In an earlier post, I argued that you can explain much of the Donald Trump phenomenon as a counter-revolution by what Peggy Noonan aptly called the "unprotected class" against what Christopher Lasch called the "new elite" (a.k.a., the "protected class," to use Noonan's terminology).
Few folks exemplify the new elite better than the tech folks of Silicon Valley:
In The New Class Conflict
, Joel Kotkin argues that the socially and politically ascendant groups in contemporary America are the oligarchs of Silicon Valley and a complex of elite journalists, think-tank pundits, and academics that he dubs the clerisy. The nouveaux riches of the tech world are increasingly intent on remaking society in accordance with their own passions .... The clerisy, meanwhile, promotes and provides ideological legitimation for elite goals. The effect of the two groups' efforts, he concludes, is to concentrate wealth and power in a shrinking number of hands, leaving the middle class stranded and subject to ever more evident economic decline.
And our tech overlords are not happy about the proles getting uppity. (It calls to mind a classic Wizard of Id cartoon.):
Apple CEO Tim Cook, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Alphabet CEO Larry Page, and Napster creator Sean Parker all attended an exclusive event where the "main topic" was preventing Donald Trump from getting the Republican nomination for president, reports The Huffington Post.
HuffPo reports that:
Sources familiar with the meeting -- who requested anonymity because the forum is off the record -- said that much of the conversation around Trump centered on "how this happened, rather than how are we going to stop him," as one person put it.
It happened because the working and middle classes have finally woken up to the fact that the elites--on both sides of the aisle--view them with contempt and loathing. It happened because tech overlords have gotten wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice, while the working class and middle class have been left behind. It happened because the GOP put the interests of the Business Roundtable ahead of those of the working and middle class, while the Democratic Party unleashed a toxic mix of class warfare and identity politics (while still somehow managing to keep the Masters of the Universe on Wall Street on board, a remarkable accomplishment).
In my view, it couldn't have happened to the proverbial nicer group of people.
