The Republican Party is dead: GOP strategist stunned by reception to Trump's 'unhinged' CPAC speech

[KY_EnviroGuy]

8. Current-day Republicans represent the dark side of prosperity.

We're experiencing a substantial loss of old-fashioned humility and empathy in much of America's populace, primarily due to an extended period of prosperity in middle and upper classes. I've watched that happen in many people I've known in the last 40 or 50 years.

If this sort of behavior is typical of upper middle-class people, we can just imagine the psychology of the upper crust.

Good snippet from a great long read in The Atlantic:

Perhaps the best evidence for the power of an aristocracy is to be found in the degree of resentment it provokes. By that measure, the 9.9 percent are doing pretty well indeed. The surest sign of an increase in resentment is a rise in political division and instability. We’re positively acing that test. You can read all about it in the headlines of the past two years.

The 2016 presidential election marked a decisive moment in the history of resentment in the United States. In the person of Donald Trump, resentment entered the White House. It rode in on the back of an alliance between a tiny subset of super-wealthy 0.1 percenters (not all of them necessarily American) and a large number of 90 percenters who stand for pretty much everything the 9.9 percent are not.

From:
The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy
The class divide is already toxic, and is fast becoming unbridgeable. You’re probably part of the problem.

Read more: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-birth-of-a-new-american-aristocracy/559130/

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