I find myself somehow charmed by this no-room-for-satirization Austin Bramwell post. It perfectly exemplifies the quaint essence of elite American conservatism: a sense of grievance at the loss of exclusive WASP folkways.
For the well-heeled, perhaps the biggest problem with economic growth is that eventually one is forced to compete with the hoi polloi for non-manufacturable goods. In this example, to avoid entirely the snowboarding philistines, one ends up having to own a mountain. But in what kind of damnable world must a Yale man be that rich in order to carve virgin powder?
I feel Bramwell’s circle and its habits should be the subject of a careful ethnography, or declared endangered and legally protected, before all is lost. Perhaps he could be placed in a handsome diorama on weekends, so that snowboarding American slobs can contemplate first-hand just how much gracious living their vulgar appetites have displaced.
Will Wilkinson 