One of its many peculiarities is its penchant for fads, and what can only be called mass hysteria.
Repeatedly, we see waves in which something that nobody much cared about suddenly comes to dominate ruling class discourse...
There are several factors behind this, but one of the most important, I think, is that our ruling class is a monoculture...
I’ve written elsewhere, in a law review article titled Is Democracy Like Sex? that electoral turnover in democracies produces a moving target for special-interest groups (the political analog of parasites) and thus helps keep them from becoming too well adapted to the society that is their host.
I’ve written elsewhere, in a law review article titled Is Democracy Like Sex? that electoral turnover in democracies produces a moving target for special-interest groups (the political analog of parasites) and thus helps keep them from becoming too well adapted to the society that is their host.
As evolutionary biologist Thomas Ray observed, every successful system accumulates parasites, and the United States of America has been very successful indeed.
- I suggested that part of its success lay in electoral shifts that served keep special interests from locking in their positions entirely.
- But what I (mostly) missed when writing that piece many years ago, is that electoral turnover only affects one small piece of society. While elections change out elected officials sometimes, the rest of our society – the bureaucracy, academia, media, corporate leadership, what is generally known as the “gentry” or “ruling class” – remains the same...
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