Fascinating subject. I've never been the greatest fan of H.D.--find her poetry somewhat arid, though am intrigued by her fiction. But the Pearson--Doolittle story is interesting; he's an intriguing figure. Looking forward to digging into this.
Hi, interesting cast! I've learned new information and turns out that between the 1830s until after WW2 there was no all powerful small, centralized and exclusionary elite ruling structure as they had been displaced by lower case "d" democratic forces and the powers of pluralism. Between the 1830s and the early to mid 20th century, there was no singular, unitary establishment able to control national narratives, policy, or power. After the Jacksonian revolution and the destruction of the Second Bank of the United States, the old Yankee-WASP establishment lost its ability to operate as a coherent national command structure. What followed instead was a fragmented, pluralistic, and regionally differentiated political economy, sustained by local civic institutions, diverse newspapers, heterogeneous banking systems, most importantly decentralized and publicly accessible competitive mass-member parties, and more!! This era was characterized by bottom-up governance, policy variability, and democratic participation!
the sort of group your referring to, the Yale-driven, Virgil-quoting, intelligence-networking, taste-making WASP elite, only truly cohered after WW2, when the Cold War was illegitimately used to justify centralization across media, finance, education, and intelligence under a professionalized ruling stratum. They quickly began accumulate power and really started to achieve it domestically in the early 1960s and then almost fully established themselves with advent of the so called Neoliberal Era, where then the by products of their own excesses and failures began to then change themselves culturally over time.
But it turns out that system was not a holdover from the 19th century; it was a reaction against the decentralized democracy of the Old Republic and its great successes. Before that, power was fractured across a thousand local and regional centers. Consensus, where it existed, was often contested and temporary. The era of Pearson, Bundy, and McGeorge was a historical rupture, not a continuation. To say the “unitary establishment” has died is to, if true, signal a potential return to the Great Experiment that had been running before
Fascinating subject. I've never been the greatest fan of H.D.--find her poetry somewhat arid, though am intrigued by her fiction. But the Pearson--Doolittle story is interesting; he's an intriguing figure. Looking forward to digging into this.
Hi, interesting cast! I've learned new information and turns out that between the 1830s until after WW2 there was no all powerful small, centralized and exclusionary elite ruling structure as they had been displaced by lower case "d" democratic forces and the powers of pluralism. Between the 1830s and the early to mid 20th century, there was no singular, unitary establishment able to control national narratives, policy, or power. After the Jacksonian revolution and the destruction of the Second Bank of the United States, the old Yankee-WASP establishment lost its ability to operate as a coherent national command structure. What followed instead was a fragmented, pluralistic, and regionally differentiated political economy, sustained by local civic institutions, diverse newspapers, heterogeneous banking systems, most importantly decentralized and publicly accessible competitive mass-member parties, and more!! This era was characterized by bottom-up governance, policy variability, and democratic participation!
the sort of group your referring to, the Yale-driven, Virgil-quoting, intelligence-networking, taste-making WASP elite, only truly cohered after WW2, when the Cold War was illegitimately used to justify centralization across media, finance, education, and intelligence under a professionalized ruling stratum. They quickly began accumulate power and really started to achieve it domestically in the early 1960s and then almost fully established themselves with advent of the so called Neoliberal Era, where then the by products of their own excesses and failures began to then change themselves culturally over time.
But it turns out that system was not a holdover from the 19th century; it was a reaction against the decentralized democracy of the Old Republic and its great successes. Before that, power was fractured across a thousand local and regional centers. Consensus, where it existed, was often contested and temporary. The era of Pearson, Bundy, and McGeorge was a historical rupture, not a continuation. To say the “unitary establishment” has died is to, if true, signal a potential return to the Great Experiment that had been running before