I admit I enjoyed reading the article in The Daily Beast about what incompetent louts Donald Trump, Jr. and Jared Kushner are.
The article used a term I have not encountered before, “failson” [db]:
A “failson” is a son of wealth and privilege who is equal parts incompetence, stupidity, and arrogance. Sound like anybody you know?
Yes, anyone with any historical literacy will recognize that’s just another term for “hereditary aristocrat.” The word “hereditary” is the one that does all the work. Otherwise, what is an “aristocrat”? [vocab]
The word aristocrat comes from the Greek word aristokratia, which itself comes from the root words aristos, meaning “best,” and kratos, meaning “rule.”
Napoleon 2.0
Well, are you done with hereditary aristocracy, yet? As you can see, it’s practically self-contradictory, or – at best – based on a misunderstanding of genetic determinism. If King Thag is a great, wise, and mighty king, does King Thag pass on those traits when he lies with his queen? Nowadays we understand (except for the many stupid ignorant racists) that that’s not how greatness, wisdom, and might come to be. Greatness, wisdom, and might come from education, hard work, and attention to detail. It’s interesting, if not fascinating, how many great, wise, and mighty people knew that – but still turned around and inflicted their useless frogspawn on the societies they conquered. I cannot find any comments by Napoleon I regarding his son, Napoleon II, which I take as an indication that he was not particularly impressed; Napoleon, one of the greatest strategic analysts of his time, was – if nothing else – a great reader of talent. and he stuck his son out of the way as ruler of Rome, and conspicuously did not make him a diplomat or a marshal. The greatest, wisest, and mightiest autocrat of all times (arguably) Genghis Khan, promoted his most important followers from the ranks of the many he encountered in his lifetime. He did not elevate any of his many sons. I could go on all day with this, but I should have stopped with the dynasty that sprung from Napoleon Bonaparte: Napoleon II and Napoleon III. Napoleon III is what Donald Trump Jr and Jared Kushner aspire to be. Hell, Napoleon III is what Donald Trump probably aspires to be, god help us all.
I think there is some merit to the idea of aristocracy, but none whatsoever to hereditary aristocracy. As Richard Feynman once said, “hereditary aristocracy makes as much sense as hereditary physics.”
Napoleon 3.0
By the way, here’s a quiz for you: in popular culture, what branch of endeavor has the highest degree of “hereditary aristocracy” today? [See below the divide for my guess] Meanwhile, any indication that the descendants of kings inherit their greatness from their forbears can be conclusively refuted by the Windsor/Mountbatten/Romanoff mafia, and the Bonapartes.
Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr are not even in the league of Napoleon III, who at least exhibited good taste while leading France into its most crushing defeat since the battle of Crécy in 1346. Let’s hope Kushner and Trump never get the chance to actually lead anyone into anything, ever.
Seriously, though, what is wrong with humans that they follow the frogspawn of great leaders? A look at some history shows that, generally, they are not the best human beings, but rather the worst. This has been obvious all along – the only reason that anyone takes King Thag II seriously is because his father is probably still kicking around somewhere with his spearmen ready to ensure that his frogspawn is shown proper respect.
We can be quite sure that Trump, Jr., did not write “his” book (in the tradition of his father, who has probably never read a book, let alone written one) and its bestseller status had to be secured by right-wing action groups mass-buying copies on amazon to jigger the bestseller lists. In other words, the people who manipulated the bestseller list were implicitly admitting that they knew the book is unsellable shit.
Wales? Mummy I don’t even know where Wales is; I want to go home this hat sucks.
My theory is this: most people actually realize that the offspring of the king is most likely to be a dud. The offspring of a line of kings is going to be a dud with a thud, like Caligula. The citizens are left hoping that they get a harmless loser like Prince Charles and not an aggressive dipshit like Kaiser Wilhelm II or Caligula or Napoleon III.
When you add to the prevalence of idiocy and congenital defects in monarchies, you really need to step back and question hereditary aristocracy as an idea. Just don’t question too loudly, lest King Thag’s spearmen come sort you out.
