Pseudo-Populism of the Elitists

A week or so before the November 2008 presidential elections, my support of VP-candidate Palin through one of my blog posts, caught the attention of Journolist founder Ezra Klein. He had then deigned to respond to it with a blog post entitled Populism of Mediocrity. In his short rebuttal, Mr. Klein submits that he may not fully understand why ordinary people like me could identify with Palin and could throw our unstinting support for her causes. But the title of his blog post tells us already what he thinks about the kind of people I presumably stand for and of course, about Sarah Palin herself. Our populism has been judged as that of mediocrity.

Sadly but admittedly, the ensuing election proved that more people found favor with the way Mr. Klein’s candidate was glowingly presented before the electorate and thus Obama was awarded the presidency. Though buyer’s remorse may now be a common wail of many who threw their support to him like many Independents, finding his governance miserably falling short of his high-minded campaign rhetoric. And if we are to assume good faith and goodwill on the part of his many supporters in media and elsewhere, many ought to be suffering from this malady, too. But I suppose not for the proud or the hard-core partisan ideologues in media who continue to find Obama’s governance as just fine.

But the many revelations exhumed by the leaked emails from the Journolist put in clearer perspective why certain media/political operatives think the way they do about ordinary Americans.

That first, they appear to consider themselves specially privileged and thus separate and distinct from the world inhabited by the many of us who toil each day trying to make a good living while diligently obeying the laws of the land and trying our damned best to be ethical, honorable, equitable and fair in our conduct with government and our fellow citizens.

And maybe insulated or isolated from such everyday realities, it is no small wonder many in their numbers are quite disconnected with regular folks, what the latter consider ethical or what they aspire for. In their echo chambers (as exemplified by the almost secretive membership in cabal-like Journolist), they can let their hair and their guards down and really be what they truly are – smug in the tacit acknowledgement of their avowed cognitive superiority and conversely quite condescending in their treatment of the rest of the country – the great unwashed that need to be babied and cared for and guided by the big hand of government and its many omniscient bureaucrats, bolstered and validated by the able assistance of their intellectual counterparts. And in their blinding zeal, they truly are convinced that they are doing God’s work, for after all they have the best of intentions. To protect and care for humanity.