Kerby Anderson

Several commentators have said that the conflict between Republicans and Democrats is merely a distraction. The real divide is between the elites and the rest of America. Yesterday I talked about the economic divide in America, but there is also a political divide.

Mary Eberstadt reminds us in a recent column about the last book written by Christopher Lasch and his daughter. The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy may not have made much of an impact then, but Mary Eberstadt argues that it was one book that “explained the seismic pollical shifts to come.”

His book, she proclaims, “now reads as a template of our political reality.” Think of candidate Barack Obama dismissing working class voters because, “they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion.” Or think of candidate Hillary Clinton who declared that half of Trump supporters fit into a “basket of deplorables.”

Thirty years ago, Christopher Lasch wrote that, “The new elites are in revolt against ‘Middle America,’ as they imagine it: a nation technologically backward, politically reactionary, repressive in its sexual morality, middlebrow in its tastes, smug and complacent, dull and dowdy.” He also noted that there was also a divide in Europe that was deep and widening.

His book was written 30 years ago and was prophetic. There was always a privileged class, but he saw a future widening cultural gap between Washington and the American heartland. Today we live in a world where most of the political elite, the economic elite, and the media elite live in a different world and have less respect for other Americans outside of their circle.