What’s a failson (pronounced exactly like it looks, just a combination of “fail” and “son”)? He is an upper – (or upper-middle) class incompetent who is protected by familial wealth from the consequences of his actions. The term seems to have been coined by one Will Menaker of the podcast Chapo Trap House, as documented in The New Yorker in this 2016 article.
Ah, you mean a hereditary aristocrat.
The reason I want to stomp down hard on this terminology is because it’s being used to conceal the ugly fact that many American wealthy and powerful do try to create hereditary aristocracies. In principle, the United States was a rejection of a hereditary aristocrat, George III, another incompetent Englishman distantly descended from the king who did win at Crécy in 1346, and therefore fit to rule a massive colonial empire. The US was, specifically, a rejection of all of that shit, and it’s unamerican as fuck to try to establish hereditary aristocracies here, of all places. What’s sad and a bit ironic is that the Trumps are, if anything, a criminal aristocracy – like the Kennedys. If there was a hereditary skill-set there, it would have been rumrunning and stock market manipulation. Perhaps the Trump dynasty will specialize in tax-dodging and bloviation.
Fortunately, those are not genetically determined skills.
One is not born a failson. Nor does one simply inherit the status of failson. No—failson status is earned through a display of equal parts incompetence, stupidity, and arrogance.
Sorry but that’s just wrong. One is born exactly that; a child of a father who cannot produce a great, wise, or mighty child in spite of the incredible opportunity that they have to do so. “Failson” is not a term worth using. It’s just hereditary aristocracy. Confont it – and hate it.
My bet: Hollywood. It seems that if you’re a Fonda, for example, you are assumed to be genetically endowed with acting ability. That is nonsense, of course, but what do you do seem to get is: preference at auditions.
“does King Thag pass on those traits when he lies with his queen?” – there is an entire trope that King Thag lies with a chambermaid yet the child also inherits Thag’s wisdom, might, and greatness. Is it possible that people are so utterly stupid about heritability of traits that they believe there’s something special conveyed in King Thag’s DNA? Now, if a child grew up in King Thag’s palace, and trained with Thag’s guards, and was tutored and trained, he might be the next Alexander of Macedon or Marcus Aurelius. I think that this was one of the most profound and interesting points in Frank Herbert’s Dune – that the Atreides family are aristocrats who have realized that you must raise your child to rule and – more importantly – that ruling is a skill; a skill that requires a unique and multi-faceted education. Walter Jon Williams touches on this even deeper in his fascinating and brilliant book Aristoi, in which he examines what an aristocracy of the future might look like; one in which the rulers truly are the best and brightest products of the civilization. Sadly, Trump chose to raise Donald Jr in line with his personal tastes, which put a low bar on how high he can go. The best Don Jr can accomplish is to be a dud – but, in that, he’s in very lofty blue-blooded company, indeed.
My father’s usual comment when dismissing a particularly horrible person was always “he didn’t pick his parents very well” – which is pretty darned charming since it inverts the entire heritability proposition very neatly.
The thing about Caligula is that the stories of his tyranny and excesses are from somewhat unreliable sources, follow a traditional pattern of Roman political denunciation, and stand in considerable contrast to other accounts of his early reign which portray him as very popular and generous towards the people. He was no saint, clearly, but it was very much necessary for his uncle and successor, Claudius, to blacken his name, because Claudius owed his position entirely to the assassination of Caligula being a legitimate act of tyrannicide. The general rule of Roman historiography is that if you were murdered then you had to be written up as a horrible tyrant, so the next guy didn’t look like a usurper. Caligula also had it bad, because he was the first Emperor with no military record to buttress his claim to absolute power, like Augustus and Tiberius had before him. As such he started importing more kingly stylings to the role of Princeps, borrowing ideas from Hellenistic monarchies, and this rubbed many up the wrong way who still dimly remembered Republican values and hadn’t been entirely convinced by Augustus’s positioning of his role as Emperor as just “first citizen” and “first among equals”. As far as succession goes, it is worth pointing out that, actually, Caligula never really expected to inherit. He was the last member of his branch of the family who hadn’t been murdered, thanks to his mother Agrippina’s opposition to Tiberius, and Tiberius himself was only Emperor after two failed attempts by Augustus to find a successor within the family. If nothing else, one can point to the fact they survived the intrigues of court where everyone else didn’t to show they had at least something going for them. A much better Roman example would be Commodus, son of Marcus Aurelius, who basically just wanted to watch gladiatorial shows and play gladiator himself all day. Aurelius was highly unusual for choosing his biological son as his successor – most Emperors of the early second century decided to adopt a promising candidate from elsewhere, as indeed Julius Caesar did with Octavian at the beginning of the Principate.
