Official US Arms Granting Authority

 
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20 January 2012 11:12
 

Michael Y. Medvedev;91876 wrote:

It seems that Trump remains non-armigerous and it is his company that got a corporative coat of arms with a typical sallet.

http://www.therichtimes.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/TRUMP_ARMS_DN011-550x363.jpg


Trump strikes me as the type who would eschew arms for himself reasoning that he doesn’t need them to prove his upperclass/gentry status.  The fact that he acquiesced to a grant of arms for his golf club was probably at the behest of his marketing and legal teams and not for any innate respect for heraldry or the Scottish heraldic institution.

 
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20 January 2012 13:38
 

eploy;91880 wrote:

Trump strikes me as the type who would eschew arms for himself reasoning that he doesn’t need them to prove his upperclass/gentry status.


Whatever Trump may think of himself, please let’s the rest of us not fall into the error of thinking that class in the United States—let alone gentility—has to do with having lots of money.  That’s an old British stereotype, but was never accurate.

 

Whatever class points Donald Trump picked up from having gone to a private school (not a particularly high-class one) are more than offset by having done his undergraduate degree in business, and any further reservoir of credit is totally dissipated by his involvement in the entertainment business and his craving for celebrity.

 

Rich, yes. Upper class, no, and definitely not a gentleman.

 
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20 January 2012 14:22
 

Joseph McMillan;91882 wrote:

Rich, yes. Upper class, no, and definitely not a gentleman.


Hear, hear! Well said!

 
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20 January 2012 16:13
 

Joseph McMillan;91882 wrote:

Whatever class points Donald Trump picked up from having gone to a private school (not a particularly high-class one) are more than offset by having done his undergraduate degree in business, and any further reservoir of credit is totally dissipated by his involvement in the entertainment business and his craving for celebrity.


I hasten to clarify that I do not disparage people who have business degrees, nor am I criticizing the quality of the education at Mr. Trump’s school, but within the framework of the discussion we’ve been having, it is generally considered more upper class to have an undergraduate degree with no obvious relevance to the making of money.  A business degree may follow without loss of class, although one generally earns gets fewer class points for an MBA from a given university than for a law, medical, or even divinity degree from the same university.

 

And it is generally better to make money by managing other people’s money (as an investment banker or trust officer, for example) than by things like real estate development or actually producing something directly useful other than crops.  International wholesale commerce outranks retail.  And so on.

 
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20 January 2012 16:18
 

Very little beats the probably apocryphal quote from a Conservative Party grandee’s wife about someone (now a peer and retired cabinet minister, but then a new MP).

"We won’t be going back there, all his furniture’s bought."

 

Now that’s a put down.

 
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20 January 2012 20:46
 

Joseph McMillan;91882 wrote:

Whatever Trump may think of himself, please let’s the rest of us not fall into the error of thinking that class in the United States—let alone gentility—has to do with having lots of money.  That’s an old British stereotype, but was never accurate.

Whatever class points Donald Trump picked up from having gone to a private school (not a particularly high-class one) are more than offset by having done his undergraduate degree in business, and any further reservoir of credit is totally dissipated by his involvement in the entertainment business and his craving for celebrity.

 

Rich, yes. Upper class, no, and definitely not a gentleman.


But money is a key factor at least for entry into the upper class of most societies including the US.  (Let’s ignore legacy members). I also agree that a lot of money in itself may not be enough (e.g., just look at some actors and athletes) but in all fairness to Trump I think he has made it into what even academics would call the upper class.  I agree with you however that he does not carry himself as a gentleman.

 
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20 January 2012 23:11
 

My perspective is imperfect, but having been blessed, for various reasons, with opportunities to live in close quarters with people at just about every gradient of the American social spectrum and in a number of regions, and having lived a few places overseas, too, I tend to think that the construct of "gentility" is ultimately irrelevant here. Especially in my lifetime (I’m 40), it seems that all kinds of social doors have been flung wide open, and that in any case there really is—pace Joseph’s analysis—next to nothing in the U.S. that accords substantive status besides wealth. Of course, people remain somewhat tribal, and within their groups, one can get the sense that all sorts of things (where you went to school, who your ancestors were, etc.) traditionally associated with being genteel are super important and cut all kinds of ice elsewhere, but my sense is that this kind of thing has to be backed up with real wealth, or it’s nothing more than a curiosity.

 
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20 January 2012 23:43
 

On another note, when I was poking around the library this afternoon, I came across a slender volume from 1961 by a certain J. A. Reynolds, Heraldry and You: Modern Heraldic Usage in America. It’s not on the AHS’s Basic Heraldic Bookshelf, and I haven’t had a chance to scrutinize it closely yet, but I did come across a thought provoking passage on the subject of just what an American is saying when he uses a coat of arms:

"First, it asserts an identification. It identifies you not merely as an individual, but as a member of a family, sept, or clan . . . " Reynolds goes on about this for some time, and then says, "For in the second place the display of arms is a forthright and confident assertion of status. Here the old expression noblesse oblige is particularly apt, for it was historically used to describe just this status; and it means simply that any rank or position that you inherit, assert for yourself, or accept, carries with it the obligation to meet its responsibilities with integrity, courage, and honor. In the area of social life, where family arms have no near competitor, these bearings are an avowal that you strive within your physical resources and your spiritual capacity to ‘live like a gentleman’ and that you expect to be considered one. They are not an indication of great wealth, nor pretension, nor even (in the case of new arms) of ‘old family,’ nor for that matter of a high level of educational or cultural attainment; but they are a sign of gentility. To put it most succinctly, if you are a product of and exemplify gentle birth or breeding, or if you have achieved it in yourself, you are entitled both morally and in the technical sense to the use of arms. That is still the basis for the ‘granting’ of arms in every country where arms are regulated by law. They are an open recognition of your status as a lady or gentleman."

