It's the lack of virtue in our economic and intellectual elites that does the harm. The economic elites call for great sacrifices among people not within those elites -- for the indulgence of the economic elites. The intellectual elites offer depravity in mass culture. In the former one has the ethos of the worst possible rulers -- gangsters, tyrants, and feudal lords. We can all see where such leads.
The intellectual elites at their best bring out the best in ourselves. At the worst the intellectual elites either become enforcers of the economic exploiters of lead the masses to a celebration of primitive depravity. Maybe we get entertained but we also get soiled.
The lack of virtue reaches beyond politics: it manifests itself in MLB players, who make millions of dollars per year, having bench-clearing brawls when someone is hit by a pitch (yes, I'm sure it's a low percentage, but it seems to happen a LOT these days). I posted about it in this Forum.
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