It is worth pointing out, also, that the Romans were much more aware of the thinness of their pretensions to not being an aristocratic, monarchical society than the US currently is. This last week a translation of Tacitus’ Annals, by none other than Queen Elizabeth I, has come to light in the royal archives. As a teacher of Latin, I couldn’t help but scan the first few sentences to see how well she’d managed to translate it. I noticed right away that she had made the same mistake most translators have with Tacitus’s opening line, thereby removing entirely the subtle dig Tacitus was making at the image his own society had of itself. Tacitus begins his annals with a brief run-down of Rome’s history from the founding to the beginning of the Principate, Most think his first sentence should be “Kings held the city of Rome in the beginning” – a simple reference to the fact Rome once had a royal dynasty, followed by the second sentence about how Brutus ended this period and ushered in the period of Republican rule.
But that’s not what Tacitus says. The sentence is actually “Kings held the city of Rome FROM the beginning” (a principio, not in principio, the preposition is everything). He means, of course, that while Romans tell themselves they have a glorious tradition of Republican rule, and even that the Principate isn’t really a hereditary monarchy but a reformed kind of Republic, they have actually been ruled by kings all along, they’ve just refused to call them that. The taste for authoritarian aristocrats has been a constant in Roman history, however those aristocrats have styled themselves.
Charles has only been harmless so far because he hasn’t been king so far.
I think at least part of the reason why people go along with heredity is that it’s a simple, relatively unambiguous way of figuring out who goes next. The alternative is that you suddenly have several people who all think they should be in change and wham, bam, civil war, ma’am. Better to have a peaceful transition, even if it means the next guy is a bit of a dunce.
How exactly that translates to modern times, I’m not sure. It might have something to do with hereditary dynasties backing each other up: “You give my son that cushy job and I’ll make sure your daughter gets her promotion”. That sort of thing. Keep the money and influence circling in the same small group of people, who are all tied together by mutual interests. Nobody is incentivized to rock the boat, because they owe their own success to the favors they’re getting by playing along.
Also, let’s remember that an incompetent leader is a source of great opportunities, if you’re of a certain unscrupulous mindset. Whether you want to become the new leader yourself, or you just want to help yourself to the national treasury; either way, it’s a lot easier if the current leader is a buffoon.
“Hereditary aristocrat” is another redundant phrase. It’s a tautology like for example “wet water.” Pretty much all aristocrats were born in wealthy families. Firstly, rags to riches stories are extremely rare. Secondly, even when somebody from a poor family manages to earn a fortune, other aristocrats will look down on this person claiming that they aren’t like the rest of the aristocrats. Even if the wealthy businessperson learns to copy the dress code, mannerisms, and the accent of the aristocrats, they will be perceived as an outsider anyway. Hence in past businesspeople with money were so eager to marry into aristocratic dynasties who had an aristocratic name but had lost their financial fortunes over the generations.
