulus” and need not quite be paid back. In other words, take a deep breath and imagine the opposite of everything you know by experience to be true, and you have mostly the worldview of the sheltered cultural elite, who navigate in rather protected channels and not in the open seas of the real world.


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To: dennisw

Sissy male movie stars!! That’s why we love the rare manly guy like Jack Bauer ...

That’s why people liked the gangster series on HBO. The hero may have been a bad man, but he was a man at least.


21 posted on 07/19/2010 8:47:46 AM PDT by altura
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To: Dudoight
Hanson is a treasure and he knows of what he speaks when it comes to work. He was raised on a farm in the Fresno, California area, and his family farmed raisin grapes and struggled financially. He wrote a very good book on his youth and aggribusiness titled, Fields Without Dreams.
22 posted on 07/19/2010 8:48:58 AM PDT by Cuttnhorse ("It is terrible to contemplete how few politicians are hanged." - G.K. Chesterton, 1921)
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To: Blind Eye Jones
Oops...

There is little logic among the cultural elite, maybe because there is little omnipresent fear of job losses or the absence of money, and so arises a rather comfortable margin to indulge in nonsense.

This is the bone cruncher comment. Luxury created the nonsense that the elite indulge in. In fact, luxury helped support the hippies and liberal left since the 60s. Imagine Leonard Bernstein inviting the black panthers to his cocktail party if he had to put in a 16 hour work day on a pneumatic drill? No doubt his music would also be different too. But the salient point is that America is prosperous enough to put up with idiocy of all sorts. Once the prosperity runs out — so will the liberal idiocy.

One other sad thing about the elite is that they look to the lower classes to follow fashion and ape the street life subculture with its filthy language. They don’t lead. They are hedonistic followers who are constantly lowering the bar on culture because of their white guilt. They feel they are guilty of everything and there is a natural resentment that is built up over time, especially to parental authority that said “don’t become fascists. We fought them in the war.” So, guess what? They become fascists. Spoiled children they are — dictating a “we are the world” idiocy — in an unprecedented time of luxury.

23 posted on 07/19/2010 8:50:20 AM PDT by Blind Eye Jones
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To: piytar

“I fixed the sink, replaced the entire toilet (it was beyond repair), and fixed the basement wiring. All over one weekend. She was amazed. I was amazed by that.”

I’m going to guess she was able to fix your plumbing as well?


24 posted on 07/19/2010 9:21:21 AM PDT by equalitybeforethelaw
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To: dennisw

Excellent read. VDH gets another thumbs up.


25 posted on 07/19/2010 9:22:17 AM PDT by riri
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To: dennisw
The cultural elite class

Under socialist Humanism's central planning only the elite will decide for the many.The precarious control of man by man is inimical to the Humanist worldview. Man, who must "save himself," must be in absolute control of all aspects of his universe.

26 posted on 07/19/2010 9:25:41 AM PDT by mjp ((pro-{God, reality, reason, egoism, individualism, natural rights, limited government, capitalism}))
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To: dennisw

Today’s left wing philosophy is all based on relativity. Post modernist thought rejects any type of absolute. They claim that it is all based on Einstein’s theory of relativity, that perspective is everything and anyone who insists on absolute facts are unenlightened rubes. Consensus substitutes for scientific proof, when facts are no longer facts, but simply a different perspective.


27 posted on 07/19/2010 9:35:38 AM PDT by Eva (Aand)
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To: dennisw
Here is a link to an old FreeRepublic thread that explains the postmodernist thinking better than I have ever seen it explained.

font color=blue>Hegel's dialectic. For the first time, I think that I am beginning to understand the thought process that drives the far left. What appears so contradictory and hypocritical, the left simply views as relativity.

28 posted on 07/19/2010 9:53:22 AM PDT by Eva (Aand)
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To: dennisw

Another terrific article by VDH. And I think that is why I’m attracted to people like Sarah Palin. THose who have gotten their hand dirty (as I have in many of my earlier career paths). The been there. done that, capable labor, tradespeople, craftsmen, worker bees. This one resonsated with me, thanks for posting it.


29 posted on 07/20/2010 6:26:38 PM PDT by SueRae (I can see November from my HOUSE!)
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To: SueRae

Sarah Palin has never run a business, was a mediocre governor, and should go back to baking cookies for her bastard grandchild.


30 posted on 07/20/2010 6:29:41 PM PDT by Clemenza (Remember our Korean War Veterans)
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To: Clemenza

Lovely. She and her husband were commercial fishermen, one of the toughest and most dangerous jobs there is. And she accomplished a good deal as governor. Nice comment regarding her grandson.

Such class you’re demonstrating, shame its all low.


31 posted on 07/20/2010 7:14:29 PM PDT by SueRae (I can see November from my HOUSE!)
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To: Dudoight
He is one of this country’s truly elite in his brilliance and yet possesses common sense with roots in the ‘classic’s’.

He also maintains roots in the land. He still runs and works on the family farm -- growing raisins in the San Joaquin Valley. He has an appreciation of and an affinity for manual labor.

Thus, he is uniquely equipped to discuss not only the merits of Satyricon, but of various chain saws.

Indeed, his perspective is broader than most.

32 posted on 07/20/2010 7:43:42 PM PDT by okie01 (THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA: Ignorance on Parade)
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To: okie01

I think I read somewhere that he was a democrat at some point in his life.

He is a gentleman and a scholar....and as you pointed out has worked the soil at the family vineyard.

What is happening to this nation today goes beyond party politics...its a mentality that reeks of being ruled by ignorance, emotion and hate.


33 posted on 07/21/2010 6:12:10 AM PDT by Dudoight
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To: Dudoight
What is happening to this nation today goes beyond party politics...its a mentality that reeks of being ruled by ignorance, emotion and hate.

It's not so much Democrat vs Republican...or liberal vs conservative...it's Washington vs the rest of us.

It just so happens that most of Washington is liberal and Democrat...

34 posted on 07/21/2010 9:10:07 AM PDT by okie01 (THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA: Ignorance on Parade)
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To: okie01

From your ‘name’ I wonder if you are an Oklahoman? I was born in Tulsa...though I make my home in Texas.

If Texas decides to secede I have often thought we should take Oklahoma with us. LOL!


35 posted on 07/21/2010 11:41:19 AM PDT by Dudoight
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To: Dudoight
I am an Okie -- born and raised in Medford.

And I, too, live in Texas.

Best place in the world to be from. And to live.

36 posted on 07/22/2010 8:35:44 PM PDT by okie01 (THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA: Ignorance on Parade)
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