The 'loyal opposition', Gone, gone with the wind

"The day of respect for the 'loyal opposition' has gone with the day of the gentleman class".
Richard M Weaver," Ideas Have Consequences"

This conclusion, written in the salad days of 1948, looks spookily omniscient six decades forward. Whatever societal rancor and ill will prompted Professor Weaver's jeremiad then, has mushroomed unbelievably since.

As I read Weaver, the somewhat archaic concept of a 'gentleman class' he is referencing is secular heir to a 'philosopher class'; a category of extreme rarity today. Indeed, since the passing of Emerson the philosopher ranks have been rather slim but, in the day, Weaver himself might have qualified as one. No known 'gentleman' exists in all of official Washington with the possible exception of one or two closeted specimens.

But that's okay as we've told ourselves historically; we are a 'can do' people. So we don't need bother with that other stuff like civility and productive discourse and such truck. Nah, we do it our way and it works. Or rather it used to do so. No more, I'm afraid. Nothing works well now. The total lack of respect or even common decency for the opposition, so visible in the halls of Congress, is projected by media onto a national screen. So much so that the public, never much given to thoughtful disagreement, lurches from one misplaced sentiment to the next. Lost, somewhere, is the ability to discern if a given decision or action is personally beneficial or not. This is true even when it could result in great loss or dire consequence.

Decades of assault first by radio and films, later by television and now the web, have sown massive confusion in the population. So much so, that a constant rise in literacy has been offset by an equal rise in credulity. The extensively, but narrowly educated consumer of goods and services, has morphed into a serf-like font of near medieval gullibility.

A goodly amount of national time has been spent polishing oafs to resemble a respectable middle class. This is no regard a 'gentleman class' effort, since as Nietzsche observed, the middle class would be moderate, even in virtue. With little chance of discovering philosophers lurking about any day soon, our best hope is an outburst of civility throughout the land. This might presage the arrival of a bevy of gentleman types arising Phoenix-like from the ashes of a burnt-out elite class and be an inspiration to us; the lumpen remainder.

Generations of pundits, preachers and educators can take credit for this melaise. A system based largely on treating constituents as mere consumers of material goods and arranging all of society around that maxim, has brought down the house on our heads.