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To: Nick Danger
He talks about "elites" as though these folks just aren't like you and me, because it's impossible to crack through the Invisible Wall and get one of those 7,000 jobs unless you're one of them. Oh, horsefeathers. Our very own World's Richest Man is a college dropout. The previous president of the United States -- may he rot in Hell -- grew up in such decidedly poor surroundings that even today people refer to him as "white trash."

Yeah, we have a few families that the media like to wave in front of us as some sort of hereditary nobility, but so what? To walk around thinking that opportunity in America is closed to all but a select few is the dumbest, most self-defeating claptrap I can imagine. Elites, schmelites.

Nick, you could use a good dose of Vilfredo Pareto, Gaetano Mosca, and James Burnham. Like too many conservatives, you have bought into the Horatio Alger myth, and failed to grasp how elites function in society. Pay some attention to some intelligent conservatives who have studied the question of elites in great detail; had all conservatives done so 50-60 years ago, we might not now be in the mess we are in. We can't very well fight a phenomenon we do not understand (elites).

For one thing, your understanding of elites is rather shallow and media oriented: the real elites aren't well known to the general public and don't often show up on TV. Bill Clinton isn't a member of any ruling elite; he was, rather, an employee of the ruling elite. It was no accident that this "poor white trash" got a Rhodes scholarship (no Horatio Alger, he). Clinton's inherent corruption and corruptability made him an especially useful tool, since there was no chance of Clinton ever standing up to his "betters" and asserting his principles (if he had any) or his better judgement (if he had one), because the elite "had the goods" on Clinton since before he entered politics. Likewise Bill Gates is not a member of the ruling elite, although with his money, he could become one if he wanted to, and if he played by the elite's unwritten rules. But Gates isn't a political animal.

23 posted on 06/11/2002 6:44:29 PM PDT by Vast Buffalo Wing Conspiracy
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To: Vast Buffalo Wing Conspiracy
the real elites aren't well known to the general public and don't often show up on TV

... mmmmh, care to enlighten us who these mysterious elites are ? I am sure you know them.
30 posted on 06/11/2002 7:32:56 PM PDT by Economist_MA
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