Welcome to The Drama Guild
A staple of political commentary is explaining why things happen the way they do. In certain circles explanations reduce back to “the elite”, positing their motivations as the reason why the music that plays, plays. Sometimes the elite are posited as first actors, those who set in motion a shift in policy or in international relations. That word “actor” is really helpful, as it brings us to the idea of the drama guild. We can think of the elite, and probably should, as play directors. Those that run the show (notice the theater language) are those who write the script and then hands out that script to politicians. Politicians are simply actors who follow the script they are given. Let’s look at an example.
When Covid-19 broke out there was a global disease that nobody knew what it was or how to handle it. At the very outset of the pandemic there were videos coming out of China of soldiers in hazmat suits orchestrating evacuations of cities. I tried finding some of these videos, but I could not dig up any. For those who were on Telegram at the time (and I know most of my readership were), you know what I am talking about. For those who were not (or are not at Telegram at all), I am sure you can remember the initial confusion and fear. Imagine the confusion and fear you felt, whether watching those videos or listening to the new, but now imagine you are responsible for the health and wellbeing of every soul in your country. What do you do? Where do you begin? In comes the World Health Organization with a series of protocol, a step-by-step plan to combating Covid. Soon every country began to implement the WHO protocols. There was the script writer, the WHO, and the actors, the politicians. Actors read the script they are given because they trust the director, because he has credibility. It is this credibility, institutional credibility in most cases, that make elites elite.
Two other elite institutions are the RAND Corporation and Chicago University. RAND is a policy non-profit organization that is best known for creating Lyndon B. Johnson’s The Great Society and for inventing the doctrine of nuclear deterrence by mutually assured destruction. Chicago University is very similar, except that it has been traditionally more aligned with neo-conservative interests.
Why did LBJ source his Great Society from RAND? Why are Chicago University professors (such as John Mearsheimer) authoritative in foreign policy? Both of these organizations, like the WHO, are trusted by politicians to be the director to their actor. By gaining credibility (and each successful policy multiplies previous credibility) an organization becomes known as “the place with answers” and they attract more clients. After an organization has started to attract world leaders as its clients, then we can safely categorize that organization as “elite.” The WHO, RAND, Chicago University, or others like the World Economic Forum or The Tavistock Institution, are simply directors who provide detailed scripts to world leaders when they need scripts most. Global pandemic? There is a script. American economic crises? There is a script. A threat to unipolarity? There is a script. Note how none of this is nefarious or conspiratorial, as a lot of talk about “the elite” often is. Most of what the elite do is pretty benign and can be reduced to (because it is) policy wonkery and Excel wizardry.
As an interesting aside, the disappearance of the great statesman of old can be explained by the existence of elite institutions eliminating much, if not all, of the arduous task of thinking. Why bumble about when there is a team of experts at the call? There has not been a Napolean because there has been no need of one. Talk about the decline in intelligence or bravery might have some truth to it, but it misses the essential point: the statesman is not needed when RAND and the WHO exist.
If we want to be genealogical about this, a seed form of this phenomena might be found in the New England Mugwumps who, having their faith in democracy shaken by the Civil war, thought it better that specialized civil servants, rather than politicians, run most of daily governance. Mugwumpery never achieved lasting political victory but did lead into populism and then into progressivism. Progressivism, through Wilson and the two Roosevelts, took the world by storm and established America as the world hegemon. Does this mean that the Mugwumps spread their ideas through America’s success (the success they did not live to see)? No, but it does mean that they were thinking the thoughts of winners many years prior, showing that the director/actor model has been around for a much longer time that we might imagine and that eventually contributed to America’s geopolitical sucess.
For aspiring elites, there are two things you need to think about:
How do I gain credibility among the political class?
Who can I work with (you will need a medium sized network) to produce scripts? Keeping in mind that these scripts will need to be detailed policies that can be amenable to any political persuasion.
Easy, right?