A Thoroughly Confused Country: An Introduction to Class Politics and a Way Forward

Americans suffer from a lack of class consciousness, which makes them easy prey for manipulation

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On July 27, 2004, in Boston, Massachusetts, senatorial candidate Barack Obama delivered the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. The speech was incredibly successful and put Obama on track to wrestle the 2008 nomination from rival Hillary Clinton and eventually win the presidency. It was a masterful oration that hit a crescendo with a rhetorical run that was, at the time, incredibly inspirational, but has aged poorly: “There is not a liberal America and a conservative America, there is the United States of America…we are one people, all of us pledging allegience to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.”

What Obama communicated was an aspirational vision for a country torn over the Iraq War and increasing political polarization, and that vision, mixed with his promise of “hope” and “change” in the face of worsening economic conditions, created a landslide victory in 2008. We could spend countless hours talking about the reasons that Obama’s presidency came up short - a dogged reliance on Neoliberal policies, the Wealth Class’s creation of the faux-populist Tea Party, corporate media propaganda - but the assertion of Obama’s speech deserves some consideration in the face of the last decade of politics.

Obama’s candidacy and then presidency was largely the last breath of a dying vision of America that was simultaneously correct and entirely misguided. An emphasis on collective identity, especially when paired with promises to address the ravages of globalism, had traces of the necessary worldview to actually change things, which speaks to how Obama was able to win so convincingly and also capture the votes of people who would eventually support Donald Trump, but it also continued the tradition of ignoring class and racial experiences.

As we begin to create coalitions in hopes of realizing a movement that can fight against authoritarianism and exploitation by the Wealth Class, we need to move past these simplistic and pleasing narratives and begin wrestling with larger truths. The failure to do so helped usher Trump back into power and has put us on the precipice of an authoritarian future controlled by that very Wealth Class.

It is my hope that this can shine some light on things you have most certainly felt but maybe struggled to understand, as well as to open some eyes of people who have never necessarily thought about any of us this but intuited in their own experiences. Also, hopefully it can help with conversations when it comes to organizing and recruiting for coalitions.

A Lack of Awareness

Americans enjoy a virtual complete ignorance of class politics. There are several reasons for this. Pleasing mythologies that create a fictional but reassuring portrait of the country have existed since our Founding, and the actual, true history of class conflict and dynamics has remained largely relegated to a specialized class of academics. At times, we’ll hear about this politician or that politician enjoying support among a certain class, but that’s often in passing and doesn’t get much explanation or examination. This is because to actually talk about class politics is to threaten the continuance of the status quo, and the people who would usually explain this on a mass level are either unaware of its existence or unwilling to threaten that status quo (more on this later).

Class consciousness is virtually nonexistent with the exception of the Wealth Class, which is very aware of it and practiced at using this ignorance to its advantage. To this end, efforts by the wealthy have largely centered on capitalizing off this ignorance by using activating messaging in the form of populist appeals and conspiracy theories that arise from a lack of awareness to their advantage. This is one of the reasons our politics have gotten so incredibly strange. The answer to what is going on and what must be done is very obvious, but it’s kept just out of frame.

With the exception of some specialized education, we aren’t taught to view things like this. In fact, the specialized nature keeps us from understanding it as much of class politics is awash in jargon and academic language that renders it inscrutable to anyone save for members of the academic class. For that reason, I’m going to attempt to write this explainer as plainly as humanly possible. There’s a whole host of things to learn if you want to go deeper, but this is intended as an introduction and hopefully an artifact that can help with understanding what’s going on and that you might be able to give to friends, coworkers, family members, and coalition members you meet along the way.

We’re going to discuss what I see as the defining classes of the United States, their characteristics, confusions, and tensions. In later articles and my ongoing Audio From A Collapsing State podcast series I’ll get into solutions and strategies in how we might move beyond this disastrous paradigm, mobilize necessary coalitions, and hopefully right our ship.

