Meet the Real Elites
The pains of this election come in waves like the plagues of Egypt. After the initial shock and horror died down, next comes the insufferable smugness of the pro-Trump independent journalists. If you spend any time on social media platforms amidst the protruding skeletal frame of legacy media’s beached corpse then you’ll recognise the names of a few of the circling vultures. Chief among them Matt Taibbi, of course, but you’ve got your Bari Weiss, Glenn Greenwald, Jonathan Chait, Lee Fang, Michael Shellenberger, et cetera.
These aren’t pundits in the style of Tucker Carlson or Megyn Kelly, they’re not so far to the right that they’re cutting eye holes out of their pillow cases. In so far as they can be grouped together I’ve seen people float pejoratives like alt-left or post-left. I have no idea if they consider themselves to inhabit a category in the tradition of the incredibly cringeworthy “Intellectual Dark Web” of some years back. But they do undoubtedly consider themselves the intellectual wing of the Trump movement, often preferring to be seen less as pro-Trump than they are anti-Democrat, and looking down on the common Trump supporter every bit as much as on the common Democrat as all little more than vulgar human refuse.
I coined a term for a certain type of person who I don’t think otherwise has a really good term but I think everyone will know them when they see them or try to listen to them talk. I call them polluxes, due to their resemblance to the character Pollux Troy from the movie Face/Off.
These people are infuriating in a way that triggers a very ancient evolutionary marker in the primordial sub-basements of our brains, an instinct that makes our fists ball up because it dates to a time before spears when we had to punch our prey to death. They know they’re infuriating and they revel in being infuriating, but here’s the thing—they don’t understand why they’re infuriating. They think it’s because they’re winning. It’s not.
The best visual marker of a Pollux is that they are making this face most of the time, but particularly when they think they’re owning a lib.
You’ll see a lot of celebratory snark coming from their general direction for a while about how the “elites” have been defeated at last, but you won’t find any definitions of “elite” because they’re counting on you simply mentally associating the term with people who authoritatively tell you things you either disagree with or don’t want to know.
But who are the elites? Taibbi uses this word a lot and certainly doesn’t seem to think it applies to himself, someone who was born into a prominent media family and is widely considered the heir to an entire subgenre of postmodern creative non-fiction.
When you actually break it down and try to define elite in the way that they want you to define it, you’ll see that it makes almost no sense, often comically so. The elites, in Trump world, are a vast group consisting of CNN journalists, Hollywood actors, musicians, union leaders, climatologists, epidemiologists, your high school teachers, your doctor, and evil billionaires who invest in charities, healthcare, and nonprofits.
Counter to that, the heroic fighters of the elites are… Rupert Murdoch, Alex Jones, the Trump family, and good billionaires who smash unions, fight against public health, invest in debunked race science, go on TV, and tell you to go fuck yourself.
I read something the other day that I think might be the most astute “nailed it” observation I’ve ever read about the definition of “elite” and I’m upset that I didn’t note down where I saw it so I can properly credit it—please inform me in the comments if you know—but it’s simply: When saying “elite,” the left means plutocrats, while the right means technocrats. They talk past each other because neither side is using the same frame of reference.
I take a different point of view. The definition of “elite” that works best for me is these Pollux assholes who have become the Mouth of Sauron for the plutocracy. They tell their audience what they want to hear—your gut instincts about these mendacious so-called experts is correct—and they will do the dirty work of insulting the people you hate in better words than you could while you cheer at the sidelines. “Get ‘em, big bro!”
These guys all talk about freedom of speech as one of the most important principles of society, and I agree with them. I actually agree with them more than they agree with them, because for all their big talk about freedom of speech they are really just talking about something specific, conditional, and frankly less honest than I am.
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