Anger at the ruling class is real
“The three things progressives commonly disregard in pursuit of their policy preferences are the ones which argue most persuasively against them: History, human nature and math.”
— Jerry Shenk, 2014
America’s parties share those shortcomings. For decades, big-government Democrats and Republicans have been career officeholders, political brokers, financiers, news filters, bureaucrats and/ or deal makers. Their common history has created a “fusion party” — a bipartisan ruling class, hidebound, obstinate, predictable, utterly selfinterested and detached from the regular people they govern but don’t know or understand. America’s ruling class lives in a self-invented bubble clouded by a blinding, arrogance-induced fog.
They lack self-awareness and the skills to identify both their problems and practical solutions. Bubble-dwellers overrate their competencies and act on timeworn practices that create problems rather than provide solutions. Political bubble-dwellers often willfully-bypass promising solutions, e.g., regulatory and tax reform/simplification, to preserve their power, perks and opportunities for graft.
Such behaviors may be explained as human nature, but they have weakened public trust in the parties, polls and electoral math. 2016 has been especially troublesome.
According to David Goldman, “the decisive issue of the 2016 campaign was the corrupt machinations of a ruling elite that considers itself above the law, and the rage of the American people against the oligarchical ruling class that has pulled the ladder up behind it.”
In leaked emails, the Department of Justice, including the FBI, the White House, the Democratic National Committee, national media and Hillary Clinton’s campaign were revealed to be coconspirators in whitewashing the candidate’s felonies, suppressing news of her lawlessness, stacking the deck against Bernie Sanders, unethical campaign collusion and, during the primary season, promoting the only Republican opponent Clinton was confident of defeating.
The Federalist’s Ben Domenech on Donald Trump: “The key to understanding the …Trump phenomenon is to recognize that he is neither a disease nor a symptom — he is … the beta-test of a cure. He represents … a breakdown that has been happening in slow motion for the past two decades, fueled by a dramatic decline of trust in America’s elites.
“The percentage of Americans with a great deal of trust in the presidency, the courts, public schools, and banks are in the teens. Trust for unions, the justice system, big business, Congress and the media are in single digits.”
Public distrust of the political class is well-deserved. Rather than finding solutions to citizens’ legitimate concerns, governing elites overpromise and under-deliver. In effect, elite indifference to public dissatisfaction and the economic adversity that many Americans still suffer nominated outsider Donald Trump.
Trump is a metaphorical poke in the eye to the political class; political fixture Hillary Clinton is its eye, but, through collusion and corruption, she hasn’t been disqualified. Under those circumstances, as president, Clinton will be considered illegitimate by more than half of Americans.
America’s anger is real. It’s not going away. Another Clinton presidency will only fuel it. Until it is reformed or replaced to address Americans’ justified outrage, America’s ruling class will remain a national menace.