For the past 30 years or so, the left has invented a narrative that there are two Americas: a group of very super-rich people (the 1 percenters) who have prospered over the past several decades, and everyone else who has gotten poorer.
It’s a fairy-tale narrative because almost all Americans have seen financial progress. The median household income adjusted for inflation has risen by more than 40 percent since 1984.
Prosperity isn’t an “us versus them” zero-sum game. A rising tide really does lift all boats.
But there really are two Americas today. First, there are the cultural and overeducated snobs—the kind of people who religiously read The New York Times, drive electric vehicles, wear Harvard or Yale sweaters, and have never even heard of NASCAR or eaten at Popeyes or ridden a John Demainere tractor.
And then there is normal main street America. The snobs thumb their collective noses at the unrefined working-class Americans. The elites believe they are intellectually, culturally, and morally superior to the working class and rural America. You won’t see too many elites at a Trump rally with 30,000 people.
Here are some of the key jaw-dropping revelations from the survey:
Oh, and about three-quarters of these cultural elites are Biden supporters. Surprised? Read the full report on the committee’s website.
The Grand Canyon-sized divide between the elites in America and ordinary Americans is so profound that it is as if they live in two different countries. Silicon Valley, Manhattan, and Washington have become bubbles that have lost contact with everyday Americans. This explains why the political class—which is a big part of the elite group—is confused by poll numbers showing that voters are feeling financially stressed out. The elites are doing fine, so they believe that everyone is prospering.
I suspect that most don’t want radical change in the public schools because their kids attend blue-chip private schools. They are fine with abolishing SUVs because, in big cities, Americans generally don’t drive those cars—if they drive cars at all.
Crime, illegal immigration, inflation, fentanyl, and factory closings aren’t keeping the elite up at night because, in their cocoons, they don’t encounter these problems on a daily basis the way so many Americans do today. Not too many main street Americans are losing sleep about climate change or LGBT issues.
The elites in America tend to work in the “talking professions”—university professors, journalists, lawyers, actors, and lobbyists. They keep talking, and normal Americans are more than ever not listening to them.
