RULING CLASS: Michael Lind: The New National American Elite: America is now ruled by a single elite class rather than by local patrician smart sets competing with each other for money and power. “The rising ruling class in America is found in every major city in every region. Membership in it depends on having the right diplomas—and the right beliefs.”
Plus: “More and more Americans are figuring out that ‘wokeness’ functions in the new, centralized American elite as a device to exclude working-class Americans of all races, along with backward remnants of the old regional elites. In effect, the new national oligarchy changes the codes and the passwords every six months or so, and notifies its members through the universities and the prestige media and Twitter.”
Related: ‘Luxury beliefs’ are the latest status symbol for rich Americans.