Chaos and Order: Harmony in Madness
Via CNN
“American class is not hereditary. Technically, you can be a billionaire, a president, and an olympian.” Says Johnathan Bi, a sartorial New York City residing Columbia grad of the class of 2020, who is descended from a prominent family of longtime Chinese elites. Is Bi Johnathan actually Bi? Perhaps the great exams of dynastic China which he often speaks of should be pointed toward this irreverent question.
Roughly, this — not the curiosities of Johnathan’s sexuality — has long been true, and to the tune of this piece’s title, is the key defining characteristic of the organic dynamism of the American system. A “mixed aristocratic and democratic” system, within the open market, has allowed for private dynasties of sorts to form out of commerce and institutional access, most notably, and recently, the Kennedy and Bush families; and soon perhaps the Trump and Obama families as well. Business interest has morphed and intermingled with political interest, and vice versa, and allowed wealthy families to establish lasting political footholds on a handful of occasions at a national level, and more commonly at the state level. What Europe historically lacked due to the rigidity of its social structure, a ladder of mobility, America filled, and in doing so executed the greatest brain drain of history in siphoning the most pioneering, risk preponderant minds not only of Europe, but more recently the entire planet, India and Asia especially. And yet, there is another, far more unserious ladder beyond finance, industry, and academia in the American system of elitism, one more recently developed, in the world of popular entertainment.
When once there were court jesters, composers, pianists, writers and the like, we are today drummed upon by the new jesters of our age; rappers, comics, screen actors, pop singers, TikTokers and increasingly, pornstars, who have come to command moderate levels of influence upon society. That dynamistic system which once elevated often corrupt yet still fairly serious people, through merchant commerce and elite educational institutions, has crumbled to the deluded indulgences and tendencies toward mass consumption of modern times, raising what can only be referred to as the worst cadre of elites in recent history. Though Taylor Swift’s late endorsement of Kamala Harris in the 2024 election cycle did not successfully swing enough voters in her favor, nor the many millions handed out from her campaign purse towards such similarly eloquent and sartorial figures as Megan Thee Stallion, Oprah Winfrey, and Beyonce, the same can sparingly be said of the celebrity support which helped push Barack Obama and Joe Biden to the Oval Office. It is of course doubtful that any of these elections were decided by the malleable politics of such entertainment figures, but they have no doubt played a role in influencing the most gullible of our consumerist masses in their own decisions.
Andrew Breitbart famously said that “politics is downstream from culture,” and our culture is not only rotten, but has by the forces of time, nature and mass commerce taken a dive to the sewer. Accordingly, our politics has as well. Donald Trump is the most palpable representation of this, having risen from a bombastic career in business and entertainment, to the world’s highest office, twice, by the late years of his life. The great populist like no other, reminiscent of no president in recent memory, is both a product and a symptom of our current times, and our self-sentence to meaningless consumerism and celebtard fandom. He is of course the celebrity billionaire president, though an olympian only in the contest of ragebaiting normie democrats on Twitter. The America which was once broadly literate, pious, and economically resourceful across classes, is today pulling apart in more directions than one can count, but most notably toward mass stupidity and increasingly selective excellence. In Trump, we’ve at last found a fusion of both.