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Date: Sun, 16 Feb 2025 09:49:40 -0700
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Subject: the rich white civil war
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https://www.wral.com/story/david-brooks-can-we-please-stop-calling-these-people-populists/21862865/

Pretty good article by David Brooks.  I don't always like his analyses,
but this one makes sense.

//--
If America elected a populist as president, you would expect him to
devote his administration to addressing these inequities, to boosting
the destinies of working-class Americans. But that’s not what President
Donald Trump is doing. He seems to have no plans to narrow the
education chasms, the health outcome chasms or the family structure
chasms. He has basically no plans to revive the communities that have
been decimated by postindustrialization.

Why is that? The simplest answer is that Trump really seems not to give
a crap about the working class. Trump is not a populist. He campaigns
as a populist, but once he has power, he is the betrayer of populism.

What’s going on here is not a working-class revolt against the elites.
All I see is one section of the educated elite going after another
section of the educated elite. This is like a civil war in a fancy prep
school in which the sleazy kids are going after the pretentious kids.

Look at who is running this administration. The president is an Ivy
League-educated real estate developer. The vice president is an Ivy
League-educated former venture capitalist. Elon Musk, the emperor of
DOGE, is an Ivy League-educated billionaire.

Look at the people working with Musk. Luke Farritor is a 23-year-old
who used artificial intelligence to decipher an ancient Greek scroll.
Ethan Shaotran is a 22-year-old Harvard student. Gavin Kliger wrote a
Substack post called “Why I Gave Up a Seven Figure Salary to Save
America.” These people are not exactly Joe the Plumber.

And look at the programs they are going after. They’re not going after
the programs where big budget savings can be realized — like the
entitlement programs. They’re going after the programs where they think
highly educated progressives work. They’re going after the foreign aid
community, the scientific community, the NGO community, the
universities, the Department of Education and the Kennedy Center.

They are seeking to destroy the wokesters (the word they use for highly
educated progressives) and DEI (the term they use for what highly
educated progressives do).

In 2018 the organization More in Common released the “Hidden Tribes”
survey. It found that two groups were driving American politics, which
it called progressive activists and devoted conservatives. These groups
are at opposite ends of the political spectrum, but they have a lot in
common. They are the richest of all the groups in the More in Common
typology. They are the whitest of all the groups. They are among the
best educated of all the groups. When I wrote a column about the bitter
feud between these two elite groups, I headlined it “The Rich White
Civil War.” That headline still accurately describes what we’re seeing.

//--

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