The Working Class

It’s easiest to think of the Working Class as a group that is largely at the mercy of employers with little to no say in how their jobs function and how our politics and culture play out. It’s misleading to believe the Working Class is relegated to so-called “Red States” as it is a massive collection of people from disparate backgrounds and geographic locations. They are in rural towns and they are in cities. They belong to both political parties and are often completely disengaged from politics altogether.

In the United States, the Working Class is sometimes keenly aware of their class and oftentimes confused or ignorant. Millions understand they are living paycheck to paycheck and recognize just how precarious their lives are. Then, there are millions more who believe they are Middle Class, largely because they take on huge mountains of debt to buy middle-class luxuries, including expensive cars, top of the line electronics, and houses they struggle to afford. Often, people who are aware of their class are stretched so thin that they don’t have time or desire to engage in politics, and the people who remain confused about their class are left to identify with the wealthy (including a certain billionaire real-estate developer turned reality-TV conman).

Resentment is a major factor in their politics, a truth the wealthy have taken advantage of. When it comes to the Working Class in Republican-controlled states and Middle America, they experience a violent divide between what they have access to and what others have. Because higher education has become so expensive, their kids are often left behind, creating a “sour grapes effect” in which they actively and angrily despise the educated and associated perks, including cosmopolitan luxuries and perks. This causes a doubling-down on identity, including an embrace of cultural products like country music that lionizes “country living” and the Make America Great Again Movement, which dresses itself up in these rejections and identity markers while also serving the interests of the wealthy.

Neoliberalism has done a number on the Working Class. Globalism allowed the wealthy to uproot manufacturing jobs and exploit workers around the world. Predatory monopolies like Walmart hollowed out Middle America by offering cheap goods that then redirected traffic from local stores and merchants, and destroyed rural economic ecosystems. Institutions that held meaning for the Working Class - think a sports team leaving a city and moving to another - have been destabilized and ruined, creating a feeling that the world is out of control. What remains of the Working Class, whether its people working in manufacturing or the barrage of service and gig labor positions, is run by algorithms and private equity and practices like contract labor that make it feel like that lack of control is only growing with every passing day.

The ranks of the Working Class are growing by the day because of Neoliberalism and the Wealth Class has employed an incredibly effective strategy in capturing a portion of them. The MAGA Movement has been a careful and meticulous operation that has, through the campaigns constructed and carried out by think-tanks and institutes in the service of the Wealth Class, fostered the feeling of resentment and used inherent prejudices, including racism, sexism, nativism, xenophobia, gay/transphobia, to shift anger from the people who created and profited from this system onto their political enemies, using conspiracy theory narratives to “explain” the systematic destruction of America. The Working Class are right in not trusting our institutions. They’re right in not trusting our politicians. They’re right in feeling as if things are tilted against them. But a lack of understanding and awareness as to how it is happened and who has done it has left them vulnerable to these manipulations, and it doesn’t help that the Democratic Party and our media, both of which are beholden to the same Wealth Class and therefore unable and unwilling to trouble them, refuse to address these culture war issues through this framing, choosing rather to take the “issues” head-on and gift them validity.

In Trump, millions of them have found someone they can believe in, largely because he is crass, because he signals to them, and because he has been willing to say, unlike many politicians, that the entire system is corrupted. Of course, he is doing so as a means of manipulation, but when class and the actual workings of politics are obscured, that manipulation is often left uncovered.

Life under a second Trump Administration, a sham of a presidency that is captured and operated by the Wealth Class, will make their lives much, much worse. The present manipulation, however, is prepared for this, and will likely blame these disastrous results on “the Deep State” and “globalists” and the same minorities that have been scapegoated for years now. As this happens, the United States will begin to “reindustrialize” as the standard of living drops and globalism swings back around to its originating nation. Investment in US manufacturing will create a new wave of factories and plants, most of them either automated or relying on cheap labor, a lack of regulations, and worsening conditions. These will likely be relegated to so-called “Red States,” where many Working Class voters will simply be thankful for jobs. Effectively, the labor protections hard-earned by labor unions and the Progressive Movement will be nil, returning a portion of the population to Industrial Age exploitation and brutal conditions. There could be a push to organize and unionize, but the Wealth Class is preparing to remove any and all protections for those looking to do the work.

