Normies vs. Elites

and the elites can't stand it

Let us describe the world as Martin Gurri does at The Free Press in “The Revenge of the Normies.”

The normies want to get on with life. They want to work, get married, have children—boring stuff. That’s what normal means.

The elites, for their part, wish to change everything: sex, the climate, our history, your automobile, your diet, even the straws with which you slurp your smoothie.

Then he gets down to business, for the piece is not really about the revenge of the normies but how the elites are trying to silence them.

The elite dream is to turn the clock back to the day before the internet was invented. Short of that, they wish to turn the web into something like the front page of The New York Times circa 1960.

Well, yes So would I if I was a member of the tippy-top elite. Because the thing about the present moment is that it is much more difficult than in the old days to keep the normies silenced. Because internet.

But the elite is doing its best. There’s the censoring of social media exposed in The Twitter Files. There’s Brazil with its “Secretariat for Digital Policies” and \ “National Prosecutor for the Defense of Democracy”. There’s Belgium where the lefty mayor of Brussels closed down a NatCon conference.

But will it work?

The normies believe that digital platforms have brought them into close proximity to the people at the top of the pyramid. They can criticize—loudly and rudely—presidents, journalists, and experts of every kind as equals in the information sphere. They can talk back.

But, the elites disagree.

They find it far-fetched to think that the public is growing feistier or more independent: the exact opposite is the case. The normies are viewed by the elites as a “basket of deplorables,” a dull and almost animalistic mass of cravings that are easily manipulated by clever but unscrupulous populists.

Yes, it’s all about the normies getting hypnotized on social media by disinformation.

This interpretation has a calming effect on the elites, restoring their faith in the way the world is supposed to work. The conflict, properly understood, isn’t between lowly nobodies and themselves at all. It’s between good (institutional) elites and evil (populist) ones who manipulate the masses. Either way, the elites are always in charge, as God intended. 

But still, the elite is troubled and confused.

The twenty-first century presents a riddle they have so far been unable to solve. As a class, they own all the big guns and command the strategic heights, yet their prestige has evaporated, and power is slipping like water through their hands.

It’s a tricky situation for our beloved elites. They know they are right and they know that the populists are wrong. But something seems off — a glitch in the Matrix, perhaps.

As you know, I have a Narrative about this. I called it the Three Ages of Communication.

At the American Thinker I put it this way.

So let us tell the three ages of the History of Communication.

Age of Parchment: Writers write, monks in monasteries create illuminated manuscripts by hand in their monastic cells. Gatekeeper: The Abbot.

Age of Gutenberg: Writers write, printer’s devils convert the written word into print. Gatekeeper: The Editor.

Age of Free-for-all: Writers write, and press Publish. Gatekeeper: The… (oh no!)

Here’s my latest version of my Three Ages of Communication

In the Age of Parchment, only monks and scribes could publish stuff.

In the Age of Gutenberg, only tippy-top intellectuals could publish stuff.

In the Age of Internet, every deplorable normie in the world can publish stuff.

And in the Age of Internet, our elites, like Lina Lamont in Singin’ in the Rain with her diction coach, cayn’t stand’m.

The question is, of course, whether the current elites, the educated ruling class, can successfully censor the new communications in the Age of Internet.

That is the difference between real life and a movie.