National Review: Meritocracy: Does It Exist?

Kevin Williamson has gone on another one of his famous rants.

National Review:

“There are not many contemporary phenomena that have one-word explanations, and even fewer that have one-word explanations that are not “gravity” or “whiskey.” But if you want a one-word explanation for the ugly, stupid, vicious populism that has overtaken our politics, try this one: meritocracy.

It should not surprise us that the people at the top believe very strongly in meritocracy. The well-off already enjoy the best of everything, and the feeling of virtue is one more exclusive pleasure for elite consumption. It is not enough to settle into a nice first-class seat and enjoy a glass of champagne — for the most exquisite satisfaction, one must also feel that one deserves it. …

In fact, the populist Left and the populist Right tell more or less the same story, rehearsing more or less the same complaints: Big business, especially multinational business, is against them, as are big money, big media, and big institutions of most kinds. Each side believes that it is the plucky representative of We the People, set upon from all directions by the vampires of profit, globalization, and capital. Each sides believes it lost a critical presidential election because of hostile actors in Silicon Valley and shadowy forces in the federal bureaucracy, assisted by a malevolent media. …”

It is worth asking though: what are the populists so angry about it?

If I could sum it up in one sentence, it is the fact that cultural, economic and political power has been systematically redistributed from the vast majority of the American people and has flown upwards where it has been concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite which has seceded from the rest of the country and which demands deference in spite of its loss of legitimacy. This disconnect between the ruling class and the governed combined with the perception of incompetence and unaccountability, immiseration and the memory of better times in a country which used to be a democracy is the source of populism.

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8 Comments

  1. If Williamson truly believes that those at the top have the most virtue and merit, then why does he identify as a “conservative?” None of these virtuous people at the top due to merit are conservatives. Shouldn’t he take cues from them and start identifying as some kind of progressive or center-left liberal?

    In reality, Williamson is paid to stroke the egos of the middle class petit bourgeois NR subscribers who mistakenly believe they are or will soon be “at the top.”

  2. Kevin Williamson is on the fringes of power, sort of like a court jester in the old days. He writes for NR to show their disdain for the deplorables and how the good “conservatives” should still be invited to Washington DC cocktail parties. After all, let’s not forget, Kevin Williamson reads books and is friends with the Big Colored Fag, Don Lemon, on CNN.

    There they can all rail at the knuckle scrapers who fix their cars, transport their food and other goods, move their furniture, build things, repair things, you know; work with their dirty hands, not their minds? Either they didn’t finish college or they went to a third rate institution because they just don’t rate on the magnificent ‘Scale of the Meritocratic’ like the sophisticated NR crowd. No doubt the Big Cuck David French pines away to attend at least some of those Washington parties with his wife and her black boyfriend in tow.

    None of these assholes understand in the least that their disdain is multiplied and returned 10 fold. They are useless grifters licking up crumbs from the tables of the .01% who use them as controlled opposition. When the wheels come off this multi-cult, globo-homo shopping mall economic zone the Kevin Williamson/David French types will flee like refugees into White areas full of deplorables, no colored folk allowed.

  3. ” concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite which has seceded from the rest of the country ”

    Did you see today’s NYPost article describing zuckerberg spending 420 million to win the presidency for Biden ?

  4. No surprise the Neo-Clowns’ lickspittle Williamson would push such mythology. Meritocracy in Murika is a total myth now. Meritocracy is every bit as real as magic dirt and unicorns – maybe even moreso,=.

    Read all about it here:

    https://www.unz.com/runz/the-myth-of-american-meritocracy

    As the late George Carlin noted in his farewell rant: “It’s a club … and you’re not in it.” He also remarked that the American Dream is such a fairy tale one would have to be asleep to believe it was true.

  5. Meritocracy, that is the very opposite of America today. Every system of government is structured to discourage merit.

    The reason both Napoleon and Hitler had so much initial success , is their implementation of systems of merit. Neither had the opportunity to fully realize their ideas.

    It’s the money elite who despise merit, because the common man often rises above those of moneyed privileges.

  6. It doesn’t matter who you vote for. The outcome is the same either way. If you had a choice of five parties, there should be five possible outcomes depending on voter results. You have just two parties though, but they’re indistinguishable to the average American and are both controlled by the establishment with no point of real difference, apart from minor issues to fool the public into believing there’s difference and choice, when there isn’t. As a result……….every election always results in one outcome…………a party that is controlled by Jews, and does nothing of substance for most Americans.
    So the bottom line is:- rather than multiple possible outcomes that should occur in real democracies, you only ever have one outcome. Whether it serves left or right, it’s one outcome. There is no democracy in its real form, and probably hasn’t been for decades.

  7. They’ve looted the provinces and retreated to the “castles” of NYC, DC, Silicon Valley, and Hollywood. The heartland is full of smart kids praised over by the high school teachers who went nowhere. There is no “unlimited opportunity,” it’s mostly luck and who you know. The country is “shrinking” and it’s like musical chairs with everyone hoping not to left out when the music stops playing.

  8. I get a kick out of all the gentile fools I knew back in the 90s who thought they could just go out to LA and have a chance to be “a director” or “screenwriter.” As if that was realistic. They are as stupid as the dolt Joe Buck in Midnight Cowboy who naively fantasized he would make a living servicing female clients and instead ended up facing the reality of servicing queers.

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