RE DK THE GLOBAL ARISTOCRACY

Friday, June 15, 2018

The Global Aristocracy

"...The critical development of the twenty-first century, I am convinced, is the growth of a new global aristocracy, reflecting our new economy.  It is dominated by financial interests, energy magnates, and the leaders of the new technology in cyberspace.  It is allied with, or dominates, many of the governments around the world--including those of Russia and the United States.  (I really don't know what the situation is, in this respect, in China.)  It is having major impacts on foreign policy and war.  And it is relatively impervious to the workings of democracy, which it has learned, here in the US, to control...." 

"...The new aristocracy is even more international than the old one.  Its members, whether from Russia, China, or the Middle East, are buying up high-end real estate in all the most desirable places in the globe--the places, like Paris, London, Vancouver, San Francisco, Boston and New York, became so desirable because their nations had strong political orders over the last few centuries.  Great aristocrats own most of the world's leading professional sports teams.  In the US, one family, the Kochs, have put together what is by far the most powerful private political network in US history. Other parts of the aristocracy exercise great influence on US foreign policy and have recently managed to torpedo the nuclear agreement with Iran. The new aristocracy has promoted, and benefits from, the new global economic order, and many of the agreements that have created and seek to expand that order now try to protect its enterprises from any government interference.  As Thomas Piketty showed, the new aristocracy has managed to hide a very large portion of its enormous wealth from scrutiny...

"Last, but hardly least, two allies of the new aristocracy are now the heads of the Russian and American states.

"Whether Donald Trump actually counts as a member of aristocracy depends on the answer to the mystery of how much money he really has himself. ....." DK

This description of a so called aristocracy is based on money and on the political influence money by itself can buy, reflecting as he says our new global economy.

It is very different from, and incredibly more simplified than, the aristocracy within the old European Order,  which he also briefly describes, and which did also involve wealth as one criterion, but for which that was hardly the only or most defining criterion, and for which there were many other very important aspects of status throughout the order not comprehended strictly in monetary terms.

"...The new aristocracy is even more international than the old one.  Its members, whether from Russia, China, or the Middle East,..." DK

This clause makes it seem that the main difference, from the old European Order, is merely one of physical extent, i.e even more international, not of kind, and that other kinds of national, civilizational, and religious distinctions and characteristics are not really relevant anymore. Nothing could be further from the truth.

When it hits the fan, these global elites' conflicting and crosscutting civilizational affiliations and rivalries will make the Old European Order dynastic rivalries look like a kindergarten playground feud, because these elites are restrained less, if at all, each within their own civilizations and nations, by anything like the old European Order sense of obligation, noblesse oblige, or a moral order tied to a religious system.