The Twilight of the Elites

[kpete]

The Twilight of the Elites
By Christopher Hayes Thursday, Mar. 11, 2010

In the past decade, nearly every pillar institution in American society — whether it's General Motors, Congress, Wall Street, Major League Baseball, the Catholic Church or the mainstream media — has revealed itself to be corrupt, incompetent or both. And at the root of these failures are the people who run these institutions, the bright and industrious minds who occupy the commanding heights of our meritocratic order. In exchange for their power, status and remuneration, they are supposed to make sure everything operates smoothly. But after a cascade of scandals and catastrophes, that implicit social contract lies in ruins, replaced by mass skepticism, contempt and disillusionment.

In the wake of the implosion of nearly all sources of American authority, this new decade will have to be about reforming our institutions to reconstitute a more reliable and democratic form of authority. Scholarly research shows a firm correlation between strong institutions, accountable élites and highly functional economies; mistrust and corruption, meanwhile, feed each other in a vicious circle. If our current crisis continues, we risk a long, ugly process of de-development: higher levels of corruption and tax evasion and an increasingly fractured public sphere, in which both public consensus and reform become all but impossible.

For more than 35 years, Gallup has polled Americans about levels of trust in their institutions — Congress, banks, Big Business, public schools, etc. In 2008 nearly every single institution was at an all-time low. Banks were trusted by just 32% of the populace, down from more than 50% in 2004. Newspapers were down to 24%, from slightly below 40% at the start of the decade. And Congress was the least trusted institution of all, with only 12% of Americans expressing confidence in it. The mistrust of élites extends to élites themselves. Every year, public-relations guru Richard Edelman conducts a "trust barometer" across 22 countries, in which he surveys only highly educated, high-earning, media-attentive people. In the U.S., these people show extremely low levels of trust in government and business alike. Particularly distrusted are the superman CEOs of yore. "Chief-executive trust has just been mired in the mid- to low 20s," says Edelman. "It started off with Enron and culminates in Citi."

Such figures show that the crisis of authority extends beyond narrow ideological categories: Big Business and unions, Congress and Wall Street, organized religion and science are all viewed with skepticism. So why is it that so much of the country's leadership in so many different walks of life performed so terribly over this decade? While no single-cause theory can explain such a wide array of institutional failures, there are some themes — in particular, the concentration of power and the erosion of transparency and accountability — that extend throughout.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1971133_1971110_1971117,00.html#ixzz0iDA40V58

[bighughdiehl]

1. Yeah

Clearly and with good reason, we have lost faith in the asshole-in-charge. I think the know this, which is why their grip only tightens to outright ciorporate fascism as we slip into third-world status

[Psephos]

2. The author makes it sound like skepticism and mistrust of reliance on authority are bad things.

He also seems not to have read much American history, which is one continuous series of scandals, corruption, and catastrophe.

The strength of any country lies in its common people, not its elites.

[HeresyLives]

3. These are institutions, not 'elites'.

[Richard Steele]

4. "Twilight" my ass- they're on the verge of ANNOUNCING that we've re-establishid feudalism!

The "elites" are on the edge of a "Golden Age"
that they've been working toward since the last
one started to slip away from them almost a thousand years ago.

"polls" don't mean jack shit to them. They stole 2 elections and
spent 8 years PROVING that "public opinion" is a force beneath their notice.

You think they're in trouble because people are NOTICING?
:rofl: :rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

They don't care if people notice anymore, because they are well past
the point when "people" can do anything to hinder them.

That whole "American Dream" thing? It's over. It was over a long time ago.

[PSPS]

5. I usually dismiss these articles

What always bothers me about articles like this are two things:

1. They use a "poll" as some kind of great arbiter of truth. Only if something "polls" poorly, is it "bad." We apparently have a "crisis of authority" because the "truth barometer" (polling) is low. This is as silly as saying the economy is doing well or poorly because the "consumer confidence index" (polling the feelings of people) says so. The fact is that all of these things can be measured empirically. A person/CEO/politician is a crook or they aren't. A thief is a thief regardless of whether he "polls" well.

2. They talk about an individual's malfeasance as if it were primarily the fault of "the system" in a way that almost tries to cast the crook as a sympathetic figure. If the CEO of Enron becomes obscenely wealthy because he gleefully bankrupts California, there's something wrong with "the system." So, let's focus on "the system" instead of worrying about the thief and the money he stole and squirreled away in The Cayman Islands.

As to this opinion piece in particular, this jumped out at me:

While no single-cause theory can explain such a wide array of institutional failures, there are some themes — in particular, the concentration of power and the erosion of transparency and accountability — that extend throughout.

Of course, there is a "single cause." It's the cultural worship of greed and avarice over all else that began with saint reagan. It's been festering and has metastasized quite widely over the last thirty years into the corruption and criminality we have today in business and government.

[bleever]

6. I reread the article to see if still agreed with his point so strongly.

I did find something to question about his thesis. He writes, "...this new decade will have to be about reforming our institutions to reconstitute a more reliable and democratic form of authority."

One might argue that the attention span of a public fed their news by the Corporate Media (including the outright rightwing propaganda arms of the GOP) is so short that people can be managed by just making sure they aren't pissed off, and hence paying too much attention.

But I heartily endorse his vision, and the possibility of seeing it through.

[athenasatanjesus]

7. The easiest way to obtain power is through the single minded pursuit of power.

The surest way to maintain single mindedness is to care only about your own needs.

[the other one]

8. Corruption comes from the top

Maybe letting the Bush steal the election in 2000 set a bad precedent for the decade.