We tend to talk about American society, politics, and culture in terms of a left-right polarity. Do you live in a blue state or a red one? Are you a liberal or a conservative? Do you lean left on this issue or right? Is FDR in your political pantheon or is it Ronald Reagan?
These may be the wrong questions. Maybe that left/right framework is missing something. Maybe it even misses what’s really going on today.
Ted Gioia is a jazz musician and music historian, a Stanford prof. He also writes about culture more broadly at a Substack site under the masthead “Honest Broker.” Recently, Gioia (whose brother Dana is a celebrated poet and former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts) proposed that the left/right framework, or polarity, may not be that to which attention needs be paid.
He drew upon a 1930 book by the Spanish philosopher, Jose Ortega y Gasset, titled Revolt of the Masses. In that book Ortega argued that it’s not Left and Right that explains things, but Up and Down.
“He hardly acknowledges,” writes Gioia of Ortega’s Revolt, “the existence of ‘left’ and ‘right’ in political debates. Ortega’s brilliant insight came in understanding that the battle between ‘up’ and ‘down’ could be as important in spurring social and cultural change as the conflict between ‘left’ and ‘right.’
“This is not,” continues Gioia, “an economic distinction in Ortega’s mind. The new conflict, he insists, is not between ‘hierarchically superior and inferior classes…. upper classes or lower classes.’ A millionaire could be a member of the masses, according to Ortega’s surprising schema. And a pauper might represent the elite.”
However much it may be pitched to us as left vs. right, what’s really going on said Ortega, is masses versus the elites. The down versus the up. It’s not the revolt of the right. It’s the revolt of the masses.
“The key driver of change,” as Ortega sees it, comes from a shocking attitude characteristic of the modern age — or, at least, Ortega was shocked. “Put simply, the masses hate experts. If forced to choose between the advice of the learned and the vague impressions of other people just like themselves, the masses invariably turn to the latter. The upper elites still try to pronounce judgments and lead, but fewer and fewer of those down below pay attention.” As many polls have shown, the new realm of authority is “people like us.”
Ringing any bells? Describing something you’ve seen or wondered about? “Put simply, the masses hate experts.”
Riffing off Ortega, Gioia writes of our own era, “Analysis of cultural conflict is still obsessed with left-versus-right strategizing, but the actual battle lines are increasingly down-versus-up. A lot of work goes into hiding this, because both left and right want to present an image of unity, but both spheres are splintering into intensely hostile up-and-down factions.”
Was it the economic collapse of 2008-09 when the elites, but not the masses, were bailed out? Was it the COVID pandemic when many didn’t buy what the experts were selling? Or was it one of the new revelations from on high, academe, (i.e. critical race theory and diversity cops)? Or maybe the driver is the internet’s information explosion?
For my money, Ortega and Gioia are onto something. Up/ Down may better describe what we are seeing around us.
As it happens, a more recent writer cribbed on Ortega with a similar theme and title in 2012. Martin Gurri, a former CIA analyst who had been tasked with understanding bubbling popular movements and protests (Occupy Wall Street, The Yellow Vests, Arab Spring), wrote The Revolt of the Public. I read it then and found it fascinating. I can’t remember if Gurri tipped his hat to Ortega or not.
Gurri’s thesis was that the internet had undermined the elites who were no longer the authoritative source of information, of knowledge, of value or of norms. But the problem, said Gurri, was that the elites did not understand this. They kept acting as if they were authoritative but were increasingly emperors without any clothes.
Gurri has applied his analysis to the most recent election here when Gurri himself voted, for the first time, for Trump. You may not care for his provocative analysis. In fact, I am sure it will disturb many of you as much as it did me. But it does line-up with Ortega’s insights of nearly a century ago. It’s not left and right. It’s up and down. It’s the Revolt of the Masses, The Revolt of the Public.
Where will it all lead? Well, as Adam Grant says, “If you’re sure you know how the next four years will play out I promise: you are wrong.”
