Consider this as a clue to how fucked we are as a country.

[Hortensis]

43. You don't think Jefferson himself had a good streak

of radicalism in him? Of course they all believed class differences were inevitable and somewhat desirable, as you say, differing most strongly in how elites should be identified and rewarded with authority. After all, Virginia was some 250 years old with a long established colonial aristocracy at the time of the revolution. And certainly Jefferson was very much an odd man out when he wrote that "equality" garbage into the Declaration of Independence.

Regarding, why, though, let's not forget wealth, the basis of all enduring privilege under a European system. King George was turning the screws on the colonies, and very much on the colonial leaders who had gotten way above themselves and needed to be brought into line. George Washington's greatest motivator was probably the threat that the king would award to someone else all the western lands Washington had claimed title to over years of hard work. Especially after he denied Washington's consortium title to over a million acres to the west (which would have turned all the settlers who put their lives and wellbeing on the line to own their own land into Washington's tenant farmers) while awarding a similar giant holding to another group. It was apparently right after this that he became a devout believer in independence.

Well, sidewalks in the nicer neighborhoods of nicer towns anyway. I'm pretty sure you're right that lost of "we" did not. But we've wandered pretty far from Stinky the Clown's concern about what Trump's horrifying proximity to the White House says about us as a people.