Trump and Sanders are just symptoms, Glenn Reynolds argues, of a ruling class that takes important subjects out of play:
On many issues, ranging from immigration reform, which many critics view as tantamount to open borders, to bailouts for bankers, the Republican and Democratic establishments agree, while a large number (quite possibly a majority) of Americans across the political spectrum feel otherwise. But when no “respectable” figure will push these views, then less-respectable figures such as Trump or Sanders (a lifelong socialist who once wrote that women dream of gang rape, and that cervical cancer results from too few orgasms) will arise to fill the need.
He cites Angelo Codevilla from a few years ago:
Never has there been so little diversity within America’s upper crust. Always, in America as elsewhere, some people have been wealthier and more powerful than others. But until our own time, America’s upper crust was a mixture of people who had gained prominence in a variety of ways, who drew their money and status from different sources and were not predictably of one mind on any given matter. The Boston Brahmins, the New York financiers, the land barons of California, Texas and Florida, the industrialists of Pittsburgh, the Southern aristocracy and the hardscrabble politicians who made it big in Chicago or Memphis had little contact with one another.
Today’s ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters — speaking the ‘in’ language — serves as a badge of identity. Regardless of what business or profession they are in, their road up included government channels and government money because, as government has grown, its boundary with the rest of American life has become indistinct. Many began their careers in government and leveraged their way into the private sector.
Orphaned voters aren’t a bug but a feature for a ruling class that would prefer to rule without them, Reynolds notes.
Indeed, to paraphrase Z Man from The Z Blog again:
“Orphaned voters aren’t a bug but a feature for a ruling class that would prefer to rule without them, Reynolds notes.”
Surely “aren’t a feature but a bug”?
The phrase is from the IT world, where unintended and (to any outside observer) flawed aspects of a system are often explained away as features. A joke but not a joke sort of comment.
I stated the same in an essay on Social Matter how Trump is a demon of the establishment’s design. Good to see Glenn is catching on.