Fear and Loathing and Radical Chic
Cracks in the facade of the status class.
Then, with snoots in the air, they paraded about And they opened their beaks and they let out a shout, ‘We know who is who! Now there isn't a doubt. The best kind of Sneetches are Sneetches without!’
Then, of course, those with stars all got frightfully mad. To be wearing a star now was frightfully bad. Then, of course, old Sylvester McMonkey McBean Invited them into his Star-Off Machine.
Then, of course from then on, as you probably guess, Things really got into a horrible mess.
All the rest of that day, on those wild screaming beaches, The Fix-it-Up Chappie kept fixing up Sneetches. Off again! On again!
In again! Out again! Through the machines they raced round and about again, Changing their stars every minute or two.
They kept paying money. They kept running through Until neither the Plain nor the Star-Bellies knew Whether this one was that one...or that one was this one Or which one was what one...or what one was who.
Then, when every last cent
Of their money was spent, The Fix-it-Up Chappie packed up
And he went.
-Dr. Suess, The Sneeches and Other Stories.
Tom Wolfe attended a party one January evening in 1970 and proceeded to set fire to the Cultural Elitist complex that occupied the finest penthouses in New York City. This one took place at Park Avenue and 79th Street in the apartment of Leonard and Felicia Bernstein. Wolfe’s retelling of it was published as “Radical Chic” in New York magazine.
What Wolfe did was strip the upper echelons of the well-heeled social class of their perfectly assembled and maintained patina, the High Society aloof in their penthouse apartments and private museum engagements, boozily awash in pretentions and social graces. He makes sport of the duality of people who are outwardly committed to the latest cause celeb while lamenting the very rules of fashion that must be followed to prove their genuineness:
God, what a flood of taboo thoughts runs through one’s head at these Radical Chic events…But it’s delicious. It is as if one’s nerve endings were on red alert to the most intimate nuances of status. Deny it if you want to! Nevertheless, it runs through every soul here. It is the matter of the marvelous contradictions on both sides. It is like a delicious shudder you get when you try to force the prongs of two horseshoe magnets together…them and us…
Wolfe’s greatest revelation wasn’t in the surface façade of alabaster vases and priceless Japanese bamboo baskets and the silver-plated hors d'oeuvre croquettes held by white-gloved servants disappearing into the background like a spare settee. The parties for the Black Panthers were another fashionable trend that signaled membership to their exclusive club.
The deeper revelation and its greatest legacy is exposing the feigned beneficence of the gatekeepers. Wolfe, perhaps unknowingly, foretold what happens when an entrenched elitism is sought as an antidote to the pesky and deep-rooted belief of an American idealism of meritocracy, autonomy, and faith-based morality. Those things are, in the minds of people who care for nothing other than maintaining their perch atop the institutions of power, obstacles of a nouveau aristocracy. To them, the gauche American middle class is nothing more than a collection of untrained appetites whose small minds haven’t the capacity for the cosmopolitan sensibilities as delicate as the artfully crafted canapes served from the French Laundry’s tasting menu.
What used to be termed “politically correct” is now “woke.” But the true purpose is to separate the morally good from the bad. And far from any real theological basis, this is one of performative compassion. Alliance with an aggrieved identity group is a modifier of personal morality; it is listing pronouns for your soul.
But for the status-seeking nouveau aristocracy, the performative compassion is grossly opportunistic. It involves little thought and even less sacrifice. The nobility it claims comes from the virtue it signals. The tolerance yard signs might as well say “A good, compassionate liberal lives here.” Make no mistake, there will be no real sacrifice — moral superiority doesn’t require the martyrdom of Joan of Arc, the slum living of Mother Teresa, not even the protests of Martin Luther King, Jr. Today’s activist prove their devotion to the cause by driving an electric vehicle, flying a BLM flag, or publicly disavowing potato rolls. One can even be the unquestioned champion of the unfairly “oppressed” by attending the most exclusive and glamourous social event in a designer gown displaying the words, “Tax the Rich.” Profound!
But the group that considers themselves our social, cultural, and political betters let the mask slip this month when the Supreme Court betrayed their vision for a progressive America. When the separation of classes became an issue to be exploited for the gain of the elites, the dividing lines became clear. The elite class is an institution to be protected. Any proletariat threats are absorbed into their fold and weaponized. The ire of discontent is redirected towards a better-suited antagonist: middle- and working-class Americans of whom systemic this-or-that is revealed to be the true villain. The First and Second Amendments, a culture of life versus abortion-on-demand, school choice: all demand a nation with power in the hands of the individual and out of control of a few elites who believe they are entitled to make definitive decisions for no other reason because they just know better.
This is the beginning of a turn from self-contained elitist insecurity and superficial gestures to a deeper social contagion and obsession with status and fear-stricken elites. There are cracks in the façade.
C.S. Lewis warned about the divisiveness of a status-centric society in his Memorial Lecture at King's College, University of London in 1944, “The Inner Ring.”
I believe that in all men's lives at certain periods, and in many men's lives at all periods between infancy and extreme old age, one of the most dominant elements is the desire to be inside the local Ring and the terror of being left outside…The lust for the esoteric, the longing to be inside, take many forms which are not easily recognizable as Ambition. We hope, no doubt, for tangible profits from every Inner Ring we penetrate: power, money, liberty to break rules, avoidance of routine duties, evasion of discipline. But all these would not satisfy us if we did not get in addition the delicious sense of secret intimacy.
Wolfe alluded to this on a July 9, 1975 episode of William F. Buckley’s Firing Line. Wolfe had just written The Painted Word and was commenting on his “making sport” of these self-important art critics and wealthy collectors who made status — or the singular pursuit of it — their core being. In Word, Wolfe aims his satirical fire to the world of high art. Briefly, he mentions what is taking shape as the central thesis of modern times: cultural strata as the foundation of morality and even the subversion of religion. In a sense, Wolfe says, art “[Is] really a religious thing … Art today is the religion of the educated classes.”
Wolfe was talking about art, but it can be applied more broadly to the present-day culture and what allows a person to gain entrance into the “Inner Ring.” Wolfe explains
Well, what most puts your foot in the door of heaven. And today, what most puts your foot in the door of heaven is giving to art. In fact, art today fulfills the two historical functions of religion apart from matters of theology. One is for the rich the legitimization of wealth — just as tithing used to put your foot in the door of heaven; and for people without money, it’s the established form of the abnegation of money.
They invested their energy in the false promise of bad law to enforce their rules and now they realize how close they are to being cast out of the ivory tower they built for themselves. One long-held belief after another has fallen and those instances that were reliable exercises in self-soothing and mutually assured privilege aren’t so reliable anymore.
When the people of San Francisco reject their radically progressive district attorney, when the people of Minneapolis elect to keep their police force, when Floridians cheer the passage of a bill protecting kids from sexual indoctrination, when the Supreme Court trusts states to confront questions about the sanctity of life — every act of defiance against the rule-makers is a confirmation to them that society will spin out of control without them calling the shots.
Elites label us as backward for trying to maintain a traditional value system centered on a stable family and objective morality. They chide this as regressive and unsophisticated, openly advocating for tearing down the doctrines that lead to an unqualified truth. Meanwhile, they participate in their Radical Chic ideology: projecting their fear of powerlessness onto a nation struggling to find a path out of the disorderly state they helped create.
When culture is settled in lines defined by one group to set it apart above all others, those definitions become ineradicable walls to freedom. When thinking and telling the truth becomes useless, the battle is lost. The late Richard John Neuhaus described it well, "In the absence of truth, power is the only game in town." Freedom, after all, is a dangerous thing.