Different terms have different connotations, hence people choose to use one over the other is specific situations where they want to convey some meaning. In Europe the term “aristocrat” has positive connotations. The rubes are expected to admire the aristocrats and look up to them. Calling all the European kings and princes “failsons” instead of “aristocrats” can help convey my disgust towards aristocracy as such. I don’t like to use the word “aristocrat” when talking about all the European monarchs. I rather prefer to substitute this word with something like “parasite,” “snob,” “money-grubber,” “a walking waste of public funds,” etc. and yes, also “failson.”
cartomancer @1: It’s a bit misleading to point out Aurelius’ appointing his son as successor being an abnormal thing; he was after all the only one of the six Five Good Emperors who actually had any offspring. The ‘adopt a competent guy’ thing was done precisely because they didn’t have children who could succeed, not deliberately.
Andreas Avester@#4:
“Hereditary aristocrat” is another redundant phrase. It’s a tautology like for example “wet water.” Pretty much all aristocrats were born in wealthy families.
But they don’t necessarily follow. In principle an “aristocracy” could be the rule of a wise mighty leader who demonstrated their wisdom and might in spite of arising from humble roots. I grant your point that that pretty much does not happen, but I think it’s useful to distinguish an aristocracy from a “hereditary aristocracy” which is really an oligarchy.
The US is founded on a bunch of republican sentiments (which are largely convenient lies, in the US) but the principle remains that the people can choose wise and mighty leaders from among themselves, assuming they are wise enough to recognize such leaders when they do a marketing blitz on facebook.
LykeX@#3:
I think at least part of the reason why people go along with heredity is that it’s a simple, relatively unambiguous way of figuring out who goes next. The alternative is that you suddenly have several people who all think they should be in change and wham, bam, civil war, ma’am. Better to have a peaceful transition, even if it means the next guy is a bit of a dunce.
Bingo!
That’s one of the things I think Dune gets really right: the aristocrats’ job is to produce a new leader as an heir – one who has been prepared and trained for the task, and who is good at it.
Otherwise, we’re left with King Thag’s sons squabbling over the pie. In our case, Ivanka would win, and she’s probably the smartest of that lot (which means she’s the most able and therefore the most dangerous)
In an ideal aristocracy, I suppose that the leader would designate their heir and everyone would cheer loudly, because the heir was obviously competent, well-trained, and a good leader. You know, like they cheered for Prince Charles.
I remember reading in some collection of Irish quotations one (I forget by whom exactly; possibly it was the 18/19C lawyer and politician John Philpott Curran as it sounds like him): when confronted by a room of the snotty scions of the Irish aristocracy who informed him that there wasn’t a single one among them not of noble birth, looked them up and down and declared, “dear me! What a collection of anti-climaxes!” 😀
sonofrojblake @#2
I wouldn’t say Charles has been entirely harmless, witness for one the ‘spider’ letters and his right to comment on policy affecting the Duchy of Cornwall.
I haven’t read the book that’s mentioned here, but the whole idea sounds awful for me.
Creating a biological child cannot be some people’s job. Firstly, no society needs a leader with some specific DNA combination. Secondly, baby making ought to be people’s free choice and not a job. Forcing a man to be a sperm donor against his will is nasty. Forcing a woman to go through a pregnancy is horrendous.
Thus the job gets reduced to raising the child and teaching them. Adopting some random kid from an orphanage ought to be OK. Are aristocrats really the best people for raising and educating the new leaders?
Firstly, they tend to be arrogant and imagine that they have accomplished something and earned their wealth, when it fact they just got lucky in the genetic lottery.
Secondly, aristocrats tend to amass wealth. They also tend to hang out with other wealthy people. They live in their own sheltered world and they tend to be clueless about the problems of the remaining 99% of the society. They care about furthering the wellbeing of their own buddies, the 1% wealthiest people. The rest of the society doesn’t matter for these people.
And even if some aristocrat happens to have more empathy and they truly care about the poor citizens, the chances are they will be clueless about how to help. “Let them eat cakes” might be exaggerated, but general cluelessness about poor people’s struggles is painfully common among everybody who has some money.
For example, food stamps exist, because the wealthy imagine that you cannot just give poor people money—the belief is that if you just gave poor people money (rather than food), they will just waste it on alcohol and tobacco. Or consider politicians who imagine that increasing taxes on sugary beverages will help poor people by improving their health.
