I happen to live in a place (Portland, OR) where the graduate / progressive elite class still rubs elbows with the working class. But that's not what I see in most of the rest of America. And even 20 miles from here, the working class loathes Portland and its politics, and people here with a lot of degrees have no concept of that or what those people actually believe. Both groups have no more than a caricature of each other in their minds. I happen to split my time between both places and it's pretty clear they are living in completely separate spheres of information.
So my other place is in Yamhill which is even more extreme, but basically all counties surrounding Multnomah are full of people who swear they haven't stepped foot in Portland since 2019 and will never go back because it's, according to them (who don't visit), a "I'm sorry you live in that shithole" level shithole. Which is obviously absurd. But that's how extreme the urban/suburban divide is here.
Same in Seattle. I walk around my neighborhood, get coffee, talk to people working in their gardens, pet friendly cats, it’s quiet at night, I go to Jazz Alley, then walk home around Lake Union. My friends from rural Washington ask me how I can stand to live in Seattle. They literally try to convince me that I’m wrong to believe it isn’t a hellhole. Of course, they turn me down when I suggest they come visit. Come to think of it, when I suggest a roadtrip to Portland, some of my Seattle friends look at me in horror too. It’s surreal—even intelligent people prefer to believe what they see in the news and on social media to their lived experience.
Even before the economic divide, there might be mental issues at play, but the article goes there only very briefly, when mentioning identity. I don't know this Turchin guy, but you can't always explain everything with just numbers. Did he really say that people are deemed "deplorables" due to economic or education status, as this blog implies? I'm sure anyone can think of plenty of people with multiple degrees and millions in the bank who are horrible humans, sociopaths, inveterate narcissists or any combination of those.
