Conclusion: Lady Liberty   

   Following up on Saturday's discussion about elites in the land of opportunity, Prof. Bottums says:

   Americans "believe political, financial and cultural elites seek only their own interests. And so we get Donald Trump (himself an elite) as a corrective to this. And so we get rioters torching police stations. Trump voters and Antifa activists differ widely, but have a set of shared characteristics:"

   Both mistrust the old ruling class.

   They both believe the common good isn't being served.

   They both have anger from a long-building sense of betrayal. 

   We paraphrase: "How does a person become wealthy in a lifetime of elected office? They belong to a class that lost its moral authority to rule - but kept on ruling, often in the name of claimed moral stature. 

   "Trump was elected as a symbol of our national mistrust. Washington is viewed as a swamp, as intrusive busybodies, an unelected deep-state bureaucracy for the benefit of its own class. 

   "This is born from a disbelief in the authority figures who seem to have taken their power as a lifetime pass to an easy-money machine. 

   "Trump is a placeholder for conservative anger. 

   "As for anger on the left, Joe Biden - a man who may be the most placeholderish of placeholders ever to receive a major party's nomination. He operates almost entirely in symbolic space: the empty vessel with which Democrats seek to carry their causes into the White House."

   The professor asks, "What have the nation's elite done to make us trust them?" 

       Jimmy