Donald Trump and the Other Class Warfare
When democratic masses tire of being condescended to.
August 25, 2015
Bruce Thornton

The rise and continuing popularity of Donald Trump reminds us that “class warfare” is an eternal constant of democracies, for as Plato said, every city is in fact two cities, “one the city of the poor, the other of the rich; these are at war with one another.” But possession of wealth is not the only factor in this eternal conflict between the few and the many. The masses of course resent the elites’ greater wealth, but even more they dislike the assumption of superior wisdom and virtue that elites have always claimed as justifications for their status. It is this galling assumption and the anger it arouses in people that Donald Trump has brilliantly exploited.

Many Republicans correctly see that this popular anger is usually directed against progressives. The typical Democrat reflexively assumes that he is smarter and better educated, thinks more “scientifically,” and has more cultivated tastes than the masses in flyover country who cling bitterly to their guns and religion, as the President once said. All true, but many in the Republican elite often display the same attitudes. We saw this in some of the responses to Trump’s remarks on immigration. Lindsey Graham called Trump a “wrecking ball,” and Jeb Bush said Trump’s remarks were “unfortunate” and advised, “We must have a more civil policy debate in this country.” In other words, it wasn’t the truth of Trump’s remarks that mattered, but their déclassé tone. Similarly, John McCain has called Tea Partiers and Trump followers “crazies” and “wacko-birds.” The implication is that social inferiors and ignoramuses are meddling in the business of their betters.

The people may be “uninformed,” as faux conservative columnist David Brooks said in explaining Trump’s popularity. But they know when they are being condescended to, and they’re good at detecting when a leader supposedly on their side behaves as though decorum and elite solidarity are more important than truth and principle. John McCain provides another example. In 2012 he attacked Congressman Michele Bachmann and four other Congressmen for raising questions about Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin’s family connections to the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood. From the floor of the Senate McCain blasted the “unwarranted and unfounded attack on an honorable woman, a dedicated American, and a loyal public servant” whom he considers a “friend” attacked “without concern for fact or fairness.”

To many conservatives, it seemed that elite inside-the-Beltway bonhomie was more important to McCain than determining whether or not his word “unwarranted” was just begging the question. Nor did he seem interested in whether or not it was a bit dangerous to have the chief officer of our foreign policy establishment, the Secretary of State, so close to someone intimately linked to an ideology inimical to this country’s security and interests, particularly at a time when the administration was advancing the cause of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

That sort of political good-old-pols-club solidarity is what angers many people. They are also sick of the carefully parsed and qualified and nuanced and poll-tested statements that are yet another device for avoiding the truth and hiding true motives. They sense that “insiders” with their bespoke suits and college degrees and smooth rhetoric are patronizing them and sacrificing their interests and principles. They get that the constant calls for “civility” and “decorum” are camouflage for the grubby pursuit of personal power and advancement, and a disdain for the common folk. Perhaps that’s why Trump’s dismissal of McCain’s status as a war-hero did not exact the price one would have expected, given the high regard Americans have for veterans. Perhaps many people figured that McCain had for too long made a career out of waving the bloody shirt rather than challenging the progressive status quo bankrupting the country and endangering our security and interests.

Or take the establishment Republicans who dismiss the disorder and crime created by illegal immigration, and call for “comprehensive immigration reform.

..............................................

http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/259893/d...-bruce-thornton