Listening to Johnson reciting The Iliad in Ancient Greek for 2 minutes is a useful reminder that comparisons to 😡 are not only facile but way, way too flattering of the latter
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In a way they are both playing the role of the old fashioned good elite. The billionaire success and the good aristocrat a la Churchill.
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Pareto circulation of elites theory. Fox vs. Lion. Consistently the most useful simple frame I’ve found.
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I basically agree with Pareto about the circulation of elites, and as ideal-types "foxes" and "lions" are useful archetypes. Of course, empirical reality is not always so neat. 😡 for example talks like a 'lion' but acts (insofar as there's any coherence to it) more like a 'fox.'
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I think the key variable is power, and information technology has muddied what is meant by power (by, for example, rendering the question of whether pen is mightier than the sword moot). 1/2
But I think there's a litmus test: it is still crystal clear who admires power vs. insight. So a lion is *defined* as someone whose actions draw the admiration of power-admirers, regardless of the particular form of their behaviors. So Jacksonian America is still "power" oriented
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My memory of Pareto is vague but aren't foxes "co-opters" who believe in decentralization, pluralism and restraint in the use of force, whereas lions are authoritarians who rule through centralized, hierarchical bureaucracies, emphasizing unity, homogeneity & established ways?




