I’m quite interested in how pro-establishment, pro-status quo, economically powerful people make common cause with anti-establishment, anti-status quo, economically weak people. Maybe I can discuss it a bit this week, with a humorous nod to the word “bougie?”
In my youth, pejorative use of the word “bourgeois,” “bourgie” or “bougie” for short, was confined to fatuous, egotistical rich people looking for a snarky insult for what they saw as socially inferior middle class people, particularly if they supposed them putting on airs. So, for example, one might expect a spoiled young tycoon with inherited billions, living in a grand estate, to hear a middle class person talking about his or her job, career, retirement, modest house, whatever, and declare it bougie, that is, relatively low class, inferior. More recently, I’ve noticed economically weak, struggling people using “bougie” rather differently. They also use it to describe middle class people, maybe still with some connotation of pretentiousness, but as a criticism of a quasi-elite with a modicum of economic power.
I realized it recently when aimlessly channel surfing and encountering a young English lady giving video tours of her favorite posh stores in London, talking about what appealed to “the masses,” and declaring especially fancy, pricey items “bougie.” The usage seemed obscure. Was she saying the offending product was something only tasteless, bling-seeking plebs, “the masses,” might buy? Or was she saying it was particularly pricey, fancy, something an economically struggling person might suppose rich people would like? It seems today coddled rich tycoons and struggling poor people can make common cause lambasting middle class people and their concerns, tastes as bougie, but for entirely different reasons, masking the even greater scorn tycoons may have toward the poor and possibly vice versa.
It seemed to me a reflection of a similar thing going on with respect to anti-democracy sentiment, shared by pro-establishment, pro-status quo, economically powerful people and anti-establishment, anti-status quo, economically weak people, but often for quite different reasons. Economically powerful, egoistic, establishment types often hate democracy because they perceive it a threat to their own economic power. Economically weak, anti-establishment types often hate democracy because they suppose it captured, dominated by the economically powerful. The two groups often clearly have very different criticisms, with very different potential solutions, and would be at one another's throats if democracy were ever actually eliminated, but before then, they may act the part of good friends, united in anti-democracy zeal, anger.
It’s not always the case. Economically weak people, especially under the influence of anti-democracy bad economics in the conservative style, may genuinely desire government be more completely dominated by the economically powerful because of their ostensible merit. But it seems to me often the case they’re talking at cross purposes at some level. While some clearly suppose they’re fighting the prospect of radical change in any aspect of economic power, their allies seem to suppose they’re fighting just as enthusiastically for such change. One can imagine the economically powerful lambasting democracy for being bougie, too responsive to the hoi polloi, the mob, insufficiently controlled by economic power, and the economically weak agreeing, "Yes, bougie; so indifferent to the poor, dominated by the rich.”
One should look beyond the fact democracy doesn’t always give one what one wants when one wants it before making common cause with others on that basis. Ask what problems they perceive, how they intend addressing them, or one may just end up a useful idiot, a tool. Understand the ethos of democracy, why some suppose the views of the governed valuable, its basis in ultimately subjective and changeable secular ethics, but also its implications for stability, ability to undergo peaceful change and development, free speech and thought, etc. Think of democracy in systemic terms, to be evaluated against other potential political systems, not just on the simplistic dimension of whether it delivers what one wants the moment one wants it. I suppose no system can reliably provide that result. That’s not a real issue.
