flâneur

🟧 The revenge of elitism - One Thing

onethingnewsletter.substack.com · 1,266 words · saved by 1 readers

Everywhere I look I see elites, which is to say, people who already have power (or clout, fame, and capital) leveraging their power to gain more of it and to exert authority over other people. What’s more, the top-down hierarchy has become somehow cool — desirable or at least inescapable and thus ripe for adoption and appropriation. The crackpot tech philosopher Curtis Yarvin calls for an American king, which Trump acts like anyway. The Trump family forms a royal court that is busily extracting money from their demesne like any crew of evil princes of centuries past. Hangers-on compete to get closer to the center, or they just go to Butterworth’s in DC to bask in the elitist aura. (Even as government workers, the non-elites, are forced out of their jobs and lives.) In culture, print magazines are getting new, young editors-in-chief: see Noah Johnson at Highsnobiety, Mark Guiducci at Vanity Fair, and Chloe Malle at Vogue, who instantly become power brokers themselves. People genuinely c

This season of America sucks!!! I was reminded of this as I watched a trio of heavily armed National Guard troops patrol DC’s 18th Street in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday, as if the president had sent the army in to occupy SoHo and arrest anyone buying Vuori. My only optimism comes from people still continuing to write and create things that matter to them, that elicit collective joy in a time dominated by conflict. This newsletter collects some of them, or at least the things that make me stay interested. First, a brief essay from me, then other links w/ Emily Chang reviewing…

related reading