Deplorables Rising

COTTonLINE doesn’t often label something a “must read,” perhaps as rarely as 2-3 times a year. This morning I’ve got one of these ‘rare birds’ for you, it’s at USA Today. Glenn Reynolds’ topic is class conflict masquerading as culture conflict.

Around the world in the postwar era, power was taken up by unelected professional and managerial elites. ... [Now] it’s important to realize that the post-World War II institutional arrangements of the Western democracies are being renegotiated, and that those democracies’ professional and managerial elites don’t like that very much.

Members of America’s ruling class seemed to view ordinary Americans with something like contempt, using terms such as “bitter clingers,” “deplorables” and flyover people.

If you look at the “yellow jacket” protests in France, the election of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and events in places like Italy and Hungary — or, for that matter, the Brexit movement in Britain — you find a similar unhappiness with institutional arrangements and the sleek and self-satisfied elites who benefit from them.

What’s happening in America is an echo of what’s happening in democracies around the world, and it’s not happening because of Trump. Trump is the symptom of a ruling class that many of the ruled no longer see as serving their interest, and the anti-Trump response is mostly the angry backlash of that class as it sees its position, its perquisites and — perhaps especially — its self-importance threatened.

Analysis: accurate.