What Old Money and Power finds hardest to accept is that perhaps their scruffy, uncredentialed and coarse opponents might not only be their equals, but their superiors. One is beginning to suspect that the terror masters are better men — not better or more capable men than normal Americans — but better men than the aristocrats. The terror men are the sort who buy the cheapest acceptable limousine, not because they like it, but simply to make fun of the manners of their decadent victims before they detonate it as a car bomb.
The men in the White House are like grifters who inherited a great fortune and have unexpectedly come into clothes, cars, houses and jets without the slightest clue how they were earned. Not Downton but Chitown Abbey. Amazed at their good fortune they entertain hangers on, clowns and toadies at lavish parties; they dispense tawdry gifts to the favored and Obamaphones to anyone who shows up at the door.
“Give him a handful and tell him to go away”.
And when one day it comes crashing down they won’t even know why or have the quality to dignify it with the pathos of tragedy. It will just be sad. “Oh look, the beer’s gone.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, who chronicled the rise and fall of the rich perhaps better than anyone ever did, remarked “it takes a genius to whine appealingly”. By the looks of it the grifters will be low-class to the end: sans talent, sans grace and sans a clue.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member