Until there is an effort to mobilize these people, many of whom voted for Obama and come Democratic backgrounds, those strategies will continue to pay off and things will continue to deteriorate. There is a history of working class mobilization to draw from and in the story of how authoritarianism either succeeds or fails, that mobilization is essential to defeating it.

The Middle Class

Easily one of the most misunderstood classes in America, essentially everyone from the working class to the lower rungs of the Wealth Class believe they are right there in the middle. This is why almost every speech by a politician focuses on their plight. The establishment of the Middle Class in post-war America is both one of the country’s greatest successes and one of the biggest detriments to class understanding and, by extension, impediments to political change.

For the purposes of this article, we’ll focus on this class and its divisions, which have grown over time. Essentially, the American Middle Class has gotten a college education and work in fields in which they are able to contribute a modicum of feedback in how those jobs function, while still being alienated from their labor. In these roles, the Middle Class carry out the functions of the Wealth Class’s operations, including management, logistics, creative support, and clerk-like positions. As this is the case, the Middle Class is both isolated from the violent precarity of the Working Class, but also effectively alienated from the products and profit they produce on behalf of their bosses and corporations.

This is a strange space to occupy. It creates a mindset that is bewildering, isolating, and, at times, incredibly fearful. Considering how “lucky” these people consider themselves, especially as conditions worsen for the Working Class, there are incredible incentives to go along with whatever the Wealth Class wants, including carrying out austerity measures, exploiting workers, and effectively supporting the rightward movement of our politics and economics. There is an inherent “neurosis” that goes along with this, a guilt over their privilege and the actions they are forced to condone. In some cases, therapy is a bastion of comfort. In others, as we have seen over and over again, platforms and communication platforms like The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and MSNBC, which are owned by the Wealth Class and designed to tailor to the liberal Middle Class, reassure them that moderation - essentially standing between the authoritarian Right and the “dangerous” Left, which doesn’t exist anyway - is the key to maintaining order and getting through periods of crisis.

As the Wealth Class has gained more power and wealth, there has been an aggressive pinch when it comes to Middle Class workers. Many of these people have survived boom and bust periods within their employers, watching coworkers get laid off and economically destroyed. Those who are left probably consider themselves fortunate, but feel constantly as if they might be next on the chopping block. This feeling is only growing as Artificial Intelligence makes strides and it becomes increasingly obvious that AI will allow their jobs to be eliminated as the Wealth Class increases their profits through automation. On top of this, life in urban areas has gotten prohibitively expensive. Living in the major cities is almost impossible at this point from a financial standpoint, creating an increasing sense of impending doom and desperation. In many cases, entire industries in the urban centers - including journalism, the Hollywood machine, academia, publishing, and creative endeavors - have now been stocked with people who can only afford to pursue these careers and live in these areas because their families have wealth and are able to supplement their salaries, which have flat-lined and plummeted in many cases.

Because of this, and this has been the case throughout history, the Middle Class is terrified. They are reliant on the tools of the Wealth Class, especially the Tech Class (more on them later), their jobs are dependent on the wealthy, and, forced between choosing authoritarianism or revolutionary leftism, the choice is almost a foregone conclusion. There isn’t much revolutionary energy to the Middle Class and, when push comes to shove, many naturally begin to gravitate to figures who promise to use authoritarian energies to “protect what exists.” A large portion of the Middle Class has relied on the Democratic Party, which has, over time, moved from its base of women, labor, and the Working Class, to protection of the status quo, essentially becoming a conservative party, but the Democrats failure to win or achieve their agenda has paired with the rightward momentum of the country, leaving many to start turning to Trump, MAGA, and the authoritarian agenda of the Wealth Class.

