What's Tony Thinking

Look Out Above

We talk about American society, politics and culture, in terms of a left-right polarity. Do you live in a blue state or a red one? Are you a liberal or a conservative? Do you lean left on this issue or right? Is FDR in your political pantheon or is it Ronald Reagan?

But maybe that framework is missing something. Maybe it even misses what’s really going on.

Ted Gioia is a jazz musician and music critic, a Stanford prof. But he also writes about culture more broadly at Substack under the masthead “The Honest Broker.” Recently, Gioia (whose brother Dana is a celebrated poet) proposed that the left/ right framework, or polarity, may not be that to which attention needs be paid.

He drew upon a 1929 book by the Spanish philosopher, Jose Ortega Y Gasset, titled Revolt of the Masses. In that book Ortega argued that it’s not left and right that explains things, but Up and Down.

“He hardly acknowledges,” writes Gioia of Ortega’s Revolt, “the existence of ‘left’ and ‘right’ in political debates. Ortega’s brilliant insight came in understanding that the battle between ‘up’ and ‘down’ could be as important in spurring social and cultural change as the conflict between ‘left’ and ‘right’.

“This is not,” continues Gioia, “an economic distinction in Ortega’s mind. The new conflict, he insists, is not between ‘hierarchically superior and inferior classes…. upper classes or lower classes.’ A millionaire could be a member of the masses, according to Ortega’s surprising schema. And a pauper might represent the elite.”

However much it may be pitched to us as left vs. right, what’s really going on said Ortega, is the masses versus the elites. The down versus the up. It’s not the revolt of the right. It’s the revolt of the masses.

“The key driver of change, as Ortega sees it, comes from a shocking attitude characteristic of the modern age—or, at least, Ortega was shocked. Put simply, the masses hate experts. If forced to choose between the advice of the learned and the vague impressions of other people just like themselves, the masses invariably turn to the latter. The upper elites still try to pronounce judgments and lead, but fewer and fewer of those down below pay attention.”

Ringing any bells? Describing something you’ve seen? Or wondered about? “Put simply, the masses hate experts.” (Consider Trump’s appointments!)

Riffing off Ortega, Gioia writes of our own era, “Analysis of cultural conflict is still obsessed with left-versus-right strategizing, but the actual battle lines are increasingly down-versus-up. A lot of work goes into hiding this, because both left and right want to present an image of unity, but both spheres are splintering into intensely hostile up-and-down factions.”

Was it the economic collapse of 2008-09 when the banks, but not the average Joes, were bailed out? Was it the COVID pandemic when many didn’t buy what the experts were selling? Or was it one of the new revelations from on high, from academe, i.e. CRT and DEI? Or maybe the driver is it the internet’s information explosion?

For my money, Ortega and Gioia are onto something. Up/ Down may better describe what we are seeing around us.

As it happens, a more recent writer, cribbed on Ortega with a similar theme and title ten years ago. Martin Gurri, a former CIA analyst who had been tasked with understanding bubbling popular movements and protests (Occupy Wall Street, The Yellow Vests, Arab Spring), wrote The Revolt of the Public. I read it then and found it fascinating. I can’t remember if Gurri tipped his hat to Ortega or not.

Gurri’s thesis was that the internet had undermined the elites who were no longer the authoritative source of information, of knowledge, or of norms. But the problem, said Gurri, was that the elites did not understand this. They kept acting as if they were authoritative but were increasingly emperors without any clothes.

Gurri has applied his analysis to the most recent election here when Gurri voted, for the first time, for Donald Trump. You may not care for his provocative analysis. In fact, I am sure it will disturb many of you as much as it did me. But it does line-up with Ortega’s insights of nearly a century ago now. It’s not left and right. It’s up and down. It’s the Revolt of the Masses. The Revolt of the Public.

Where will it all lead? Well, as Adam Grant says, “If you’re sure you know how the next four years will play out I promise: you are wrong.”

This much Gioia will say:

“All of the cultural energy right now is on the bottom. And that energy has been intensifying. The attempts to distort this conflict into conventional left-versus-right battle lines has prevented opinion leaders from grasping the actual dynamic at play. Any ambitious agenda that doesn’t take into account down-versus-up is doomed to failure.”

Oh, and he adds this: if the old saw has been “Look out below,” it now needs to be “Look out above.”