Lifelong aristocrats aren’t qualified to lead countries. They do miserable jobs at being presidents or kings or whatever they are. They get to keep their jobs only because it’s hard for the society to remove and replace them.
Ketil Tveiten, #6
Well, yes, a lot of Roman Emperors were put in the position of choosing someone else because they didn’t have any biological sons themselves. Most Emperors, in fact. But that in itself is a telling fact that points out the difference between the Roman system and those of many later monarchies, where the need to propagate legitimate heirs was paramount. Emperors did not see it as a necessary thing to father sons in the way most later European royalty did – the adoption route was a perfectly acceptable, usually a superior alternative. In a speech given to Galba in 69AD (the first Emperor after the end of the Julio-Claudian line, and also the first to adopt from outside his own family) Tacitus makes it clear that adoption was seen as the smart and morally appropriate thing to do, precisely because it allowed an Emperor to be chosen on talent.
After a brief reversion to dynastic succession with Vespasian, who was followed by his two sons Titus and Domitian, the adoption model reasserted itself until Commodus. There were about a dozen further attempts to found dynasties, but only two Emperors were ever succeeded by two generations of their direct descendants (Gordians I, II and III, albeit with a short usurpation between the last two, and then Valerian, Gallienus, Saloninus), every other attempt failed after only a single generation. This was not seen as failure, so much as the normal workings of the system.
Napoleon II was four when Napoleon was exiled, and ten when Napoleon died. How would anyone have known of his capabilities? Also, Napoleon II himself died at the age of 21, so could he be considered a “failson”?
Did he say that? Where? Thomas Paine said something very much like it;
cartomancer @12: Had a look at the list of (pre-476) emperors, didn’t do an exact count but “seized power” and “(possibly distant) male relative of previous emperor” seem to be the top ways to the throne, rather than adoption of suitable candidate. Example: I can’t really see anyone selecting Elagabalus or Severus Alexander for their ability, they were both chosen for being grand nephews of Septimius Severus.
Ketil Tveiten, #15
Yes, the majority of emperors were not actually chosen by their predecessor. But you can’t plan for being violently usurped or dying unexpectedly. In a lot of cases it was a messy consensus of the Praetorian Guard, the legions, or the slaves and freedmen of the Imperial household that raised up the new emperor. Any blood or marital relationship, however distant, between the new guy and the previous one would then be hit upon as part of the effort to legitimate him retrospectively.
But quite often the people putting an emperor in place were not keen to have a strong and able emperor – they wanted somebody they could manipulate, or who would be conducive to their corruption and crimes. Elagabalus is perhaps the most prominent example of this – he was a teenager thrust onto the throne by his grandmother and several ambitious courtiers to further their own ends. Likewise, when Otho made his bid to usurp Galba at the beginning of 69AD, part of his appeal to a lot of the soldiers stationed in the city was that he was brought up in the luxury and excess of Nero’s court, and would cosset and bribe them just like Nero did, rather than trying to knock some old-fashioned discipline into them as the elderly Galba planned to.
My favorite group for causing irony meters to explode is the Daughters of the American Revolution — an organization that you can only join if you can prove your descent from someone who was willing to die in order to abolish hereditary privilege.
I wonder if para-social relationships are a big part of this? A hereditary ruler provides a single person you can put in the public awareness for a long time and have people in general feel like they have some sort of relationship with. Hence all the royal gossip.
The other option being some person you’ve never heard of being in charge, which makes it very easy to be critical of them since you don’t feel like you know them.
Rob Grigjanis@#14:
As Richard Feynman once said, “hereditary aristocracy makes as much sense as hereditary physics”
Did he say that? Where? Thomas Paine said something very much like it;
I am 99% sure, but I don’t recall where he said it. I have a huge archive of Feynman stuff (including copies of the source tapes from which “Surely you are joking…” came from – literally days worth of material. My bet is that it’s in the Q&A on his “cargo cult science” talk or somewhere in the book of his letters that was published a few years ago. Finding a particular quip in a book of correspondance means re-reading the whole thing, pretty much. I just checked my copy and it doesn’t have an index (although the “cargo cult science” talk is printed at the end of the book and does not have the quip I recall. My memory is starting to go, but that’s another story.
