Thread by @robkhenderson

To exempt themselves from the demands of adulthood, children of the WASP elite claimed to have "neurasthenia," a "neurotic despair" with symptoms like insomnia, irritability, anxiety, fear of responsibility, lethargy, an inability to make decisions amzn.to/3Dm3Fjx

Theodore Roosevelt suffered from neurasthenia as a young boy, "with the makings of a full-fledged neurotic." He ridiculed the softness of the upper class and overcame his fears by lifting heavy weights, boxing, rowing, mountain climbing, cowboying, and leading men into war

Women from rich WASP families were taught at colleges that they had undeserved privilege, and felt a "desperate wish" to atone and "do violence" to themselves to repent. They aimed to blend Christianity with Socialism & "delighted in the vast Russian experiment" in Communism

J.P. Morgan, "the most powerful WASP in the U.S.," established clubs in which the old rich (who had prestige but lacked capital) & the new rich could intermingle

Lax WASPs favored the term "social prestige." High WASPs thought that term vulgar, preferring the term "reputation"

Some upper WASPs believed moneymaking was "a hell to be endured in the hope that they might one day enter the public service." The choice between Wall St. & government was often determined by the person's aptitude and desire for specific kinds of power (eg political vs economic)

The rise of "cocktail parties." The rich drank on empty stomachs. Love affairs became respectable—"a great relief to WASP women who were famished sexually...The traditions of preppy endogamy obliged them to marry within their class...this severely restricted the choice of mates"

Some WASPs ridiculed the loosening norms and the popularity of binge drinking and casual sex among the rich. John Maynard Keynes remarked that “We had the best of both worlds. We destroyed Christianity and yet had its benefits.”

In 1914, Woodrow Wilson proclaimed U.S. neutrality as Europe was engulfed in war

Many WASPs refused stand by. Graduates of Harvard and Groton served as fighter pilots in Europe before the U.S. later officially joined the war.

The elites were different back then

WASPs believed in "the perfectibility of man" and wanted America to play the part of a good emperor, "promoting a stable world order through wisdom and virtue"

T.S. Eliot was a WASP but grew up outside their circles. His detachment helped him diagnose their failures

"When Eliot, the transplanted New Englander, came to catalogue the weaknesses of his fellow WASPs, he exhibited them in a way no purely New England Brahmin could have done"

Contrasting what he saw on campus with the “debris of a city” he saw just beyond the gates of Harvard Yard, T.S. Eliot concluded that the WASP elites of his day weren’t up to the task of redeeming American culture

The WASP founder of The New Republic wrote about the "impossibility" of educating the masses. Members of the WASP elite spoke of "the bewildered herd," envisioning a class of experts and insiders who managed problems "to complicated for the mass of misinformed citizens to grasp"

WASP Ernest Hemingway battled the fear of neurasthenia by skipping college & getting a job as a junior reporter covering crime. At 18, he joined the Army in WWI, where he sustained severe wounds. Later, he described the work of Henry James as "snobbish, difficultly written shit"

"in autumn 1964 the first episode of Gilligan's Island aired, and in the character of Thurston Howell III the WASPs began their descent...Mid-Atlantic English—dropping the r's in words like 'fear' and 'Harvard'—became the dialect of a lock-jawed clown" amzn.to/3sJRat5

American WASPs who studied abroad in Cambridge University discovered a vibrant socialist society at Trinity College, which was controlled by the USSR. Old Cambridge families developed ties with the Soviet Union, & recruited wealthy sons of American WASPs into the socialist cause

Communists found WASP men who were "bourgeois in education, appearance, and origin" & trained them to infiltrate top institutions. One Soviet spy stated "the majority of Britain's most polished sons are pederasts," suggesting most affluent British men were interested in other men

Eleanor Roosevelt, born to socialite WASPs in New York City, was supportive of communism. In 1939 she said innovations of the Soviet Union were “a positive force in world affairs” and formed ties with U.S. communist organizations

After the Great Depression, “young idealists” from Harvard and other Ivies became enamored with communism. They flocked to Washington, D.C. in their quest to follow the example of the Soviet Union

The rise of standardized testing undermined the WASP establishment, and their monopoly on Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. The SAT led to a fairer society and a more hyper-competitive, status-anxious elite

Interesting that 2 men now considered iconic WASPs, George F. Kennan & F. Scott Fitzgerald, both felt like outsiders when they were around WASPs

Kennan resisted induction into their circles, but was later admired within them. Fitzgerald hustled for acceptance & died in obscurity

The conventional wisdom is that the 20th century WASP establishment pursued internationalist policies for power & profit. But just as important was that WASPs were generally uninterested in their own country beyond Manhattan & the northeast, preferring to meddle in other lands

The WASP elite viewed ordinary citizens as "yahoos" trapped in "moronic darkness."

WASPs viewed them with contempt:

"It is a question whether a high WASP ever supported a fashionable cause without some secret knowledge that the cause was abhorred by the vulgarians."

"WASPs were not, of course, in a conspiracy against America. They were, however, out of touch with it...WASPs never mastered the art which a viable elite must incessantly practice, that of hiding its contempt for those who seem to it vulgar."

JFK was another outsider who is now remembered as an emblem of the WASP establishment

Though from an Irish Catholic family, his father Old Joe Kennedy “had no doubt that the WASP ascendency was real; he wanted his boys to be first assimilated to it, and afterward to master it”

"In the days before Viagra, aging WASPs took up gardening as a substitute for sex, deriving a vicarious pleasure from the orgies of pollen, the fertilizing stamens, the receptive pistils—the exuberant display of all that voluptuousness we ourselves are at pains to conceal."

WASPs argued for the value of a liberal arts education and donated a lot to humanities programs. But they failed. Today the liberal arts survive in diminished form because top colleges look at it as "a hoary heirloom you don't really need but can't bring yourself to put on eBay."

The author suggests that today, a liberal arts education might do more harm than good. Introducing curious young ppl to the works of Sophocles, Shakespeare, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Tao Te Ching might lead them to lament a bygone era before the narrow culture of specialization

"the university (once faulted for being out of touch) has come to embrace every passing fad...the philosopher needs a rest from 'anything to do with today'...difficult to achieve in institutions that give philosophers every incentive to wallow in the commonplaces of the moment"

"the insecurity of elites in a democracy. Under a democratic regime a power establishment has hardly got its moat dug before its ascendancy is assailed by a new troop of moneyed barbarians...the patrician under egalitarian stars fears loss of caste and takes refuge in snobbery"

The author argues that despite the failures of the WASPS as a ruling class, they still cultivated a culture of "public service and sober patriotism" that ultimately triumphed over both National Socialism and Soviet totalitarianism in the 20th century

The manners, tact, and restraint that characterized WASP culture helped to "soften the fierceness of the country's politics." Politeness and "habits of civility" helped to unite the ruling class and cultivated collaboration across political lines. A different era.

Henry Adams, among others, thought "WASPs were spiritual traitors, snobs who exchanged a red-blooded connection to their country for an anemic Europeanism that left them, finally, in a moral no man's land." In contrast, T.S. Eliot praised WASPs for trying to be "good Europeans."

The WASP Louis Auchincloss: "I used to say to my father, 'Everything would be all right if only my class at Yale ran the country.' Well, they did run the country during the Vietnam War, and look what happened!"

The late 60s was more or less the end of the WASP power structure.

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