INTERESTINGLY, I’M REREADING THAT BOOK NOW: Donald Trump is the beta test of a cure for The Revolt of the Elites. In fact, here’s a passage I flagged:
Simultaneously arrogant and insecure, the new elites, the professional classes in particular, regard the masses with mingled scorn and apprehension. In the United States, “Middle America” — a term that has both geographical and social implications — has some to symbolize everything that stands in the way of progress: “family values,” mindless patriotism, religious fundamentalism, racism, homophobia, retr0grade views of women. Middle Americans, as they appear to the makers of educated opinion, are hopelessly shabby, unfashionable, and provincial, ill informed about chan ges in taste or intellectual trends . . . . They are at once absurd and vaguely menacing — not because they wish to overthrow the old order but precisely because their defense of it appears so deeply irrational.
Christopher Lasch wrote it 20+ years ago, and now we’re living the endgame.