Charles Murray: US Political Aristocracy Rules America from SuperZip Elitist Bubbles

The European aristocracy at one time ruled almost absolutely from within a narrowly defined world of elitism and privilege.  Being wealthy, they had the best of everything.  They kept to themselves and intermarried with other royal families.

     In his book Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 (2012), American sociologist Charles Murray, relying largely on national statistics, describes “how the cultural divide between the new upper class and the rest of America is being reinforced by residential segregation that enables large portions of the upper class to live their lives isolated from everyone else.”

      Though few in numbers, these wealthy are almost hermetically sealed off from the rest of the population.  They live in gated-type communities and send their smart  kids to Ivy League colleges to marry their own kind and secure positions of power and influence.

     “The culture of the new upper class carries with it an unmistakable whiff of a ‘we’re better than the rabble’ mentality,” Murray says about them.  They are “overeducated elitist snobs,” who just “Quietly believe that they and their peers are superior to the rest of the population, intellectually and in their nuanced moral sensibility.”

       The highest concentration lives in the Big Four SuperZips or zip code clusters around New York, Washington, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.  ADA voting records in the pie chart reveal the liberal orientation:

Murray says that these four SuperZips “are the home of almost all the narrow elite whose decisions directly affect the economy, politics, and culture of the nation.”  In fact, “The representatives they elect reflect a component of the new upper class that is just as liberal as its reputation.”

      In short, this is the world of Establishment political elite from both Republican and Democratic parties who rule America with an almost unseen hand.