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I get the sense the deeper you penetrate into elite circles, the harder it is to not become complicit in something ugly. To some extent elite cultures are almost defined by a kind of mutually assured destruction condition of collective complicity.
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Not quite - the narratives shift. You are treated like a Titan of Industry, or a Luminary of Science, or a Patron of Sacred Arts. The heavy weight on your shoulders is to make the *tough* calls; mere mortals don't understand. But we do. "We've all been there", "we get it".
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That’s the outer ring of self-congratulatory pageantry. The inner rings aren’t quite like that. There’s the “you can’t handle the truth” inner ring of self-righteous, self-justifying abuse of power, and a parallel inner ring of naked secretive abuse.
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It’s like some onions: outer rings are singular, but innermost rings come in sets of 2. Subset A is moral self-justification of abuse of power as not abusing/greater-good, subset B is secretive abuse that they don’t bother justifying. High priests vs bagmen/fixers.
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