Back in the days of the 18th century, before the advent of Democracy, the King's word was law. He was carefully attended to from the time he got up to the time he went to bed. The King frequently wasted away countless days in idle frivolity, including balls, cards, gambling, and dancing. People gained royal favor not because of their competence, but because of their dancing ability. If a would-be courtier could not dance and offended the king, he/she was banished from the court. As a result, courtiers, instead of doing their work for the state, spent countless hours perfecting their moves to avoid such a painful penalty.
And when the King walked through the hall, all activity would stop. Everybody would grovel down to their hands and knees and not dare to look up for fear of offending the King. It was, as Charles Dickens once wrote, a crowd of worshippers.
The Republican elitists are starting to engage in the same behavior as the monarchs and aristocrats of the 18th century. They are shutting themselves off from the people and refusing to engage with anybody other than people of their own kind. In the same way, many suburban people were the ones who fled from integration and who have shut themselves off from any contact with people from other races.
The Republicans have frequently called us elitists or Massachusetts Liberals or names of that nature. But right-wingers frequently make accusations against liberals of things that they do themselves. For instance, many homophobic individuals are secretly gay themselves. In the same way, many Republicans who love to call us elitists are elitist themselves. A typical Republican smokescreen tactic is to hurl accusations against liberals of some type of behavior to conceal the fact that they are doing it themselves.
In defining elitist, I do not suggest that all suburban voters are elitist or that all Republicans are elitist. However, an elitist in my book is someone who only associates with people of their own kind and shuts themselves off from everybody else.
In the last election, George Bush showed prototypical elitist behavior by refusing to meet with anybody who opposed his views or who even was undecided. People who attended Bush's events were carefully screened for their views about the president so that the "Ask President Bush" events were a carefully-orchestrated right-wing love-fest instead of a constructive dialogue between the President and prospective voters.
Although Bush is the worst of the elitists, there are plenty of others. Armstrong Williams is another example. Although he was paid $240,000 in part to recruit Black supporters for No Child Left Behind, he failed to do so according to today's Chicago Sun-Times, as I noted in my last diary. He did not bother to do any of the hard work required of someone who was paid $240,000; all he did was air a few TV and radio shows on the topic. He refused to engage leaders of the Black community as was required of him by the Department of Education.
Most of the right-wing congressmen in the January 6th election debate were elitist. They refused to even address the challengers concerns about the fairness of the elections. Instead, like the snobby aristocrats, they hurled epithets like "the Michael Moore wing of the Democratic Party" at people who had very legitimate concerns about the Ohio election.
If J.D. Hayworth and other aristocrats can call us the Michael Moore wing, we should call any Republican who engages in conflicts of interest like the Wall Street Journal reporter or Williams the Ken Blackwell wing of the Republican Party. Blackwell, you may remember, was the co-chair of the Bush campaign in Ohio. In addition, he has refused to answer the valid concerns of the many thousands of voters who were denied the right to vote because of inadequate numbers of machines. This refusal to answer the concerns of the voters, combined with a failure to appreciate the sacrifices of Martin Luther King and others who died so that he could become the Ohio Secretary of State makes Blackwell an elitist as well.
This elitism carries over to my own two senators, Kit Bond and Jim Talent. I have written them before concerning the issues. I have never got a response from Bond and the only response from Talent's staff claimed that they weren't sure I was from Missouri even though I clearly stated Missouri as my address.
This aristocratic behavior by the Republicans convinces me that they think they are answerable to nobody. They also think that we should just be a team player and bipartisan and perhaps they will throw us a few crumbs like they would to a cute little lapdog. It is appalling how many millions of people were gullible enough to fall for this groupthink mentality.