American Aristocracy and Fights at the White House
My friendly disagreement with
@NormanDodd_knew here is that American aristocracy culture has never been rooted in this kind distinctly European pretension. We don't call our countrymen peasants. This may derive from Puritan "city on a hill" priesthood of all believers theology or the impractical Enlightenment principles of our founding documents, but one way or another we don't have this kind of sneering contempt for the common man. Quite the opposite, it has always been essential to American aristocratic culture to connect with the common man, especially through sport and the outdoors, even when only for symbolic display or show. The American aristocrat goes hunting and gets his hands dirty on a farm/ranch at some point in his life.
Theodore Roosevelt had a boxing ring built in the White House where he hosted exhibitions, wrestled college wrestlers, invited japanese jiu jitsu experts, American boxers etc... Andrew Jackson had enormous raucous parties open to the public at the WH. (Now, you could argue they were early populists and traitors to the aristocratic class. That's another conversation. My point is that there is absolutely precedent.) For elected representatives, I see it is as vulgar and garish as our presidents showing up to sports events. Is the Army Navy football game a "peasant display"?
For our unelected elites, titans of industry etc, you have a point that they often partook in more refined and European contests of competitive vigor like rowing, sailing, polo, court tennis... But being very few generations, if not inside a lifetime from poverty themselves, there was never an inculcated intergenerational disdain of the type that you are suggesting as core to the American aristocracy.
My gilded age industrialist ancestor grew up with dirt floors and a single sheet of tin for a roof to become one of the wealthiest men in the country. I don't think he forgot his roots, or I'd like to think so. His grandkids, who accomplished nothing? More likely. But the greats? Carnegie? Vanderbilt? Gould? Fisk? Morgan? Rockefeller? Frick? No sir. The point remains, try as they may have to emulate them, our American aristocrats did not rise to the level of pretension of their European peers. To pretend that they did, or that we are some cheap copy of post-monarchic Europe, is to deny the very unique and frankly awesome (dare I say unprecedented) nature of American culture. (As an Easter egg, all but Morgan in that list of American Aristocratic Greats were born poor or to common farmers).
Outside of culture it's simply a time question. It takes many more generations than we have in this land to sustain and entrench wealth at a scale and duration to get to European Nobility levels of pretentious and "above" the common man. The volatility of our highly economically mobile society extinguishes most family wealth before it can grow to think itself truly apart from the common man. "Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations" is in the nature of America.
Steinbeck famously wrote that "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." The opposite is also true: American aristocrats have always retained a culture of being temporarily blessed common Americans, equal to their countrymen before God. That is why they take part at far greater rates than the Europeans (or anyone) in philanthropy and "common" sports/avocations community engagement because their attitude is that they are just Americans who, by the grace of God and the sweat of their brow, have scraped together and built more than the people they grew up around (whether that's true or not, this can be a false modesty culture, but the fact remains.)
So no. I will not pearl clutch at this display of competitive vigor and patriotic vitalism at the White House tonight. I will not call it a "peasant display". I wish I was there. In a top hat.
I wouldโve thought if anything, THIS would be what you would push back on. Itโs vulgar and garish. What would your great grandfather think of this peasant display in front of the White House on such an important day?
Are we to deny our good breeding to own the libs?