ELITISM AND POPULISM

Another pertinent variation on the hero theme in modern American culture.

During the American presidential election campaign of 2008, when the present entry was originally written, the heavily loaded term elitism had rather suddenly moved to the top of the word count in its contemporary political vocabulary. As usual, it was rather poorly defined, except that, used interchangeably with such an apparently self-evident whip of condemnation as being “out of touch,” its shocking pejorative connotations and the ruthlessly inevitable conclusion of unelectability extended to Senator Obama’s chances of winning the White House that fall, had overwhelmingly defined elitism as one of the dirtiest qualities to be found in a politician, and perhaps, even the dirtiest of them all.

A fitting follow-up question now pops up: what will the opposite of elitism be? In other words, if the villain is an elitist, then what do we call the hero? Aside from our hero being ever “in touch” with the regular folks (that is, bowling and drinking beer with them, without ever standing out of the crowd), is he also a devout populist, always telling them what the folks wanted to hear and never-ever committing the ultimate political blunder of spilling the beans of the truth? No wonder then that cheap populism and its shameless pandering to the masses had become a distinctive feature of American politics, exemplified by Candidate Hillary Clinton, and to no lesser extent previously by the incumbent President George W. Bush. Judging by the looks of it, Senator/Candidate McCain was (and still is) no exception to the rule. In fact, the one and only breath of fresh air at the time happened to be that poor newcomer Barack Obama, literally dragged through the mud for paradoxically exhibiting the best in American politics.

This silly discussion of who is an out of touch elitist in the running for the presumably heroic, yet never to be confused with uncommon and extraordinary, post of the President of the United States, speaks volumes about the aesthetic direction of modern American society, making it sharply different, and even culturally incompatible with the respective proclivities of Soviet and American societies, as I used to know them just forty years ago, and, considering that what can be described as my distinctive Russianness is still with me, and, therefore, still characterizing Russianness an-Sich, whether or not things in Russia have changed dramatically in the past three decades, during which I have been an expatriate.

Interestingly enough, Western audiences could get an inkling of the Russian attitude toward elitism from the rather unlikely, but in this case exceptionally perceptive source: the early British James Bond movie From Russia With Love, where the beautiful Russian spy tells her recruiter that she does not mind being intimate with a foreigner (in the service of her Motherland, of course), but only if that person is Culturny, which can be interpreted as a man of culture, classy, well-polished, in other words, not a man of hoi polloi, but, in fact, a consummate elitist…

In the Russian psyche, elitism or aristocratism is always a positive, but not in the sense that I am better than them, superior to them or holier than them. Russian elitism is the desired state of cultural enlightenment and self-improvement, striving for better education, refined aestheticism, and classier tastes. The Russians want their leaders to be superior to foreigners or at least on a par with the best of them, looking and behaving not like a Joe-next-door but as a distinguished member of the most elite club on earth. There was a sense of sad disappointment concerning the demeanor and behavior of such Soviet leaders as Nikita Khrushchev and a few lesser others, who did not meet the high standard the Russians have judged their leaders by, but I remember the reverence everybody I knew had for Stalin in that respect, as in the famous set of pictures of the Great Three: Stalin, Churchill, and FDR: the conditions of the elite club membership were fully met by each participant, and exemplified the concept of elitism as well, as, in more recent days, the pictures of Mr. Putin on the memorable 2003 State Visit to the United Kingdom, being received by the British Queen Elizabeth II, or the selfsame Mr. Putin on numerous official occasions in the Kremlin, or meeting other world leaders with all the pomp and circumstance that befits such royal occasions.

Ironically, although Comrade Brezhnev was not held in a particularly high regard by the Russians, the superpower grandeur of the Brezhnev-Nixon summitry, wisely appreciated and promoted on the American side by Kissinger and Nixon, turned those Nixon years of 1972-1974 into a veritable golden age for elite politics in the Russian memory of the post-Stalin era. Conversely, the populist appeal of George W Bush hosting Mr. Putin in the less-than-royal settings of his Crawford ranch could not produce anything but intense disappointment for the Russian senses, but, I guess, by that time, the Russians had already been so incensed by the American betrayal of their pro-American fantasies in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, that no super-reception in the world given by either President Clinton or President Bush for Russian dignitaries, could have made any difference to sway the Russian opinion in America’s favor.

Getting back to our discussion of modern American society and its attitude toward elitism, I somehow refuse to believe that it is anti-elitist. The splendor of Hollywood still captures America’s imagination, and I am confident that under normal circumstances the American people would still favor the Camelot of JFK and his First Lady over the grotesquely affected unexceptionality of the George W. Bush era. But there are definitely certain social psychiatrists at work who wish to bring the exception crashing down in American public psyche, and so far the media follows their cue. There will be no more Camelot for Mr. Obama, and not because the American people would not love to have it back, but because the controllers of American public opinion will use all their skill, and all their considerable power over the shaping of public opinion, not to let that happen.