 

I think Reynolds has got it about right. I notice, in scanning other parts of the book (which amounts to an extremely basic primer), that he displays a healthy confidence in Americans’ freedom to do their own armorial thing within some kind of coherent transnational context, which I like.

 
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21 January 2012 00:01
 

eploy;91896 wrote:

But money is a key factor at least for entry into the upper class of most societies including the US. (Let’s ignore legacy members). I also agree that a lot of money in itself may not be enough (e.g., just look at some actors and athletes) but in all fairness to Trump I think he has made it into what even academics would call the upper class. I agree with you however that he does not carry himself as a gentleman.


That really does depend on whether the academics are economists or sociologists.

 
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21 January 2012 00:04
 

James Dempster;91892 wrote:

Very little beats the probably apocryphal quote from a Conservative Party grandee’s wife about someone (now a peer and retired cabinet minister, but then a new MP).

"We won’t be going back there, all his furniture’s bought."

 

Now that’s a put down.


There’s an equivalent Boston story.  A newcomer to town is invited to tea and asks the hostess if she can recommend a good milliner.  There is an awkward pause and the Bostonian lady replies, "My dear, in Boston we have our hats."

 
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21 January 2012 01:42
 

Fred White;91897 wrote:

I tend to think that the construct of "gentility" is ultimately irrelevant here. . . . Of course, people remain somewhat tribal, and within their groups, one can get the sense that all sorts of things (where you went to school, who your ancestors were, etc.) traditionally associated with being genteel are super important and cut all kinds of ice elsewhere, but my sense is that this kind of thing has to be backed up with real wealth, or it’s nothing more than a curiosity.


To dilate on this just a bit more, my observation is that there is a certain kind of failure of the imagination that spells doom. Every individual I know, actually, whose identity turns chiefly on his ancestry, where he went to school, and his clubs, and who isn’t really open to the genius (in both the primary and the secondary senses of the word) of people from outside his group, is in a fairly apparent way on a dead-end path in life. And I know a number of people who went to the right school, etc., who perhaps enjoy it in a semi-ironic sort of way—feeling fortunate but not constrained by any of it—and then another set still who really do want nothing to do with it and have made wonderfully original lives for themselves. Anyway, when these people skip out on the in-group, outsiders fill the void and gradually reshape the criteria for being insiders. It’s all very porous and in flux—especially these days.

 
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21 January 2012 01:47
 

Fred White;91897 wrote:

Of course, people remain somewhat tribal, and within their groups, one can get the sense that all sorts of things (where you went to school, who your ancestors were, etc.) traditionally associated with being genteel are super important and cut all kinds of ice elsewhere, but my sense is that this kind of thing has to be backed up with real wealth, or it’s nothing more than a curiosity.


That has been my impression as well in the US having heard of a few female classmates back in high school rejected from the cotillion primarily because their families lacked enough financial clout.  Most had the proper ethnic and religious background and even good pedigrees (e.g., distaff DAR descent/ pioneer families in their communities albeit distaff descent).  Of course these girls came from families that were trying to announce their entry into the upper class.  For legacy members I suspect one’s lack of money will only be overlooked for so long before they get bounced from the clubs at least on a social level until they come back into cash.

 
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21 January 2012 02:06
 

Trying to relate this all back to heraldry or at least chivalry, it is my impression that for those societies lacking a fons honorum or a particularly strong or active one, that things like money play a greater role in determining class.  In societies where the fons honorum is strong, then money becomes less of a factor and poor nobles/gentry no longer sounds like a oxymoron.

 
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21 January 2012 02:52
 

eploy;91904 wrote:

Trying to relate this all back to heraldry or at least chivalry, it is my impression that for those societies lacking a fons honorum or a particularly strong or active one, that things like money play a greater role in determining class.  In societies where the fons honorum is strong, then money becomes less of a factor and poor nobles/gentry no longer sounds like a oxymoron.


France is an interesting case in this connection. I suppose the republic could amount to a strong fons honorum, what with its ability to award membership in the Legion of Honor and its underwriting the Academie Francaise and the other academies of the Institut de France—all high-visibility and very prestigious—but it is a republic, nonetheless, and my sense is that being of noble lineage lineage has some social value there, all the same, partly, though, because noble families have managed to work the republican system to maintain a strong presence in the organs of power. Anyway, what I meant to say here is that, in my experience, France is a place where there is deep, widespread assent to forms of prestige that are not at all contingent on significant wealth. Being a poor noble would not be an oxymoron there, but more interestingly, philosophers there can be celebrities.

 
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21 January 2012 08:29
 

eploy;91903 wrote:

That has been my impression as well in the US having heard of a few female classmates back in high school rejected from the cotillion primarily because their families lacked enough financial clout. Most had the proper ethnic and religious background and even good pedigrees (e.g., distaff DAR descent/ pioneer families in their communities albeit distaff descent). Of course these girls came from families that were trying to announce their entry into the upper class. For legacy members I suspect one’s lack of money will only be overlooked for so long before they get bounced from the clubs at least on a social level until they come back into cash.


This really does depend on where we’re talking about.  I am not suggesting that social class in the United States has nothing to do with money.  I’m suggesting that it doesn’t have only to do with money, and that in most places the amount of money that it takes for someon of an "old family" to maintain its class standing is infinitesimal compared to the holdings of people who still aren’t permitted past the doorkeeper.

 

But I don’t really want to go on any further with this debate as it has little or nothing to do with heraldry, let alone chivalry, whatever that term means.