Have's vs Have-Too's

One of the most ironic things about the political revolution that manifested itself with battle cry "Make America Great Again" is its inherent ideological contradiction. Although Trump supporters never explicitly explain what "America" they want to bring back, implicit is the notion that they want to see again the dominant, stable U.S. of the post war II period. A country characterized by economic stability, a rising middle class; a country where people could pay for their own college education with a waiter's wage, and where corporate employees could rely on the certainty that their corporation looked at them as life partners who deserved to retire with juicy defined benefit pensions. 

Where's the contradiction, you ask? Well, the political leaning of the era --the one that allowed stability and prosperity for its middle class--was markedly left-leaning: the New Deal of FDR, the Great Society of LBJ. Even Republican Eisenhower knew better than going against the institutions that lent that post WWII period the nostalgic solidity Trump fans would like to go back to: 

Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these things . . . [but] their number is negligible and they are stupid.

                                                                                                     Dwight Eisenhower, in a letter to his brother 

Elites have a delicate balance to keep. Really hard to pull off, if you ask me. On the one hand, you want to close access to the Elite's ranks, because, what is an Elite without exclusiveness, really? Let us start by acknowledging (with brutal honesty) that there's an inherent satisfaction we humans get from seeing our peers from a relative higher perch, no matter our absolute status in the social ladder. Gladwell framed this in the positive narrative of Caroline Sacks, who needed to be put in the absolute less competitive University of Maryland --where she'd be a relative superior-- but instead went to absolute more competitive (Ivy League) Brown University --where she was relative inferior, and ultimately failed. She didn't have the satisfaction motivation of seeing her peers from above. But (crucially) on the other hand, Elite's permanence nurtures itself from the legitimacy of its very existence, whereby its subjects (i.e. the inferiors) accord it its superior status in exchange for the possibility of one day --if they play their cards right-- being able to be themselves part of the privileged Elite. 

The Have's (Elite card-carrying members) dangle their Elite-making Pixie Dust in front of the Have-Nots --who are, to describe them more accurately, longing Have-Too's. They too want look at their peers from above. And the Have's have the power to anoint them... if the Have-Too's behave well, that is. Therein resides the true power of an enduring Elite. Not in the money the hoard, or in the comfort they enjoy, or in the control of the law and courts they exert to do their bidding, but in the illusion they build around the idea that the gates are wide open for those who abide by cannon, behave well, worship the Elite, don't rock the boat, and perpetuate the status quo. 

The power to anoint is the Elite's true asset: To make Have-Too's do something in the pursuit of their perceived self-interest while at the same time perpetuating the very status quo that shuts the vast majority out. After all, and in the words of E. Digby Baltzell:

...affluence without authority breeds alienation...

And alienation poisons the soil where Social Capital grows. That's why the Have's need preachers who proselytize and can give testimony of their bona-fide life stories. Verifiable rags-to-reaches stories of formerly Have-Too's minted into Have's who can now pridefully --and with satisfaction-- look down upon those they grew up with. 

There is a problem though. These days there are too few of those boda fide testimonies. And most concerning, there is an oversupply of Have-Too's. People who play by the rules, attend college, rack up ungodly amounts of debt, who were promised by the Elite: "behave well and you will be rewarded" who are quite simply getting the shaft. It's actually worse than this: there's an even bigger oversupply of Dunning-Kruger Have-Too's who don't know they don't know but think they legitimately have a shot deserve a spot in the Elite (because they follow @TheRoaringKittie).    

Social Media destroying society. Exhibit #1 (you still have to admire the comedic talent?)

There is an implicit Elite dilution in the act of anointing Have-Too's into newly minted Have's. The Elite knows this, and they don't want to overdo it. But do it too little, and you have a social ticking time bomb. Therein lies the Elite's dilemma. These days, they can't dilute their ranks fast enough even if they wanted to (newsflash: they don't). The line of Have-Too's at the entrance of the Have's hot nightclub extends around the block several times over, and all have their shiny diplomas entry tickets, legitimately demanding be let in. What's worse is that behind them comes an angry mob of revelers 10X bigger ordering the bouncer to let them in too, armed with a screenshot of a Tweet of Chamath that convinced them they are the righteous successor of the rotten Elite that's historically kept them out of the party. 

Elites are scared. The Barbarians are (literally) at the gates, and they want heads on spikes. Which is why they're in appeasement mode: The Business RoundTable and its declaration of the advent of "stakeholder capitalism". The Fed's 180-turn in Jackson Hole elevating full employment as a primary goal of theirs --inflation be damned.  The first round of stimmies. The second round of stimmies. The third round of stimmies. The newly proposed entitlement act infrastructure act.

The left-leaning social contract established with the New Deal and subsequent sets of policy choices was itself a panicked response to the collapse brought about by the Depression and the World Wars. It breathed life to a period of relative economic stability, where the Have-Too's of the time had a somewhat decent shot at becoming part of the Elite --until the model exhausted itself in the 70's with inflation and the Reagan revolution rebuilt the narrative that lured the Have-Too's of the time --"greed is good". Now that model is finally unraveling (yes, pushed by the pandemic), and we're witnessing (in real time) another realignment in the way the Elite reasserts itself as the proverbial anointer of new recruits. The Elite is reconstructing the narrative it intends to employ for the foreseeable future. 

What it is, I still don't know, but it'd better be something better than 

"all you need to make it is a stimmie, a Coinbase account and to come up with the most asinine name for your own Shitcoin"

Because, if it is, we're in deep trouble.