Those who remain faithful to the Democrats are living primarily in an increasingly balkanized society. There are, of course, the “Blue” and “Red” states, a stark division of reality between regions. Those who can afford to live in the “Blue” states are paying a premium to escape the control of Republican legislatures, but that cost is getting more and more expensive with every passing day. Same goes for those who live in the cities that are divided from the rural areas, which is another division that anyone can see when they look at an electoral map. Because the Democratic Party has failed to contest races or invest in “Red States” or rural areas, those who are privileged enough to remain in these “Blue” oases have learned to largely ignore the suffering outside of their bubbles. An example of this is the 2022 Dobbs decision that destroyed Roe v. Wade, leaving “Red States” to effectively outlaw abortion. Rather than seeing widespread protest, many in “Blue States” retreated to their own lives and offered gestures of concern and openly urged women in “Red States” to move, which isn’t possible for many.

What makes this even worse is that, through social media and many cultural touchpoints, there has arisen a gesture-based economy in which personalities, politicians, and media platforms are able to market to this Middle Class demographic, selling them a narrative that 1. Trump is an aberration 2. Our institutions are fundamentally sound 3. Those institutions, including the Democratic Party, the FBI, the CIA, the legal system, etc., are going to hold Trump accountable and put things right again. This, of course, is an alternate reality that allows the Middle Class to deny that reform is necessary and, by extension, allows them to continue their lives of privilege without having to risk anything to change things. What emerged was a host of people who would post and comment within an oligarchical-controlled corporate space as if that took the place of actual organizing and actual resistance. This failed predictably, leaving many Middle Class members to either tune out or begin accepting Trumpism, MAGA, and the Wealth Class’s authoritarianism as normal or even advantageous.

To this extent, the Middle Class is now divided between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, which was the logical conclusion of all of this and the continued schism in Middle Class thought. History shows that, over time, more of them will move to the Right and even embrace authoritarianism if there is not an effort to somehow stress interdependence between themselves and the Working Class throughout the country. This is made harder, though, as there is an antipathy for the Working Class, who are often viewed by the Middle Class as brutish, disgusting, and stupid. This is something that will hamper any effective organizing if it isn’t addressed and make the situation worse. There has to be coordination and understanding here if something is to happen.

The Tech Class

Within the Middle Class is a new and largely separated class that carries out the operations of the tech companies, including programming, testing, design, maintenance, and other assorted features. As Tech has emerged as the driving force of both the new economy and culture, these workers have been largely separated from other members of the Middle Class due to their proximity to concentrated wealth and power. Their identities and ideologies are varied, but there is a larger classification here that help to understand our present dynamic.

Members of the Tech Class live largely privileged lives surrounding tech centers such as San Francisco, Palo Alto, Austin, Seattle, Denver, and New York, and receive relatively generous salaries. Depending on where they call their home, even their compensation proves less than needed. Many are left to commute for hours to their tech firms and, over time, have been pushed to relocate to cities and states with lower costs of living, including “Red States” which have recruited them. Those who stay in places like San Francisco or throughout the tech corridor are growing increasingly reactionary due to high crime and large unhoused populations, and have been taught to see the world through increasingly authoritarian lenses, including elements of the “California Ideology” that promotes a feeling that designers of the tech present and future are “special” and shouldn’t be hindered by archaic legal and political structures. This has led to a political standpoint that encourages the tech Oligarchical Class (more on this later) to continue amassing as much wealth and power as possible and a need for the world to submit to tech-informed solutions, which is understandably reminiscent of the Futurism movement that predated the outbreak of Fascism in Europe.

These Tech Class members straddle the line between alienation from and control over their products, oftentimes creating apps and new systems, but, in a new twist that throws things kind of in disarray, their goals are to corner the market themselves and join the tech Oligarchical Class or to catch the attention of the tech Oligarchical Class and cash in on their inventions. This existence as “feeders” of the larger monopoly system is quite reminiscent of the Wealth Class’s “fast cash” finance philosophy, which we’ll discuss later. Theirs is a mishmashed existence and, due to Elon Musk’s buying of the MAGA Movement and ascendance within the governmental power structure, they are moving away from a liberal leaning and the Democrats, who championed and funded them in the early stages of their development, and coming to embrace strongman authoritarianism and worship of figures like Musk as tech messiahs who will usher in a new world.

