The New New Class? – by Noah Millman:Just as Bill Clinton...

The New New Class? – by Noah Millman:

Just as Bill Clinton was our first meritocratic president—the first one whose path to success and power ran from someplace like Hope, Arkansas to Georgetown and Oxford rather than from Hope to the army and the local party machines—Donald Trump is our first attention-economy president, our first influencer president. Not Ronald Reagan; Reagan was an actor, and his acting experience served him well as he became the Great Communicator, but he came up as an actor in the old studio system, served as a union president and worked for General Electric before entering California Republican politics as a party man. He was a natural talent, but he was the product of institutions. Trump isn’t really the product of institutions, but neither, for all that he ran a variety of (mostly unsuccessful) businesses, is he the creator of institutions. He is and always has been first and foremost someone good at drawing attention to himself. Everything else flows from that. 

Noah’s description of our cultural move from being led by a meritocratic class to being led by an influencer class is brilliant.