“Dishonesty is so normalized that this kind of performative fragmentation—signaling that one believes certain things while acting as if one believes other things—may eventually be recognized as a marker of intelligence and proper preparation for class climbing (or class maintenance, if one starts off in that class).”

—Substacker “Holly Mathnerd,” reviewing a book I haven’t read (“Troubled”) by a writer I never heard of (Rob Henderson), but gleaning from it wisdom that sorely temps me change both conditions.

It is pure coincidence that so soon after this post and this one —and even this one—another dishonesty and hypocrisy assessment presented itself. Something is in the air.

This is a phenomenon that Ethics Alarms has discussed frequently. The “elite classes,” like those who sent my college classmates to a series of prestigious schools, pushed for the legalization and cultural approval of regular pot use which they insisted was harmless. The resulting new social norm has devastated the lower socio-economic reaches that are more likely to abuse the privilege without the means to cope with the results. Support for “illegals”—Joe’s accurate word—via sanctuary cities and bleeding heart rhetoric was adamant until the progressive virtue-signalers in “sanctuary cities” had to deal with the real consequences of an open border policy.

More from Holly:

Crucially, privileged people rarely live by these espoused beliefs (they decry monogamous marriage as outdated and oppressive for women while rarely having children out of wedlock, as one example). Some other examples: religious community is more socially cohesive and valuable among poor people than the rich, so dismissing it as unnecessary or backward is a luxury belief. Poor children, who don’t get to play in expensive sports leagues or attend expensive after-school karate lessons, are a lot more likely to need multiple authority figures and caring adults to keep them out of trouble than rich kids who are rarely unsupervised. Marginalizing religious community harms the poor, not the rich. Additional example: a poor woman is more likely to derail her life and the lives of her children through sexual promiscuity than a professional woman whose income is sufficient to provide for any child resulting from said promiscuity. Single parenthood is never ideal, but single parenthood when the child gets a full-time nanny providing one-on-one care and always has access to nutritious food and medical and mental health care is significantly less detrimental than single parenthood when the child experiences unstable, inadequate care from a revolving door of babysitters and mom’s boyfriends…

From the book: “In the past, people displayed their membership in the upper class with material accoutrements. But today, luxury goods are more accessible than before. This is a problem for the affluent, who still want to broadcast their high social position. But they have come up with a clever solution. The affluent have decoupled social status from goods and reattached it to beliefs. Advocating for sexual promiscuity, drug experimentation, or abolishing the police are good ways of advertising your membership of the elite because, thanks to your wealth and social connections, they will cost you less than me….Later, I would connect my observations to stories I read about tech tycoons, another affluent group, who encourage people to use addictive devices, while simultaneously enforcing rigid rules at home about technology use. For example, Steve Jobs prohibited his children from using iPads. Parents in Silicon Valley reportedly tell their nannies to closely monitor how much their children use their smartphones. Chip and Joanna Gaines are well-known home improvement TV personalities who have their own television network. They don’t allow their children to watch TV and don’t own a television…Successful people tell the world they got lucky but then tell their loved ones about the importance of hard work and sacrifice. Critics of successful people tell the world those successful people got lucky and then tell their loved ones about the importance of hard work and sacrifice.”

…I haven’t been able to stop thinking about one aspect of this book: the extent to which dishonesty is entirely normalized in our society among the elite. The luxury classes people pretend to believe that marriage doesn’t matter, but very few of them have children out of wedlock. They pretend to believe that fat-shaming is a serious moral affront, while they spend a fortune on organic food and personal trainers to keep themselves fit and trim. They pretend to believe many things that their lives betray they don’t actually believe at all.

It’s easy to think that most of them are just going along with the crowd and don’t realize they’re lying, but the truth is that most of them do know, which is why they expressed agreement with Rob in private. This is a familiar dynamic; I used to get DMs on Twitter from people apologizing that they couldn’t follow me (though they made a point to daily read my tweets) without upsetting their coworkers. These people included a couple of college professors, a Unitarian minister, and a couple of therapists, and possibly others I’ve forgotten.

…This dynamic is going to destroy us all if we don’t find a way to fix it. Soon.

Bingo.

Holly’s substack and review of “Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class” is here.

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Pointer: Instapundit