One of the themes that has risen to the top following the churning soul-searching on the heels of the Brexit vote is the notion that cosmopolitans – the global elite that are pro-EU, pro-free trade, pro-free movement of people (within the EU, at least), and anti-populist – have fumbled the future, that this was their vote to lose.
Ross Douthat tears a hole in the discussion:
[…] it’s a problem that our tribe of self-styled cosmopolitans doesn’t see itself clearly as a tribe: because that means our leaders can’t see themselves the way the Brexiteers and Trumpistas and Marine Le Pen voters see them.
They can’t see that what feels diverse on the inside can still seem like an aristocracy to the excluded, who look at cities like London and see, as Peter Mandler wrote for Dissent after the Brexit vote, “a nearly hereditary professional caste of lawyers, journalists, publicists, and intellectuals, an increasingly hereditary caste of politicians, tight coteries of cultural movers-and-shakers richly sponsored by multinational corporations.”
They can’t see that paeans to multicultural openness can sound like self-serving cant coming from open-borders Londoners who love Afghan restaurants but would never live near an immigrant housing project, or American liberals who hail the end of whiteness while doing everything possible to keep their kids out of majority-minority schools.
They can’t see that their vision of history’s arc bending inexorably away from tribe and creed and nation-state looks to outsiders like something familiar from eras past: A powerful caste’s self-serving explanation for why it alone deserves to rule the world.
Douthat sounds more like a populist than a Republican, in this piece. But maybe he’s going for a double whammy: is he using Brexit as a foil to justify Trumpist populism? Is he hoping that the Make-America-Great-Again movement will grow, and Hillary and the liberal elite will be identified as that caste that thinks it deserves to rule the country?
from Stowe Boyd http://www.stoweboyd.com/post/146842543802
