The WASP elite was, relative to most elites that human history has graced our species with, a very decent one. (Was there racism and corruption? Of course. But they aspired to decency, a trait not seen in the current elite, and not seen in most elites. I'm not calling them good in absolute terms, but in relative terms.)
So, in the middle of the 20th century, they did an unusually decent (and unusual) thing. They accepted their own decline. For one example, they invented the SAT, whose initial result was to increase the number of Jewish students admitted to Ivy League universities by about an order of magnitude. (Then there was a racist backlash, which is where we get all that extracurricular bullshit in US college admissions. Elites are not monolithic.) Why'd they accept their own decline? I think they were self-aware enough (again, as a group) to recognize that there was no choice. Without letting FDR save capitalism via the New Deal, the U.S. would have fallen into economic collapse and political chaos, and not been able to fight the two-front (cultural, and then actual) wars against fascism and communism. The stakes were existential. When facing a choice between the risk of obliteration (but also the assurance that, if there was a country left, they'd rule it) and gentle decline (to merely quite rich, but not a ruling class) they took the right path. Very few elites do. Most let their countries burn.
What happened next is not a meritocratic invasion. The global elite (which is much more anti-democratic) stepped in. That's been bad for all of us. The WASPs care enough about the country not to destroy it. The global elite is not tied to any one nation, and doesn't care.
Upper-middle-class "meritocrats" are not the ruling class, and the people in charge have more in common with Russian oligarchs and Arab oil sheikhs than with either (a) the somewhat callous but stately and pro-democratic (or at least republican, with no reference to the political party/megachurch) WASPs or (b) the well-educated technology adepts who top out in the upper-middle-class. In the US, the current elite tend to look like WASPs because, in fact, many are ethnically WASPs, but their ideology comes from a dirtier source: a global elite whose values come mostly from places where political corruption is just another perk of being rich, where democracy is ridiculed, and where the poor are held in open contempt (and exploited, and often shut down violently) by the rich.
So, in the middle of the 20th century, they did an unusually decent (and unusual) thing. They accepted their own decline. For one example, they invented the SAT, whose initial result was to increase the number of Jewish students admitted to Ivy League universities by about an order of magnitude. (Then there was a racist backlash, which is where we get all that extracurricular bullshit in US college admissions. Elites are not monolithic.) Why'd they accept their own decline? I think they were self-aware enough (again, as a group) to recognize that there was no choice. Without letting FDR save capitalism via the New Deal, the U.S. would have fallen into economic collapse and political chaos, and not been able to fight the two-front (cultural, and then actual) wars against fascism and communism. The stakes were existential. When facing a choice between the risk of obliteration (but also the assurance that, if there was a country left, they'd rule it) and gentle decline (to merely quite rich, but not a ruling class) they took the right path. Very few elites do. Most let their countries burn.
What happened next is not a meritocratic invasion. The global elite (which is much more anti-democratic) stepped in. That's been bad for all of us. The WASPs care enough about the country not to destroy it. The global elite is not tied to any one nation, and doesn't care.
Upper-middle-class "meritocrats" are not the ruling class, and the people in charge have more in common with Russian oligarchs and Arab oil sheikhs than with either (a) the somewhat callous but stately and pro-democratic (or at least republican, with no reference to the political party/megachurch) WASPs or (b) the well-educated technology adepts who top out in the upper-middle-class. In the US, the current elite tend to look like WASPs because, in fact, many are ethnically WASPs, but their ideology comes from a dirtier source: a global elite whose values come mostly from places where political corruption is just another perk of being rich, where democracy is ridiculed, and where the poor are held in open contempt (and exploited, and often shut down violently) by the rich.