The Burgher Class

In the past, Burghers, or large business owners, were noble members of the community who enjoyed incredible power within their local, regional, and national spheres. Their control of production and resources granted them these privileges and, in the United States, their power stretched to the halls of the White House. This past is gone, however, and the new order has left this class wealthy but diminished in power and control.

An example of the Burgher class would be an individual who owns multiple car lots, an expansive real estate business, or the largest chain of furniture stores in the American southwest. They are considerably wealthy, enjoy tremendous influence over local politics and, with a little luck and momentum, might even come to serve in congress as a representative or senator. But the shift to the modern Wealth Class and Oligarchical class, and an emphasis on international business and even finance, has lowered the Burgher class and stolen a portion of their power.

MAGA has captured a great percentage of the Burgher class, offering them the same vision of America that is offered to the Working Class: a country that has been betrayed by its political leaders, a country that has been sold out to foreign interests, and a country that is being destroyed through cultural revolution. Trump has enjoyed tremendous support from these people as they see him as one of their own, a business owner who has made a substantial fortune but has still been held in check by powers that tower above him. Additionally, depending on their location, and especially if they reside in Midwestern or Southern states, they have taken to adopting the aesthetics and characteristics of the Working Class, buying boats and trucks and guns, and dressing themselves in “down home values.”

On January 6th, a large portion of the participants were from the Working Class, but there were also numerous people who rented private plans to jaunt off to Washington, D.C. to “stop the steal.” It is the belief of many of these people that Trump will “drain the swamp” in Washington, restore their rightful place in the power heirarchy, and finally level the playing field so that they are no longer hindered by the poor, people of color, LGBTQ+ Americans, the poor, and the Wealth Class, who they now find themselves largely aligned with despite their obvious frictions.

The Wealth Class

For the purposes of this article, we’ll be diving into two distinct portions of the Wealth Class, including the Wealth Class in general and the Oligarchical Class, which is currently asserting unprecedented power and shifting how our world works. While the Oligarchical Class is certainly part of the Wealth Class, their particular circumstances include much more personal autonomy and have the benefit of exceptional wealth that dwarfs even the ultra-wealthy.

There are several designators of the Wealth Class, but domination of national and international economics is key. While some are CEOs of individual corporations, the vast majority sit atop sprawling operations that wind their way throughout several industries after decades of mergers and acquisitions. An example most would recognize are the Koch Brothers, whose Koch Industries is a leader in a multitude of endeavors, including building materials, energy, resources, land acquisition, and finance. Others are rooted in the financial world and are primarily concerned with acquiring assets and exchanges that are incentivized to profit off destruction schemes that have been legalized rather than building something long and lasting and beneficial to communities and employees.

Members of the Wealth Class have been mobilized since 1971, when future Supreme Court Justice Llewis Powell authored his “Attack on American Free Enterprise System” memo that served as a call to arms. This memo came on the heels of the turbulent 1960’s in which Civil Rights and the social revolutions carried out by antiwar radicals, feminists, and LGBTQ Americans mobilized to pressure necessary reform. Following that decade, the Wealth Class recognized it was necessary to pool their resources and fund an aggressive campaign to change American politics and culture, leading to the mass funding of think-tanks and institutes that undermined the New Deal, led to deregulation, and eventually the re-configuring of our political, economic, and judicial systems. What happened was a large-scale attack on government and the Neoliberal consensus we now suffer under. We live in the world they created.

