My guess is that – from the inside – this behaviour is rationalised on the lines that doing-what-it-takes to retain power, fame and fortune is fine and necessary – so long as they 'use' that fame and fortune to harangue everybody else to do exactly the opposite.
This is 'long-term altruism' in action; and, within its selective framework, it is indeed perfectly rational. Because ‘my’ personal sacrifice would make 'no significant difference'; and is dwarfed by the ‘general-good’ I might/ hope-to do by Not making that personal sacrifice and holding-onto power…
Which is why it has been the modus operandi of the Left leadership ever since Leftism was originated: Leftism has always been led by the upper classes, and since the emergence of large-scale, organised Leftism, these upper class folk have nearly always stuck like glue to their privilege, and craved all the trappings of elite status.
So that by now, almost every single individual in the British Establishment (at the most expensive schools, the most aristocratic Oxford and Cambridge colleges; those holding the highest status positions in all social institutions, nearly-everybody with Honours and awards are united in spouting radical, socialist class warrior, feminist, antiracist, sexual-revolution propaganda 24/7.
This is a requirement of their holding leadership positions, but more fundamentally it is part of the deal they make with themselves; a deal that enables them to feel morally superior while behaving in a short-termist, selfish, and hedonistic fashion.
Leftist propaganda pays-for elite privilege.
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As someone who cheerfully read the Nietzsches and Ortega y Gassets (and Le Bon) when younger and nodded superciliously with the arrogance of a teenager, reworking this mental perspective is a harder call.
Of course those who supports inegalitarianism in an age when most educated people lean towards liberal progressive viewpoints are forced back towards a strange lumpen compromise (similar to the ideas in 'The Wisdom of Crowds', perhaps).
Many of the inter-war Right (Inge etc) were well aware of this Bloomsbury tendency of elite opinion formation, but high society elitists they remained.
How though has it come about that these high status markers and class signalling compel the inevitable dissolution of all those among your own ethnic group who you fancy occupy the rungs immediately underneath you.
@BGD - "Bloomsbury tendency of elite opinion formation" - For example George Orwell, in his essay Inside The Whale. I think he somewhere termed this tendency the Corduroy Panzers, but I may have imagined that.
I think of what Roy Campbell called the Macspaunday poets - Macneice, Spender, Auden, Day Lewis.
Unlike Orwell, Campbell didn't write much good stuff IMO, but there was the superb squib:
You praise the firm restraint with which they write -
I'm with you there, of course:
They use the snaffle and the curb all right,
But where's the bloody horse?
Maybe I am jaundiced by my professional experience (in medicine and academia) of seeing so many 'radical' left-spouting among my teachers, colleagues and contemporaries who are so desparate-for (and usually showered-with,) Establishment honours and awards; and having observed their lifestyles. And sadly, this generation neither grow-up nor wise-up from experience, and reliably get (ever-more) politically correct as they age.
This rather reminds me of the rationalization of some ultra-rich people that the best way to give away money charitably is to invest it into becoming even more rich, because then they will have much more money to give away. Evidently this rationalization also applies to questions of power, morality, and lifestyle.
@Seijio - It strikes me that the mechanism is the same as for the idealised socialist redistributive state - the larger, wealthier and more powerful the state becomes, the more Good it can do to help the masses. And this applies without limit.
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