Tough Titty said the Kitty.

The enemy of my enemy is my electoral base.

Doug Masson is a successful attorney in West Lafayette, IN. He also writes a blog called Masson's Blog-A Citizen's Guide to Indiana. Doug is poly math and has fingertip knowledge of Indiana history. He has this most northerly Confederate state pegged pretty well.  He recently addressed the American "class' collision that is taking place in this classless land that is America.

Doug wrote:

One of my favorite news sites is Cracked.com, a comedy site. I don’t know if it’s the old thing about the jester being able to speak truth to power or the lack of a particular axe to grind that makes me find it more informative than a lot of straight news and commentary places. A podcast they aired in March 2016 was a discussion about how bad America is at talking about class (and how that contributed to the rise of Trump). We like to pretend that we’re essentially a classless society, a meritocracy where people rise and fall according to their own abilities. We pretend that social class and wealth are pretty much the same thing. The podcast also talked about how we get a lot more riled up by people in the social class adjacent to us than we do by social classes who are a couple of steps removed. (So, the gentry (upper middle class) tend to get more pissed about acts from the upper class than the lower middle class might.) Social classes who are a few steps removed are more cartoonish abstractions than real threats to your way of life. The podcast website linked to an interesting essay entitled, “I can tolerate anything except the out-group.” The out group is going to be one that’s close to home. The author references what Freud described as the narcissism of small differences:“it is precisely communities with adjoining territories, and related to each other in other ways as well, who are engaged in constant feuds and ridiculing each other.”

 I don't know if these electoral tranches can play nice. Income inequality skews against the working class and from all I read, the AI and Robot Revolution WILL sideline many workers, even the semi-skilled factory workers (CNC, welding, low skill machining).  It will effectively finish hollowing out the middle class. There will be the upper middle class creative and knowledge class (winning class) and lower classes (losing class) of service workers. Many of these service jobs will be concentrated in healthcare  education, and foods services. And even many of these jobs can be automated. These jobs won't pay for Harleys and F350s. Or bass boats.  Or blast furnace size gas backyard barbecue grills. And try spending 40% of your disposable income on health insurance with high deductibles.

Much of what I read about the rural working class and many rural small business owners is that they believe they are losing their cultural identity. This disruption is destiny. I am sure that the hundreds of thousands of middle east refugees in Europe would like to keep their cultural identity. But only the placenta's of the top one percent come with promises.

Much of this nascent knowledge is based upon a growing understanding of the  economic changes coming. They aren't doing as well as grandpa or dad. It will be worse for their kids. They sense that automation and AI are fast approaching. They can barely make the payments now.

Some analysis I recently read is that these folks do not want to go to college and improve themselves  to get up to and into the Winning Class. They just want to make more money and stay where they are at.

Well, what did the kitty say about the momma cat's mammamaries? I would like to live high in the Sandia foothills, ride my Ducati superbike on the twisties and the canyon straights each morning after entering my options trades for the day. And spend mornings partway through my rides at the art colony in Madrid, New Mexico, drinking green iced tea with artists and musicians. But I digress...

They sure put the hurt on the world by not voting for the C***.  And unless they wise up fast and in great masses, their Chosen will cut and dice up anything that is left of the social safety net.  Their  mendacious and manipulative leaders are engaging in the destruction of the social contract that gave the US unmatched economic success for the 30 years that followed World War II. Cruel and dismissive policy changes will harm the poor and disabled. Healthcare will become only an aspiration.

Then whom will they call the C***?