That attack has only gained steam. In almost every corner of America we see the impact of what they have done. Public education has been dismantled. The government’s ability to regulate businesses has been erased. Since the 1980’s tens of trillions of dollars have been redistributed from the Working and Middle Classes to a disturbingly small number of people. Our politics have been totally corrupted, leaving us with feckless and powerless leaders and a population that is so thoroughly confused as to what’s happening that they’ve become easy targets for the conspiracy theories these people and their think-tanks and institutes whip up. This is why gun control doesn’t happen. Why we don’t address climate change. Why prices skyrocket and wages stagnate and fail to keep up.

These individuals have also effectively destroyed labor unions, rigged the legal system, and have come to dominate education to the point where most are completely unaware of what has transpired or what could be done. They are keenly aware of their class and engage in tireless class solidarity, only competing with one another for industry dominance and then returning to their work of suppressing and exploiting the Working and Middle Classes in tandem. They are not concerned about national wellbeing and operate on a transnational level, taking advantage of cheap labor and pilfered resources around the world, then selling them on the cheap to the same Americans they’ve laid off and deprived of power and autonomy. Those beneath them are subject to the harsh effects of law enforcement and the legal system, but they remain largely above any sort of consequence.

The Oligarchical Class

The Oligarchical Class has emerged from the womb created by the Wealth Class, emerging into this new environment to enjoy hyper-profit facilitated by a government and economy designed to pump incredible investment and support to their needs. Largely these are Tech giants who participated in the tech industrialization, which helped facilitate our new internet/algorithmic based economy. In the 19th and 20th centuries it was robber baron industrialists who laid the railroads and built the skyscrapers and supplied the oil who gained this immense wealth and effectively took over the country, now it’s the people who programmed our websites and designed the algorithms that follow you around the web and force feed you products you don’t need.

Like the robber barons before them, the Oligarchical Class sees itself as the rightful rulers of the country and beyond democratic approach. They are exceedingly antidemocratic and see populist challenges to their pursuits as offensive and morally wrong. As they are mostly members of the Tech world, they also carry the “California Ideology” and see themselves as masters of the universe who will literally save the human race, and even take us to the stars, if governments and their people just get out of the way. To this end, they have worked hand-in-hand with dictators and authoritarians around the world, and now they have more or less bought Trump a second presidency in order to further rig the government, the economy, and culture.

We have already seen what they’re capable of. These oligarchs have helped to crush dissent in other countries, twist their algorithms to censor speech and alter reality, and have taken advantage of grotesque slave labor as long as it means accelerated production and heightened profits. The idea that they wouldn’t do the same here is foolhardy and naive, and there is all the reason to believe that the surveillance of their platforms that has facilitated capitalism will also be utilized for surveillance of opposition. They’re gobbling up communication hubs like Twitter and The Washington Post, further skewing reality to their favor.

What also makes them different is how the Oligarchical Class has painstakingly intertwined themselves with government and the economy. Our businesses and everyday lives are wired with their products and the privatization carried out during the Neoliberal Era opened the door for private companies to carry out the functions of the American Empire, including selling military machinery and technology, supplying surveillance technology, sorting and utilizing data, and even operating the space program. They have grown so necessary to the operation of the government that when Elon Musk hindered ally Ukraine from attacking Russia by shutting down his Starlink systems, and when he began spreading virulent, antisemitic conspiracy theories, the government refused to so much as criticize him. In the 2024 Election, even as he bought MAGA and directed the Republican Party’s candidate to do his bidding, including installing him as the un-elected overseer of the government’s budget, the Democratic Party couldn’t even be bothered to campaign against the notion.

Following Trump’s victory, we’ve seen how the Oligarchical Class has responded. The Tech leaders have donated millions to him while currying his favor, all while lobbying for the National Labor Relations Board to be dismantled in order to undercut any future challenges. They are on the precipice of controlling government and turning the United States into a supplemental organ for their businesses and personal quests.

