The Global Elite

From a review (TLS 17 Oct 2014) of the memoirs of Bob Carr, former Australian foreign minister:

Carr's obsessions with personal diet and exercise routines, travelling First Class and with extracting maximum personal benefit from working for the national interest symptomatic of the gravy train the international system has become for the global elite, as they traverse the planet in pampered isolation. He punctures the prevailing illusion that all are diligently toiling away for their respective populations, world peace, human rights or the environment. The reality is that most, and Carr stars as Exhibit A, are self-centered Brahmins working to enact their own political and other fantasies. Carr seems sanguine in the face of the bawling mass who see only his own hubris and arrogance, which he seems willing to highlight in his quest to show how these very weaknesses impact on global affairs. This act of subtle dramaturgy surely underpins this otherwise navelly focused, 500-page selfie. If not, Carr is simply redundant, too selfish to be useful and too intellectually arrogant to know humility. . .  .

Toward the end of his time in office,

Carr knew election defeat was looming and admits, "I'm in the business of extracting everything from this job before it's wrenched from me."