(noun) historically, a high government bureaucrat of the Chinese Empire OR a pedantic or elitist bureaucrat OR senior person of influence in academia or literary circles / (adj) deliberately superior or complex; esoteric, highbrow, obscurantist
having culminated in the production of generations of left mandarins without the sophistication (or cultural capital) that the epithet mandarin once connoted
having culminated in the production of generations of left mandarins without the sophistication (or cultural capital) that the epithet mandarin once connoted