In Japan, around 90% of the ~ 80,000 annual adoptions are of adult men in their 20s-30s. This is done to maintain a family business when no biological (or competent) sons are available. That “family business” may be a large corporation – I think the CEO of Suzuki is the 4th adopted son to hold that position; Hoshi Ryokan is a hotel owned by the same family since 718 – 1300 years! The only limiting rule I’m aware of is that the adoptee must be at least one day younger than the adopting “parent.” I guess the family register is thicker than blood. At least LGBTQ+ people can use this to form families while their marriages remain outlawed.
But it sounds a bit like the Dune model described here. Find a promising young executive, adopt them, then carefully “raise” them to lead the business.
Marcus @19: I guess my point was that credit should go where it’s due. Paine said it long before, and said it very well. Feynman doesn’t deserve credit for this, just as Hitchens never deserved credit for “Hitchens’ Razor”. The much pithier Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur had already been around for at least a couple centuries.
Rob Grigjanis@#21:
I guess my point was that credit should go where it’s due. Paine said it long before, and said it very well. Feynman doesn’t deserve credit for this, just as Hitchens never deserved credit for “Hitchens’ Razor”.
I suppose if you feel credit for a bon mot is important, then you’ve done a good enough job identifying its origin.
As I said, “as Richard Feynman once said…” not “Richard Feynman invented this brilliant timeless bon mot” – it’s something that he, apparently after many others, said.
That said, I never quote “Hitchens’ Razor” and I generally avoid (I don’t know what these are called – bon mots that carry their own attribution) using them for exactly the reasons you point out. I try to attribute things where I can and where I think it’s appropriate, and I’m perfectly fine with someone pointing out that it was someone else who said it first. Now we all know. But I bet some republican Frenchman said it before Paine. Paine got a lot of his good bits from French enlightenment thinkers and he was (who wasn’t?) influenced by Voltaire.
Anyhow, thanks for the update.
Ridana@#20:
But it sounds a bit like the Dune model described here. Find a promising young executive, adopt them, then carefully “raise” them to lead the business.
I agree. I believe that the system of apprenticeship sort of worked that way in the crafts, as well (in principle) – you find a good apprentice who becomes a master in turn and eventually they inherit the business. Sometimes it’s a descendant sometimes it’s not.
Also, mortality definitely played a part in these things in the not-so-distant past. Having a living heir was a big deal with hereditary aristocrats, because a lot of them died in various awkward ways and of various diseases and accidents. (e.g.: Charles VII) you couldn’t bank on having a spare frogspawn ready to step in and be king; I guess that was a good excuse for sewing the royal oats far and wide.
brucegee1962, @ #17: The American Revolution was only fought to abolish one, very specific hereditary privilege. The revolutionaries certainly weren’t against the entire concept, as you can tell by their attitude to the inheritance of wealth and property.
Also, America is the only country I’ve ever heard of that actually formalises the concept of “legacy” admissions to institutions of higher education.
@Marcus Ranum post #7:
Maybe up to city/county level elections (and even those are starting to get iffy these days in the larger cities) but state and federal level have basically been an illusion of choice seeing the amount of power, influence and money that is (and was even in the early days of the US as nation) needed to run a campaign. Yes they needed to do something for the peons to get them to vote for them but generally speaking the true benefits (once elected) have always been for their class and not the people on which backs they got their power, influence and money.
Dunc@#24:
America is the only country I’ve ever heard of that actually formalises the concept of “legacy” admissions to institutions of higher education.
In that case, they’re not pretending that it’s about anything more than the financial “legacy.” Basically, you’re in the buyers’ club and you can pay to get your frogspawn in without having to do all that embarrassing stuff like make them join a high school polo team.
Marcus@#26:
embarrassing stuff like make them join a high school polo team
I’m confused. Is that the horsey version, or the wet version?