I’ve often teased about a false nostalgia, the notion that everything was better decades ago. (The contemporary version is a false boosterism, the insistence that everything is wonderful now.)
Some things, however, were better generations ago. One was once routinely taught that the fit subjects for criticism were typically peers and politicians. The expression is old; one doesn’t hear it anymore. The meaning’s simple enough: one criticized one’s peers or those with political authority, but others were generally unfit subjects of much criticism. (The press fell into the category of politics. Criminal conduct was, as a public matter, always a subject of commentary and debate, regardless of a person’s background.)
No one follows a broad rule without exceptions, but one was expected — at the least — to try to follow this rule. That’s why, for the most part, one could live one’s entire childhood without ever hearing criticism of working people. The idea that families sat around sneering at the working class is false; one would not have been able to make fun of working people without a strong rebuke. (Movies and television often portray older families laughing at the working class; it’s a dishonest portrayal.)
Now, one can freely criticize a working person without the slightest opprobrium, but to criticize a politician is decried as an offense against God and man. As for private working people, they’re now the subject of every calumny. They’re all thugs and savages and barbarians.
Madison is presently filled with insecure, haughty leaders, new to the majority, who revile working people while advancing rules for their own benefit.
Instead, it’s now criticism of leaders — of politicians and highly-positioned bureaucrats — that draws the most defensive, hysterical reactions. Having presented themselves as a called and distinct class, they react with fury at the thought that they might be criticized. They are thin-skinned toward commentary, and defensively quick to declare themselves a privileged group.
In this way, politicians are nothing like the faithful, for whom criticism today means little against the far longer history of God’s revealed tradition. In this way, politicians are nothing like an old family, for whom criticism today means little against the span of generations before.
These bureaucrats and politicians may insist upon seeing themselves as a class, but if such, then only as a selfish, self-regarding class, the worst Wisconsin has yet seen.