They despise democracy. They are aligned with dictators, regularly seek their counsel and support, and will help facilitate the realization of an international authoritarian order operating under the supervision of members of their class. They don’t care about regular people, see them as disposable, and have even created a “philosophy” of Effective Altruism that gifts them the privilege of not worrying about modern humans because their actions will help future people, which are larger in number. In their actions in assembling their monopolies, we have seen a willingness to break laws, injure people, crumble institutions, and do whatever they believe is necessary.

We need only examine what happened with the Industrialists and Robber Barons of the 20th century to understand where all of this is heading. Those men funded and helped construct the Fascist and Nazi movements, considered attacking democracy wherever they could find it, and only grew more radicalized and dangerous as they accrued more power and more resources. This batch is on the same path.

Conclusion

Again, there are mentions in all of this of the Democratic and Republican Parties, but the larger story of what has happened go ways beyond the traditional Red and Blue narratives your fed daily. The parties represent some of these interests, but are largely held and directed by them. In this rundown, you’ll notice the trends, namely that most of these groups are moving away from Democratic support and either dropping out of politics altogether or aligning with the MAGA Movement for their own financial benefit and out of a desire for reassertion of “control,” or at least a semblance of it.

The conventional narratives you’re given on the news and even in political campaigns stays away from these truths, relying instead on tired rhetoric that stays as far away from class as humanly possible and hardly ever treads on any of the class realities outlined. Instead, it relies on a small group of controversies and touchpoints that are either conveyed by the news media that is owned by the Wealth and Oligarchical Classes or designed wholesale by their think-tanks and institutes. As a result, the subject of actual reform and change hardly ever finds any room for discussion, let alone purchase.

It is a tall task to change this paradigm. I cannot lie and tell you that the vast, vast amount of resources and power doesn’t lie with the Wealth and Oligarchical Classes. It does. But what history shows us is that when members of the Working and Middles Classes become aware of their conditions and the realities of the political environment, the paradigm can change. As things are presently constructed, however, that simply will not happen. The Wealth and Oligarchical Classes have conquered our economy and government to the point where standard opposition is rare and victories are even rarer. But there is still room for that mobilization and still room for that change.

Hopefully this working understanding of our class structures help, but if you find yourself discussing these issues with others, stay as far away from the Red and Blue dynamic as possible. As explained, the talking points and shared controversies and touchstone issues are largely distractions from talking about intentional inequality and class exploitation. You’ll find, even when talking to some of the most diehard MAGA supporters, that underneath it all they can feel the truth of all of this. That’s why MAGA, as a front for the Wealth Class and now the Oligarchical Class, relies on class signifiers and narratives. It works. And it touches on a part of the American experience and the frustration that even the Democratic Party now fails to address considering its current construction. This is a secret code, so to speak, for actually bridging political divides and recognizing class realities.

Once more, I am collecting a series of articles and lectures on this situation and trying to explain how to organize coalitions within your communities and in your workplaces that can begin the hard and necessary work should we change this situation. It is going to be difficult, but we have no other choice.

Resources

• Beginning to Resist: Thoughts on how we, as individuals, should spend the months leading up to the second Trump presidency and preparing for the cruel austerity his wealth class donors are going to unleash.

• The Oligarchical Order: A primer on how to give up conventional and failed political understandings in favor of seeing how capitalism directs the course of events and where it is leading and what to expect.

• Authoritarianism and the Crisis of Meaning: Here we get into how consumerism represents an addictive drug that has hollowed out our sense of purpose, leaving us to take this as a moment of self-reflection, recognize that we have effectively been made to hate and doubt ourselves, thereby keeping us from realizing we deserve better.

• Americans Should Learn From South Koreans: The attempted coup in South Korea serves as an incredible example for how popular mobilization among the population can change the political paradigm and undermine authoritarian power grabs. We should pay attention and take heed.

• The Snake, The Rat, and Neoliberal Authoritarianism: Using Survivor and reality-TV culture, we discuss how Neoliberalism turned us against one another, rewarded manipulation and other sociopathic behaviors, and simultaneously divorced us from the skills we need to establish trust, intimacy, and solidarity, all things that organizing and creating a movement requires.