The Markos Mafia

A recommended read, with two additional comments.

(1) An "Elitist Democracy" is inherently contradictory because Democracy is, by definition, a system in which the political will ultimately reflects the will of The People. In Democracy, The People are the sovereign and are thus always the masters of their fate (even unto a complete surrender of their power to an elitist cabal). Even in a representative Democracy, where delegates are selected to represent the will of The People, it is still The People from which that power ultimately derives (cf., The Declaration of Independence). Therefore, an "Elitist Democracy" can never be a Democracy. It is simply "The Diving Right of Kings" with a more modern name.

(2) The elites are in a fight against the "rabble" that is nipping at the heels, most prominently represented by the political blogosphere, for just the reasons pointed out in the link above. But the fact that they have chosen to take the fight directly to the most prominent bloggers, under the mistaken assumption that taking down a Markos or an Armstrong will weaken the blogs, is just another manifestation of their elitist philosophy. Since they believe that only the elites can be effective in achieving political change and they see blogs starting to bring about effective political change, they can only rightly conclude that the blogs must be led by its own form of elite inner circle. They have manufactured in their minds some cyber equivalent of the smoke-filled back room because that is the only model they have for understanding the world. The Markos Mafia must exist because it is the only thing that explains the growing power of the blogs without violating their own conception of the universe.