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“America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.' It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: 'if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?' There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.

Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.”

― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

Perhaps it is only Republican shame and Democratic hubris which separate our political parties. Our school system from the beginning inculcates embarrassment and self-doubt in the "dumber" students, who may or may not actually be dumb, but in any case start out with the disadvantage of shame repeatedly imprinted on their fragile egos as small children: they are not as good as the better students.

Academic achievement is a strong predictor of financial success, but conversely, the financial success of your parents means that you will very likely enjoy academic success. Grades get you money, but money buys grades, if only through better teachers, better facilities, and parents who know the system. The Ivy League, the high church of academic and financial success, wants desperately to believe it is a meritocracy when it most obviously is not. Being a "legacy" candidate (your family attended the school) dramatically increases your chance of admissions. And so Ivy League schools desperately fall over themselves to admit a certain number of highly visible poor blacks to "prove" that they are not closed elitist institutions which serve mostly to maintain the power of those that already have power. But they are, they know it, and it gnaws at them. The gnawing worry that they do not deserve their position compels them to despise those that they beat in the rigged contest of life in America - mainly the white working classes, who have little value as tokens of equality because as members of the majority, they blend in and are just not as visible when boosted into the ranks of the elite. They fear that the white working classes will one day call an end to the charade, and so they label those classes with the worst things they can think of: racist, Nazi, but most of all stupid. These proclamations of hatred for the white working class are also known as "virtue signaling". Their calls for gun control, at a primal level, are simply a reflection of their fear that the majority will see how badly they've been scammed and physically threaten to revolt. Proprium humani ingenii est odisse quem laeseris. ("It is human nature to hate those whom we have injured.")

The elitists have nothing to worry about in America though, since the national motto is "If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?" Meaning that the poor will continue to blame themselves, and not the elite.

So we have insecurity on both sides, where those who are losing from globalization secretly blame themselves for the closing of the factory where they worked, thinking that it was just because they are their co-workers were not as good as the Chinese, when the primary cause was actually that the Ivy League-educated executives of the company that owned the factory wanted to get big bonuses for reducing the cost of labor by moving production to a place with more desperate workers and no pollution laws.

All political dialogue is only a stream of rationalizations intended to make one's self feel better about his insecurities ("Did I really deserve to go to that university through my own merit?" vs "Why don't I ever seem to do well in school? Am I stupid?"). This stream of rationalizations is not capable of convincing anyone of anything, because at some primal level we all know that it's about belonging to a group that tells you you are a valued member and not a piece of shit.

It is ironic that the Democratic Party, historically the party of the workers, has become a tool of the elite to maintain their own righteous but wobbly sense of self-worth, while the Republican Party, historically the party of the elite, now represents the working poor.