wretchard:

One of the reasons working through “proxies”, using rendition, or manipulating affairs through “engagement” is so psychologically attractive is that it largely possible to pay others to do the dirty work.

What’s the alternative? If our population truly knew the moral sacrifices necessary for living in a world full of monsters, we would all be living in a slum. The slum may not be there physically, but it would follow us wherever we go.

Look at almost any college campus. It’s clean, despite the trash students (and faculty) throw on the grass. It is architecturally segregated from other parts of society, and its architecture affects its politics. Consider why suburbs exist in the first place. One of the reasons why they exist is so those who do the dirty work won’t need to be seen. On a grand scale, Indian removal existed to get rid of an “embarrassment”. Likewise, segregation existed so white children wouldn’t see how the family of the black maid actually lived.

What you are essentially asking of the ruling class is to end their self-segregation from the realities of the rest of humanity. Since when have they ever done that? It would be rather like expecting Marie Antoinette to understand the brutish edge of nature rather than the fantasyland she created for herself. The very definition of status ever since Versailles has been the ability to shut one’s family off from the nastiness of the outside world. In essence, you appear to be asking for a revolution more far-reaching than Robespierre’s Terror, for instead of chopping off the heads of the aristocracy, you are expecting the aristocracy to use their heads instead to understand the world around them.

By expecting members of the ruling class to give up their illusions, you are effectively expecting the ruling class to give up their most cherished token of status.