This much Gioia will say: “All of the cultural energy right now is on the bottom. And that energy has been intensifying. The attempts to distort this conflict into conventional left-versus-right battle lines has prevented opinion leaders from grasping the actual dynamic at play. Any ambitious agenda that doesn’t take into account down-versus-up is doomed to failure.”
And he adds this: if the old saw has been “Look out below,” it now needs to be “Look out above.”
After reading this column with enjoyment, I have come to the conclusion that the author, and all the readers of this column, including myself, are among the lepers that the masses are angry about.
A+ blog post — it’s an interesting framework for looking at the elections earlier this month. At the federal level the masses elected Trump to replace the elite’s power structure. In this state the masses had no opportunity at the general election to make any serious dent in the elite’s political hegemony.
Would Ortega say Olympia’s elite possesses more power to suppress popular social change? The narrative of the winners here is “The masses love us and what we do for/to them.”
Whoa!
49.9% Trump
48.3% Harris
That’s not what I call a landslide much less a mandate… It’s closer than Trump eked out a victory, numerically and looks bigger because of the compromise of 1789.
(If you’re looking for getting a sense of the nation, please don’t look to the electoral college.)
So all this talk about the revolt of the masses etc etc strikes me as a way to sell advertising revenue on Media (present company excepted.)
In fact, if you look to dollars, you’ll see that the “winner take all” phenomenon of very marginal superior ability translates into out of proportion financial gain because we have such a huge market. The difference between skill in so many POPULAR fields such as sports and entertainment suggests that people do flock to the elite.
So novel theories are great, especially if you want to make your bones in academia. (Thank God, my own period of institutionalization was brief.)
But hey, it’s fun! Like those old collegiate “bull sessions”!
Sure, we knew this, didn’t we? There’s a growing segment of society that has been showered with so much dung posing as information that they have lost the ability to take knowledge seriously, and there are enough of them that they can bring their disinformed world to everyone.
That doesn’t mean they aren’t responding to the elites, though. It’s just a question of which elites are pulling their strings. Politicians who respect their electorate are the losers.
I normally blame the Reagan administration for most everything, but there’s an element of this that goes back far earlier, to various industry funded science denial campaigns – tobacco maybe first. Oil has of course been a giant in this field. That’s one example of elites that will be ascendant in the new “down with elites” scheme.
As a lifelong member of the “untermenchen” who loves art, live theatre, poetry and walking in the wild, I thank Robinson for his recall of Ortega y Gasset. What to do, what to do?
Thanks all for comments. In response to Richard’s question, “What to do?,” my answer is pay attention to our 3rd District member of Congress, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, starting with this piece, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/22/opinion/marie-gluesenkamp-perez-democrats-trump.html
Very thoughftul, helpful analysis — thanks Tony. Ezra Klein offered a similar take in a recent podcast (“In This House, We’re Angry When Government Fails”). The Democratic Party is currently filled with folks like me who are members of the professional class and cultural elite. We obviously aren’t connecting with ordinary, non-college educated Americans. How do we change that other than just die or shut up?
Thanks Walter. Yes, EK has been very helpful. Note my reply above to Richard. Attend to MGP, starting with the column to which about her by Michelle Goldberg in NYT.
What to do? Get out of your bubble. Do you only talk to people who share your opinions? Do you live in an upper-middle class neighborhood and rarely go to busy urban areas? Do you get your news from more than one source, including both liberal and conservative media ? Have you been a victim of crime, more than once? Did you and your children attend private schools? Do you ride public transportation? Have you ever managed a small business and not paid yourself to keep the business going to meet your payroll? Do you do the grocery shopping, use coupons and buy meat from the marked down area or shop at discount stores? Do you worry that women’s bathrooms and swimming pool changing rooms are no longer safe spaces? Do you have a daughter athlete who is afraid she will be injured by a biological male while playing sports? Have you cancelled anyone who disagrees with you? Get out of your bubble and try to understand the needs of those referred to as intolerable, garbage and miscreants(the latest insult from Inslee). Many of them are college educated women who value common sense.
I am dying to know who “Afraid to Print My Name” might be? Maybe we could have a Post Alley guessing contest?