Shovel-Ready Jobs (and other stupidities)

Much is revealed about our adolescent ruling class by its use of language. Many of their phrases point to a grossly inflated sense of power and competence; the former may exist insofar as it is vested in government, but the latter is notably absent. They suggest the sense of omnipotence felt, perhaps, by a video-gamer able to conquer the hazards of his virtual environment with a joystick.

Shovel-ready This is a term that is remarkable for its elitism and its condescending view of work in America. It also betrays a third-person separation between the ruling and productive classes. We need shovel-ready jobs so they can return quickly to work.

Reset button Here we have a term that might be used by someone who is confident in his ability to restore the function of a balky electrical appliance. The notion that complex international relationships, freighted with years of mutual antagonisms can be turned around with a simple, mechanical gesture. Forget the past...

Bending the cost curve This, perhaps greatest, oversimplification conjures another simple, manual exercise capable of changing the economy.

Bottom-up economy A mantra of candidate Obama. What can it possibly mean...?

Pivot Obama looks to a hard pivot on Iran. A foreign policy danse macabre?

The educated classes Elitist self-caricature. Who, we may ask, are the persons not included in the educated classes? Certainly George Bush, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh. By usage the meaning is clear enough; the speaker or writer is referring to classes not educated "like me". The candid translation is "anointed".

A recent, short article by David Brooks -- NYT's token pseudo-conservative -- has deservedly drawn considerable fire, mostly but not exclusively from the right. Brooks uses the phrase as a foil to the tea-party movement -- presumably ignorant, recalcitrant folks who disagree with the educated classes on matters such as global warming, abortion and gun control. But the writer earns high marks for one succinct and accurate observation (one, by implication, he laments):

The tea party movement is a large, fractious confederation of Americans who are defined by what they are against. They are against the concentrated power of the educated class. They believe big government, big business, big media and the affluent professionals are merging to form self-serving oligarchy — with bloated government, unsustainable deficits, high taxes and intrusive regulation.

What characterizes the users of this patrician language is elitism (of course), a sense of aloof separation from the (unwashed) non-elites*, an unalloyed belief in their own power and wisdom, and the presumption of their own moral superiority (they care). All the necessary elements of hubris.

As the "educated classes" may exclude the educated (in the normal sense), so do they include an alarming number who are not educated (again, in the conventional sense). Pop culture would seem to confirm this in the gagging smarminess of Ben Harper's lyrics to the song, With My Own Two Hands (a staple at PBS). They explain to us how the current president and his myrmidons will effect world peace, manage a changing climate and rebuild the world's economy; how they can change the world, make it a better place...

*--------
Noblesse oblige demands of the educated classes that "ordinary" people, being incompetent, must be led -- failing that, coerced. Tough love.

Parting comment
In 1994 (if not earlier) Charles Murray foresaw with some alarm the trend toward separation of elites from society at large . His phrase was "cognitive partitioning", which described the natural and circumstantial bonding of persons for reasons of a commonality of intelligence, education, career choices, income and neighborhood preferences. Murray drew a distinction between the polity at large and persons who were truly elite, that is, the best and brightest in their fields. I'm not sure he anticipated the artificial division between elites and elitists. Fides necessary to the latter being often superficial and closely associated with school status, wealth from any source, political affiliations, celebrity, and especially disdain for the common man. In short the best and brightest by self-acclimation.
--cf., The Bell Curve by C. Murray and R. J. Herrnstein