We can all agree on that, but who are these people?
They are Politicians. Or they are rich people on the right who control the government from the inside. Or they are rich people on the left who control the government from the inside. Or they are highly educated left wingers and progressives in academia. Or they are Republicans or Democrats based on the results of the last election.
How are the elites destroying the country?
They are fomenting insurrection by pushing for equal rights that we already have. Or they are fomenting insurrection by blocking access to equality and stepping on the necks of the less fortunate. Or they are weakening the military. Or they are bankrupting us with excessive military spending. Or they are taking us down the road to communism. Or they are taking us down the road to fascism. Or they are factoring God out of the moral equation. Or they have enshrined a false view of history. Or they are taxing us to death. Or their border and immigration policies will destroy us.
Proposed: Let’s stop believing in conspiracies. There is no “elite” group controlling the world and at the same time trying to destroy it. That deluded mind set has dominated human thinking since the beginning and in every part of the world.
Hitler claimed Jewish bankers were ruling the world. McCarthy claimed it was communists.
History, if we take the time to listen, tells us a fundamental truth. Pessimists who believe the country or the world needs to be “fixed,” are everywhere. but their opinions on the source of the problem are all over the map and their opinions always reflect their personal bias.
Rudyard Kipling wrote “The Man who would be King” (1888). It was a movie in 1975. It is a story about two British adventurers in British India who become kings of Kafiristan, a remote part of Afghanistan. The story opens with the two British soldiers traveling upriver and going from village to village. They have rifles and are seen by the villagers as powerful people. At each village the villagers ask for their assistance against the “bad people.” It turns out that the “bad people” are always the people higher up who are always pissing and shitting in their stream. The two men promise to help, and the grateful people are always happy and give the two men gifts. As they continue their journey towards the headwaters, the people they leave behind always cheer. At each new village, the scene repeats itself. Things go very well for the two men until the end inevitably arrives.
All social systems have elites because we are hard wired by evolution for hierarchy. Some people have a strong drive to dominate through coercion. Others–bankers, janitors, et al–are busy providing service to customers through voluntary exchange. Liberty is morally superior to the alternative.
The post entitled The Elites are destroying the Country attempted to use the term “elite” in a figurative way. The point is that people often irrationally and enviously blame their problems and difficulties on people who seem to be more successful, even if only slightly more successful.