Unearned.

American Mind on a faith immune to facts and persuasion ...

One might think that this world of artificial nobility is dead and gone. But in deep-blue sanctuaries like my local bookstore—that bubble of bubbles, the summa bubblica of America’s leftist oligarchy—a version of this same decayed aristocracy is still holding on.

These liberal ladies (and a few distinctly milky gentlemen) are harmless enough in one sense. They aren’t abusing the working class in any direct or obvious way—certainly not in their own minds! Unlike the French gentry, they do not dwell in ostentatious luxury while serfs labor in hunger. Even less are they complicit in anything like the gruesome brutality of chattel slavery in the Old South.

Still, they do partake in their own shallow way of an intellectual and moral presumption that is not at all harmless. Like every privileged class in history, they are convinced that they deserve what they have, however slight their own efforts may have been in the smooth glidepath of their lives.

The recognition of unearned privilege can sometimes turn psychologically sideways, with sublimated guilt erupting into destructive revolutionary fervor. Rarely, alas, does it flower into genuine humility and charity. But the complacent retirees with whom I rub elbows are not directing their unconscious guilt (if they have any) into overthrowing the system.

To the contrary, the oligarchy they represent frantically wants to preserve, or bring back, the pre-2016 uniparty establishment in which they flourished. Because they cannot comprehend that their fellow countrymen will no longer tolerate their socially useless sinecures, they retreat ever further into monasteries of self-deception.

But this cannot continue; something must give, and it seems ever likelier that the way forward will be rough.