THEODORE DALRYMPLE: Unleashing Arrogance, Complacency, and Mediocrity:
Everyone around him, including the Prime Minister (the dullest man ever to hold the position), comes off as just as uninteresting as he; though it has to be admitted that the author could make Talleyrand seem a bore. The one outstanding quality that these mediocrities seem to share is ambition. It is disconcerting for the citizen to be faced so starkly by the fact that ambitious mediocrity is now the main characteristic of those who rule him.
* * * * * * *
The reason that these philosopher-kings didn’t object [to Brexit] beforehand was that they were confident that the vision of the anointed (to use Thomas Sowell’s pithy phrase) would triumph. So wedded to that vision is the author that he does not feel it even necessary to explain why Britain should have voted to remain in the EU. Beyond saying that serious economists, chief executives of large companies, the Governor of the Bank of England and the director of the International Monetary Fund were in favor of Britain remaining (which is, in essence, the argument from authority) he provided no arguments for his opinion—though, in fact, such arguments existed, the most convincing, at least to me, being Lord Falkland’s famous principle that when it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change. Of course, when and whether change is necessary is always a matter of judgment, for no condition is perfect; but you don’t wreck a room just because there is dust on the mantelpiece.
However, the main reason the author provides no arguments for his views is that he believes that there are simply no arguments against them, and that therefore everything goes by default. Apparently, anyone who is capable of reading a book must, almost by definition, agree with Mr. Oliver. Over and over again he says that the push to exit the EU was based purely on xenophobia and propaganda lies. One does not refute xenophobia or propaganda.
Related! Hillary’s loss was “heartbreaking” for Lena Dunham, who tells the Financial Times, “There was no moment during the entirety of the Hillary Clinton campaign where Donald Trump winning the election seemed like an actual possibility to me. That could have been liberal naivety.”
As Glenn likes to say, we have the worst governing class and self-styled cultural elites on both sides of the Atlantic – and central to their worldview is Pauline Kael-ism on steroids. In January of 2013, Ace of Spades wrote a post attempting to explain the cause of the elites’ deliberate ignorance to opinions other than their own, titled “The Unburstable Bubble of Willful Ignorance of the International Self-Purported Elites.”
Brexit and Trump were a two-fisted bursting of that bubble last year – but don’t expect elites to change direction anytime soon.
Update: Hey, Kids! Let’s Take A Trip Behind The Veil of Ignorance! “Which then begs the question, which this post is preoccupied with: if the veil of ignorance is so useless (and it is), then how come so many people keep wanting to use it? Why is it that so many people find it clever?”