I might very well make my kids "landed gentry" myself, given the chance, but I wouldn't go around pretending it was a virtuous choice on my part. Nor would I wr

I might very well make my kids "landed gentry" myself, given the chance, but I wouldn't go around pretending it was a virtuous choice on my part. Nor would I write as though somebody else were evil because they happened, for largely unrelated reasons, to disrupt my plans for doing it. Whereas this toady is so bent on having an overclass that he's doing that on behalf of others. ... and the pledge thing is the same, really. In order to have some hypocritical desire to signal adherence to some ideal, you first have to believe it's an ideal. Those people have no need to "placate the masses" in the sense of there being an imminent risk of torches and pitchforks. They're doing it at most for prestige... and prestige only counts if it's among people whose opinions you actually care about.