For the longest time, most Americans have viewed our political system through the prism of Republicans and Democrats, right and left, or urban and rural America. But in reality, the outlines of power are now defined by the command and control mechanisms of the most elite Americans – the true “one percent.” And while so many normal Americans believe that elites have no use for them, especially since the ascent of Donald Trump, we now have chilling data to back up that belief and quantify a foundational problem in the American political and legal system.
While correlating data from about 20 of his weekly surveys, famed pollster Scott Rasmussen started to detect a pattern. Out of every large sample of responses on people’s attitudes about our political system, there were always three or four participants who provided particularly radical responses – far from the mainstream. So Rasmussen set out to compare the demographics of these most extreme respondents. He found three characteristics in common: They all have graduate degrees, family income exceeding $150,000 a year, and live in large cities. Correspondingly, Joe Biden enjoys 84% approval among these elites while averaging less than half that among the unwashed. Many of the privileged class hold degrees from the most elite universities – Ivy League, MIT, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, UC Berkeley, and the University of Chicago.
So Rasmussen conducted another poll of just that small fraction of responders. The results could only be described as – and we use this expression advisedly – deeply troubling. The raw data on these elites tells it all:
- 86 % are white, and 73 % are Democrats; Just under half (47 %) favor Bernie Sanders-style socialism.
- 47% also say there is “too much freedom” in America.
- 71 % have a favorable opinion of the legacy media.
- 76 % have a favorable opinion of college professors (The rest of the country? Just 17 % hold that opinion).
- 67 % (two-thirds) say teachers and other educational professionals should decide what children are taught rather than parents.
- 77 % would “impose strict restrictions and rationing on the private use of gas, meat, and electricity.”
- 72 % would ban gas-powered vehicles.
- 69 % would ban gas stoves.
- 58 % would ban SUVs.
- 55 % would ban non-essential air travel.
- 53 % would ban private air conditioning.
Go ahead and take a minute to absorb how the American elite has gone full Marie Antoinette. But at least she was willing to let the little people eat cake.
The Elite Nightmare
In a piece entitled “The Elite 1 Percent Behind the Cultural Civil War,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich emphasizes the significant value in identifying “the driving forces behind the destructive radicalism which is pushing us into a cultural civil war,” adding that “the degree to which the elite 1 percent think their views represent those of the average American is astonishing.” In a similarly compelling article entitled “Obama’s Awful Elite Unveiled by Rasmussen” in The American Spectator, author Scott McKay pins the blame for these elite attitudes on the 44th president, arguing that “when Obama came along, he fused the radical chic of the rich white leftist in a Che Guevara T-shirt with the aspirational upward mobility of immigrants and minorities … while effectively granting themselves the ability to creatively imagine that two plus two equals five … All of a sudden, the insane proclivities described in Rasmussen’s polling represented the demands of an entire political party.”
That almost perfectly describes the Democratic Party circa 2024, a coalition of the leisure class and those who serve it.
Just imagine the plight suffered by normal people if the policies favored by the one percent were enacted. It would create a two-tier society devoid of a middle class, in which elites would command the high ground, while the low ground would be occupied by the proletariat – including illegal immigrants, who would likely no longer be deemed illegal – serving the needs of their superiors. If you want to see a microcosm of what it would look like, check out California, where the middle class is leaving in droves, no longer able to afford the cost of living and sufficating regulatory environment. We would be plunged into a nightmare with no relief, a dark world where only the privileged few would experience life as we know it.
The fact that these elites obviously possess outsized influence over the political process has undoubtedly warped the entire legal and political environment as the two became almost indistinguishable from one another. These attitudes have empowered many a politician – or “public servant” – to jump on the do-anything-to-get-Trump bandwagon undergirded by a cheerleading and equally elite corporate media with largely the same beliefs. You can see the frightening pattern emerging in the naked partisanship they no longer hide … or even pretend to hide. You almost have to admire the raw chutzpah. The left has perfected the art of projection, in this case attempting the single most anti-democratic action imaginable: convicting and imprisoning the man leading the race for president while claiming it is being done to save democracy. Nice work if you can get it.
Blue State Justice
The irony in all this – as well as the tragedy – is that those who have benefited the most from our system of governance are fully committed to preventing others from aspiring to the same quality of life. Why else would these elites find Trump such a mortal threat who must be stopped at any cost? It’s because he is the only one who will call them out and slap a label on them: the corrupt, power-hungry, hypocritical elite.
Their mindset also leads elites, starting with Joe Biden, to argue that what people are experiencing in their personal finances is simply not valid – because he judges the economy from a safe distance and bases his beliefs on macro-statistics such as the unemployment, growth, and job creation rates. This belies the reality facing Americans every day at the supermarket and gas pump – and when they open their electric bill in the midst of winter. The utter detachment of elites from the day-to-day lives of ordinary Americans is almost breathtaking.
The case of New York Attorney General Letitia James represents the embodiment of these exact elite attitudes. Entirely unconstrained by a legal system designed to protect the innocent and convict the guilty, Ms. James ran for the office on the central premise that she would “get Trump” somehow, some way – and then proceeded to do just that with the aid and comfort of a judge who proclaimed Trump guilty before the trial even started. When a law never before applied to a single person for a supposed crime without a victim, in business that enriched all parties involved, is used to try and bankrupt the leading candidate for president, while three other courts threaten to send him to prison, what exactly distinguishes the United States of America from the third-world dictatorships our leaders supposedly abhor?
The answer is, increasingly, not much. Evidently, that’s just the way the elite one percent would like it.
