Disconnections

A couple of reports lately that reinforce one of the things I have been observing, the disconnect between the coastal urban elites and everyone else in America.

From When Rulers Can’t Understand the Ruled from Johns Hopkins.

From the press release:

All told, Bachner and Ginsberg found if a random American were dropped into the offices of a Washington administrative agency or into a lunch at Washington’s power-broking Palm Restaurant, it would feel and sound like another planet. These crucial differences, they say, lead to entirely divergent philosophies on policies, priorities and government’s ultimate purpose.
“Official Washington views the public through jaundiced eyes, believing that ordinary Americans are uninformed and misguided and that policy makers should ignore them,” Ginsberg says. “The government’s lack of trust in the people reflects the civic distance between the American people and their government as much as any political reality. Nevertheless, what the government thinks of the people affects how it governs, especially the chance that policy will be influenced by citizen preferences.”

This is related to my observation a while ago about how the inequalities and conditions in the media centers such as Washington, D.C., New York, LA, Chicago likely skew a view of America which is not consistent with the rest of America. See Where the Middle Class Goes to Die by Kevin D. Williamson for a similar observation.