Sorry Guys, Margaret Wente is Right. Almost.

Margaret Wente’s Globe and Mail column of a few days ago — “Do you belong to the Elites? Take this test and see!” — caused a bit of a stir on this blog and other places. I’m going to commit the ultimate heresy: Margaret Wente, everyone’s favourite bête noir, is correct in the main premise of her column, but goes astray in drawing conclusions.

You may kindly direct flames at CK, the owner of this blog.

Aside from the silly quiz (more on that presently) the column contains, Wente’s basic point is that our vaunted meritocracy has created a self-perpetuating, segregated elitist class, supported and cosseted by an enormously expensive higher educational system that has effectively barred the working and the larger part of the middle class from entering it. It’s this elite which controls the levers of power in every aspect of society, from politics, through the educational system, the professions, and business. They run the world.

Does anyone really doubt this elite exists? Seriously?

I’m not saying, of course, that St. Margaret-of-Front-Street is without error, of course. She’s mistaken to the point of being patronizing in using the notion of an elite to beat the Left like a rented mule, as if anyone who enjoys live theatre and likes the slow food movement is a progressive snot. Let’s clarify Wente’s condescension here: “ordinary”, non-elite Canadians, Margaret, do know what both NPR and MMA stand for. We’ve been to both tailgate parties and Luminato, and enjoyed them both. And we know, shockingly, who Carol Ott is, because we’re not illiterate dolts, and we’re curious about the world around us. I’m pretty sure large numbers of non-elite Canadians of all political stripes share in these attributes. And yes, Margaret, I do have a real job which leaves me numbingly tired at the end of shift.

What Wente is trying to do is to make the case — illogically by her own admission, for she’s a member of the gilded few — that there exists a cultural elitism associated with the Left, as if right-wing elitism somehow more authentically represents “real” Canadians. This perception is a matter of selling the merchandise, i.e. it persists mostly by virtue of people like Wente et al., all elitists of another stripe, telling us it’s true.

But let’s be real here: elite is elite. It isn’t about culture, it’s about money, power and class. Messrs. Ignatieff,  Layton and Harper have far more in common with each other by virtue of their education and position than the likes of you and me. Rob Ford, despite wearing his stereotyped “working-class” blowhard persona like pancake make-up, is the son of privilege who acts like how he supposes a garbage collector would. But I don’t think he’s coming to your backyard barbeque to chuck back a few pints and talk about the Leafs. It’s no use pretending Ignatieff or even Layton would act any differently. Or even most MPs of any party. Sons of the soil or salt of the earth they’re not.

Wente’s concludes the political significance lies in the resentment of non-elites of elitist actions*, which politicians ignore at their peril: hence the current “revolt” flavoured by right-wing populist politics. She misses the point. The first duty of any elite is to perpetuate itself. Thus it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end, amen. Our present elites, as Wente says, use the subtle tactics of education and networking to do it. Other elites in other places use the force of law or raw exercise of power to buttress their position. If you accept this premise, you can start to see politics as various factions of the elite competing for the rewards of power.

Elections have become a sideshow to this jockeying, democracy an annoying inconvenience, and most Canadians understand this. Politics, for most of us, are irrelevant, except for geeks like me who watch it as a spectator sport and hope to influence elite discourse by pecking out blog posts. The evidence lies in voter turnout, which fell to 58.8% in the last federal election. True, the municipal elections in Toronto saw participation rise from a truly pathetic 39%  to a sad high of 52.3% . But consider this turnout means Rob Ford’s “landslide” victory for taxpayers and jocks everywhere — as it’s been commonly described — was achieved with the vote of just under a quarter of the electorate. Hardly the great revenge of the little person Wente imagines: it’s mostly an overwhelming vote of apathy. This sense of being extraneous to the political process leads to what Steve V at Far and Wide describes as “Nobody Gives a Shit”:

I believe “nobody gives a shit” has become the template, the premise which underlies almost all of this government’s actions. Harper doesn’t take questions from the press, at least not in any meaningful way. Does Harper suffer because of this disposition? The answer a resounding no, primarily because you don’t suffer consequences when your audience is both disengaged, as well as entirely absent. We don’t have national conversations anymore. The fact that something so fundamental as “war” so easily manipulated, illustrates just how much the “nobody gives a shit” thesis has taken hold. All understandings must incorporate this inherent truth to fully appreciate the situation.

I can’t but think this is very bad news for democracy and the Canadian polity in general. However, all we get from Wente is a vague sense of complacency and triumphalism. You see, she says, very smart people  — mostly on the Left—brought us all sorts of bad policy decisions, which resulted in pharaonic plagues of toads and what-not. The leftist elites should be humble. And so on. Not a word about the obvious fix for this elitism, that is, democratizing the higher educational system again. And while it’s true the Left has made some disastrous errors in policy, it’s equally true we have some very slick and smart elites, right-wingers all, who are climate change denialists, conspiracy theorists, anti-environmentalists, torture advocates, oil sands apologists, Laffer curve worshipers, Randian supermen, militarist MPs who fetishize uniforms, in short, loons who advocate their policies as anti-elite populism. To some degree it works. Wente’s job is enable them. Competing elites, you know.

__________

*Oddly, in place of giving a Canadian of example elitist activism, all Wente can do is mutter her usual schtick about “nanny-statism’ and throw in a faux outrageous example from San Francisco. In the spirit of civil discourse, I will be happy to supply her with two examples drawn from Rob Ford’s campaign. Bicyclists. Breast cancer marches. You’re welcome.