Ace puts his finger on one of the key differences between “the masses” and the “governing class”:
That’s why the “Political Class” — the Gee Aren’t I Terribly Enlightened? crowd — opposes this. They talk about that a lot — the symbolism of the thing.
[. . .]
I’m noting this because a few weeks ago I saw a guy at the riots in Toronto who complained that the police barricades were a symbol representing a division between the protesters and the G-20 representatives.
And I thought, “Gee, no, actually it’s not a symbol of a division; it really is, in fact, a physical division.” Because, see, you’re rioting. (And not symbolically in riot, either.) You can tell it’s a real-world division because now you can’t get to the G-20 conference center and throw rock-metaphors through the window-symbols.
I think there is a type of person — well-represented in the “Political Class” and in progressive politics — that has learned, from college, that the Abstract is everything, that Real Smart People are always focused on the Abstract, on metaphors, on symbols.
And they seem to disregard the concrete, the real, almost as a dirty thing, something of concern to the plebians, who cannot of course grasp the subtleties of high representational thinking like they can. You know, with their “symbolic” barricades and all.
