sourceType:: article author:: David Brooks sourcePublication:: The Atlantic ref:: noteTitle:: Blame the Bobos; The Atlantic, September 2021

The Atlantic, September 2021

“Blame the Bobos”, David Brooks

These days, your education level and political values are as important in defining your class status as your income is. Because of this, the U.S. has polarized into two separate class hierarchies — one red and one blue. Classes struggle not only up and down against the richer and poorer groups on their own ladder, but against their partisan opposite across the ideological divide.

This got me wondering who the charicature version of these four quadrants are. The blue poor and the blue rich are the social-safety-net reliant minorities and rich, educated progressives, respectively. The red poor are probably the Trumpy coal miners, but who are their rich, educated equivalent? Yea, there are classic conservative CEO-types and whatnot, but they don’t check the “highly-educated and interesting-social-idea-generating” box that the blues have. I think the so-called “alt right”-adjacent, like [[curtis-yarvin-mencius-moldbug]]❌ and related might be the red version of the blue coastal elites. But do the red poor fight against them “up the ladder”?