I would argue that Charles Murray's Coming Apart is the best nonfiction book of the last 25 years. In it, Charles describes how American society has bifurcated into two distinct, practically non-overlapping groups: the wealthy, college-educated elites and the blue collar workers. He called them Belmont (elites) and Fishtown (blue collar).
The folks in Belmont live in a bubble where they associate almost exclusively with each other. Charles put together a quiz that helped you find out just how thick your Belmont bubble was. You can find it here. Sample questions include the following.
Have you ever walked on a factory ๏ฌoor?
Have you ever held a job that caused something to hurt at the end of the day?
Have you ever participated in a parade not involving global warming, a war protest, or gay rights?
Since leaving school, have you ever worn a uniform?
You can watch Charles discuss his book on Uncommon Knowledge here.
Bill Maher lives in Belmont. He is a wealthy entertainer with his own TV show. He lives in Los Angeles. His audience live in Belmont. They all clap and cheer at the appropriate times and none of them would vote for Trump. They don't work jobs where they sweat and they don't drive pickup trucks*.
The DNC, the education industry, popular entertainers and the news media all live in that same bubble. During the 2020 Democratic primaries, when it looked like Bernie Sanders was going to win, the elites got together and engineered Biden's victory by getting black leaders to back Biden in South Carolina. This isn't a secret.
Maher and his ilk are responsible for putting a man they all knew could never do the job in the White House. Now dig Maher's monologue after watching Biden seize up with dementia on worldwide TV during his debate with Trump.
They're all laughing at the results of their own disastrous decision. Maher's totally unaware of his role in what happened, but what does he care? He's got piles of cash and a secure position. So do the people in his audience. It's all hilarious to them.
Now dig this scene from England.
The consequences of Maher and his audience's decisions, both to help install Joe Biden in the White House and support unlimited migration are paid by the kind of people who buy their clothes at Walmart. Here's a scene from Germany where Christians are beaten and killed by Muslim migrants.
Maher certainly isn't Christian and the people in his audience aren't, either. Again, the decisions of the elite cabal who chose Biden and, as a consequence, allowed unlimited migration across the West, are affecting the rabble from Fishtown, not the college-educated snobs who clap and bark like trained seals for Maher's unfunny jokes.
I know those are foreign examples, but they're what I found this morning doom-scrolling Twitter and I want to get to the gym so I'm not spending any time looking for American examples that we all know exist. You get the idea.
After Biden's collapse in the debate, I've seen video after video of elites talking about What It All Means, but they only think in terms of the election, the party and the donor class. None of them talk about What It All Has Meant for the unwashed swine from flyover country for the past 4 years.
That's because they neither know nor do they care.
* - Yes these are over-broad generalizations, but I hate what the phrase "most, but not all of them are like this" does to prose, so I don't use it.
