> And yet it’s not obvious that we have produced either a better leadership class or a healthier relationship between our society and its elites

Part of the problem is as follows and I see it so often in politics.

We have an excellent technocratic leadership class.

But being a technocratic leader does not make you a great leader of people, and frankly -- given the way many technocratic fields in the humanities are taught -- getting too deep in them makes you actively unappealing to people.

The article derides the various social clubs at Harvard, Princeton, Yale, etc as 'non-academic', but nothing is further from the truth. Humans have an innate draw to beauty, and one thing that is beautiful to basically everyone is a rich culture with traditions, institutions, and members [1]. One way to signal that is by learning the social niceties inside and out. This is no less academic since it doesn't come from a book.

The 'grinds', as the article says, didn't get that, and they were shunned not because they focused on books, but because they were unable to have a more expansive view of academics.

It is shocking to me when I see pundits today seemingly confused why the masses find appeal in particular candidates despite the pundits being able to list ten technical reasons why he should be disqualified. They don't understand how people perceive things, and it's so painful to watch.

I feel as someone who occupies a sort of 'third space' here [2], I am really truly able to see both viewpoints. But it's so difficult to explain to a technocrat the full range of human emotion, and it sometimes appears as if they've been handicapped in their ability to feel it.

As an example (and I would recommend Camille Paglia's works), it's fascinating to me how, despite our ever growing technical ability to produce great film, the actual emotional content of the film is ever worse. We have the most scantily clad females of all time but the fully clothed actors and actresses of the past were actually more sexually enticing. We've lost the sense of awe that CS Lewis talks about in the Abolition of Man. We have the greatest visual effects, but the emotional content of the film is so thin that you just don't feel anything.

Where these feelings do exist, it's in independent (read: not produced by the Ivy type) films and media, which is why 'alternate' media has suddenly become so popular.

I'll also just leave that Donald Trump has an innate understanding of people. People are shocked that he's able to get so many seemingly random, seemingly opposed people behind him. They classify it as a trick. But it's not. People vote and support who they like, not who has the best technocratic solutions. That is neither good nor bad. It just is. It's a tale as old as time, and would be apparent if you studied the actual humanities.

Just so no one thinks I think Trump is some singular. Barack Obama is also one of these figures. And even Joe Biden is to some extent [3]

I can write a dissertation on this topic.

[1] It doesn't matter the culture. All traditional cultures are enthralling

[2] I was raised in the 'normal' way, but ended up at a second-tier 'elite' school, and then -- adopting some of the stuff I learned -- moved into strategy consulting at one of the Big 3 where I learned even more about this type. I eventually moved back into tech (and do feel my career is better for having been through these experiences).

[3] Completely off-topic, but I also think that if you go to spaces inhabited by the technocrats, you'll notice that 'detachment' philosophies like Stoicism and Buddhism are very popular, whereas the masses go for attachment. It's not a surprise to me that the Kennedy family, being Catholic, the exact opposite of Buddhism in that sense, was always seen as particularly charismatic and alluring amongst political dynasties

Perhaps a more crude label of what you ascribing to technocrats is the term "Soulless".

People are surprised over Trump, because of what it applies about conservative peoples hypocrisy. Conservativism is typically approached with massive amount of naivety and undeserved trust. They lie, they complain about things they don't mind, then they state their plans out loud and pundit class is still "they cant be as bad as they say". Trump and the people he is choosing winning three times clearly show who these people are ... and pundits cant admit it. Moderate republicans cant admit it either to themselves.

The confusement is because if Trump won primaries three times, it clearly means you do not care about respectability no matter how much you pretended being outraged over minor non-issues in the past. It means you do not mind lying, actually. It means you do actually want pure destruction and are in fact motivated by misogyny and all those bad things.

But, we want to believe in good of the massive amount of people. We do not want to believe that conservative Christians will do anything just to get control over women back. Or that they actually want to destroy the democracy.

> It's not a surprise to me that the Kennedy family, being Catholic, the exact opposite of Buddhism in that sense, was always seen as particularly charismatic and alluring amongst political dynasties

I don't think the "technocrats" (or whatever they're called, "materialistic liberals", yada yada) are drawn to Buddhism and stoicism because of their actual content. Platonism is an extreme form of a detachment style philosophy. Platonism and Christianity are brother and sister

If I had to guess, they choose Buddhism et al because it fills a similar hole that Christianity filled, but it doesn't put them on the same dirty level that the masses are on