Does any of this sound familiar?

Does any of this sound familiar? Guess who are devoted to an idealized concept of the ‘people’ blended with an aristocratic contempt for the actual down-to-earth, prosaic propensities of the real people? The Russian intelligentsia of the 19th century. The Russian intelligentsia worshiped at the shrine of the people but they remained convinced that the people could never achieve salvation on their own; an exterior agency was needed to guide them to their goal, all the more so since the people had no conception of where their real interests lay. Their primacy was ideology - social justice - fundamental to the intelligentsia as a whole. Their objective was a perfect society. Does this not sound like our American elite, our intelligentsia also hell bent on ‘totally transforming’ America? The Russian intelligentsia were the driving force of the Russian revolutionary movement which led to the 1917 Russian revolution. And we know where that lead!