Movie Poster for ‘Giant’ — starring three true icons of the Silver Screen

One of the more interesting and pleasant surprises I’ve had in the past couple of months was finally viewing the movie ‘Giant’, on a flight home from Costa Rica. I’m a huge Robert Earl Keen fan, and the movie is mentioned in Lyle Lovett’s and his song, ‘The Front Porch Song”, about rural Texas.

“This old porch is a Palace walk-in on a main street in Texas
It ain’t never seen or heard the days of G’s and R’s and X’s
With that ’62 poster that’s almost faded down
And a screen without a picture since Giant came to town, oh no
I love them junior mints and them red hots too, yes I do, oh yeah”

Songs like this are coded regional language — a Palace walk-in is a movie theatre with seats (as opposed to a drive-in) that even ChatGPT struggles with a bit. If you’re from that part of the world, Easter Eggs abound.

The movie, released in 1956, was an epic drama, in the style of ‘Gone with the Wind‘, as well as the age. It deals with large themes, but only moderate pacing. For those interested, you can read about the top level in the Wikipedia piece. It was also one of the first pieces to deal with racism in Texas against Hispanics.

But in the context of this blog, what it really did was trace the memetic timeline of Elite development in the U.S. The main character, Bick (Rock Hudson), owner of the Reata Ranch (some half million acres) on the high plains of Texas, and modeled on the historic King Ranch, travels east to buy a stallion from a rich, agricultural family in Virginia. In the process, he returns with a bride, Leslie (Elizabeth Taylor), and thus the story begins. In the middle, Bick’s sister is killed by same stallion, who then leaves an inholding in the Reata Ranch to Jett (James Dean) who then turns into an oil man, and builds his own fortune. In the process, he proposes marriage to one of the daughters of Bick and Leslie.

What cannot be seen in the movie, at the time portrayed, is how after Jett persuades Bick to drill for oil, they all pack up and move to Kennebunkport, Maine, and merge into the East Coast elites, who along with families like the Rockefeller’s and the Roosevelts (even another 5 generations back) form the Neo-con side of the Republican party.

One of the big questions for me is how long does it take for a group of elites to become totally insulated (if not isolated) from the concerns of ordinary people. James Kunstler writes in his books about the modulating effects of dealing with the problems of household live-in help that helped, historically, bridge that empathy gap. But as generations wind on, locating your servants off-site and out of mind doesn’t provide the grounding validity that others might not quite see the world the way you do. And if you throw jet travel into the mix, one can draw a pretty clear line between the Reata Ranch and the WEF. One thing that is almost never discussed is how, after a certain evolution of both energy business and technical acumen, you almost have to be born into it (like farming) to stand a chance in the modern world. No Horatio Alger story is going to emerge and end up running a series of large oil platforms drilling for oil in the North Sea, or off the coast of Louisiana. We’re not talking Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in their garage inventing the Apple Computer. So I’m totally spitballing five generations to create an insurmountable empathy gap between the Elites and the Poors. Condos at Big Sky, and membership in the Yellowstone Club will do that to you.

But there WILL be some of those truly ground-level innovations that will remain possible to create a Counter-elite caste. And that is where the Zuckerbergs, Bezos and Andreesens of the world come in. Everyone knows the story of Facebook, and more than a few know the story of Netscape. Thus a counter-elite is born, that has little connection to the endless wars of the East Coast elites. There is some fallacious thinking in that somehow this generation of counter-elites is more grounded to reality than the literal seven generations that left the high plains of Texas behind. Helicopters and meetings with Presidents, as well as security details will do that to you.

And wild cards pop up. Elon Musk is First Generation-and-a-Half when it comes to wealth. And he wants to go to Mars. The various blended elites (like Bill Gates – people forget that Bill’s dad was a member of the elite caste before Microsoft) or wishy-washy counter-elites (Mark Zuckerberg) may waffle around on Communitarian causes. But every now and then, someone shows up that isn’t interested in any of that. And is willing to push all his chips into the middle of the table. Every round. When it comes to SpaceX, it’s let-it-ride. Indeed.

What does it mean for the majority of us that are non-elite? Or actually poor? It seems like the current counter-elites understand the death of others’, as well as their own children. As opposed to the old oil/energy elites. But Peter Turchin has done some number counting (as well as Michael Lind) and show that no one really cares about the poor. If they benefit from large macro-social technology advances or trends, it’s only going to be incidental. Elon’s the closest to a large scale system architect. But the old institutions, which includes academia in whole cloth, can’t process any new thinking or motivation. Elon MUST be all about money (and it is true that rockets do cost money) but they can’t comprehend anything higher than the sky above their heads.

And so our current war between Elites and Counter-Elites is born. For sure, this piece is incomplete, and demands more thinking. But the current cycle started on the High Plains of Texas, with the elimination of the Comanche Indians, and follows through to the present day. As William Faulkner said, “the past isn’t even past.” And Giant is just the meditative piece for a summer night, to frame those thoughts.