The Stories We Believe

Some ruminations on that Signal chat.

The news outlets seem to be focused particularly on the incompetence indicated by the leaked Signal chat involving Trump's top advisors having an emoji-filled discussion about how and when they were going to bomb Yemen.  The story is that having such a top-secret chat on a messaging app and accidentally inviting the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic magazine to join all indicates scary levels of incompetence among the leadership of the world's preeminent military power.  And this is obviously true. 

But there are other stories that this incident speaks to, that aren't being as widely analyzed in the news.  Which is the fact that these top advisors seem to have fully immersed themselves in a form of self-deception, and it is not an act.  They are, apparently, not playing the part of being deluded nationalists, they are actually fully delusional.  They didn't just drink the Kool-Aid, they seem to have been raised on it, and now they're swimming in it.

Hearing about how they discuss the geopolitics they're apparently responding to, they seem to actually believe that NATO is a defensive organization, that the US is somehow protecting Europe, that the US has been taken advantage of by Europe, and that the US has regularly been engaged in a form of self-sacrifice through the practice of being the world's policeman, which seems to involve the thankless task of protecting shipping lanes for the benefit of Europeans.

It's just one example of the type of conversation that presumably must take place often, that the public isn't privy to.  But just being privy to this one conversation seems to very much bolster the observation many of us made a long time ago, that this new crop of far right leaders in the US seems different from many of those from previous generations, in that they appear not to be using propaganda as a tool to get the public to support their duplicitous policies, but they believe the propaganda themselves.

We in the US live in a society governed by money, which is obvious to any reasonable observer of how things work in the US.  But at the same time, we can all hear politicians from both parties regularly rejecting such basic observations out of hand, claiming they govern on behalf of the public, rather than the corporate elite, even though they accept massive amounts of corporate donations and then proceed to do things like cut taxes on the rich and eliminate regulations and oversight bodies that get in the way of corporate profits.

We've never had much democracy in the alleged fatherland of modern democracy.  It's always been rule by the rich.  We've never had much free speech in the home of the First Amendment.  It's always looked good on paper, but not been effectively enforced in practice, when the speech involved is critical of the establishment.

The propaganda has always been patently false.  But increasingly, it seems, it is internalized and believed as factual by the heirs to the creators of the propaganda machine.  This Signal chat is evidence of a degree of self-deception, of a sort of blowback of the propaganda machine, that seems somehow even more alarming than if these advisors were lying and knew they were lying.  If they believe their own propaganda, what else will they believe next?

The propaganda that these advisors are all steeped in is largely rooted in the propaganda of the so-called Cold War.  Much of it is also rooted in pre-Cold War propaganda, but the bulk of it comes out of what we now know of as the Cold War era, so it seems like a useful exercise to review the basic precepts of the American propaganda version of Cold War reality, and contrast it with the actual motivations for US policies, for which the Cold War was mostly a wild story invented to justify policies that were otherwise extremely difficult to justify.

According to the propaganda version of reality, the US has long been beneficently looking after the welfare and security of its allies in places like Europe, spending lots of money to fulfill the role of being the world's policeman, for the benefit of the world.  The reality has been much more about serving US imperial and corporate interests, and compelling Europe to participate in this project.  The new rulers say they're done being helpful, and now just want to serve US national interests, by which they mean the interests of the US corporate elite.  What they truly seem to be confused about is how the institutions they're actively dismantling used to serve those interests in a somewhat less direct way, too.

Let's go over some of the major developments over the past century or so that might help inform our understanding of what might be going on here in the minds of Trump's advisors, in terms of the reality vs. the propaganda version of it.

Starting with World War 1.  The propaganda version is the US got involved in order to save European countries from other European countries, since eventually the Wilson administration decided they liked one side of the war better than the other.

In reality, the US got involved with the war -- quite late -- in order to be in a better position to be one of the Great Powers dividing up the spoils of war afterwards.

The labor movement in the US (and many other countries) was very big and very militant at the time of World War 1.  Repression against union members seeking to speak freely on the sidewalks, let alone organize a strike, was intense, because the labor movement was a threat to the profits of the owners of industry, which the government represented.

The propaganda version of reality promoted heavily at the time was the problems in society weren't about workers being unemployed, hungry, working in dangerous conditions, not paid a living wage, etc., but about too much immigration, immigrants being mostly communists and anarchists, or what at the time they identified as "German agents," or by later in 1917, "Bolsheviks," or supporters of the Russian Revolution who wanted to create chaos and smash our great democracy, too.

With World War 2, Americans were willing to sacrifice themselves in tremendous numbers because they were told they were in a war against fascism, defending free peoples from this evil, out of concern for the welfare of humanity -- and European humanity in particular.

In reality, US victory in World War 2 set the stage for a vast expansion of the network of US colonies and neocolonies around the world, which were generally organized for the purposes of wealth and resource extraction that would benefit the rich and immiserate most others.

With the post-war formation of NATO and beginning of what they called the Cold War, the American propagandists created an atmosphere of fear of their former ally in the fight against Germany, the Soviet Union, pushing the same old 1917-era line about Soviet intentions to attack western Europe, the US, and the rest of the world.  NATO, it was claimed, would be a defensive organization, mainly about defending Europe from the Soviet Union.

In reality, NATO was created to encircle and "contain" (to use their popular euphemism) the Soviet Union.  Rather than being a defensive organization, it has proven itself to be a way to exert control through very offensive initiatives, from Yugoslavia to Afghanistan to Libya.  It has also demonstrated itself to be very oriented towards expansion, inviting many former Soviet states to join.

With the rise around the world of Soviet and Cuban soft power in the form of medical missions all over the world, food aid, advisors helping countries develop in various ways, etc., the US formed agencies to engage in the same sorts of efforts, to counter Soviet and Cuban influence, such as USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy.

Aside from providing things like food and medicine to some people who benefit from that, at least on the face of it, what has really driven policy for groups like USAID and NED has been the effort to undermine the governments they don't like, and promote largely false narratives about how things are in the west.  These groups provide so much funding for things like independent journalism in eastern European countries, for example, that they effectively give the impression that in the US, there's lots of state funding for independent journalism, which of course there is not.

These groups were not set up in order to feed the hungry and clothe the naked out of the goodness of the hearts of the American political elite that set them up.  They were set up in order to exercise American soft power, for the purposes of promoting US interests, by spreading disinformation, in various forms, about how things really were.

Copious evidence suggests that US support for Israel has never been about concern within the US leadership about the plight of Jewish people.  The desire for some Jewish people to pursue the Zionist project of stealing the land from the Palestinian people for Jews to occupy was convenient for US imperialists, it was thought, and thus, like other settler-colonial projects, it was supported as a venture that would at least potentially be very profitable in many ways, at least for the ruling few.

Similarly, US support for Ukraine has never been about supporting the Ukrainian people, but about undermining Russia.  It would be a grave error to assume that there's any motivation to help Jews or to help Ukrainians involved with US support for Israel or Ukraine.  This is the propaganda.  The reality is about serving US interests, whether that's about keeping the Suez Canal open for American ships, or keeping Russia out of the mainstream of global commerce in order to make massive profits on the scarce supply of commodities induced by the sanctions.

Throughout the Cold War period, every war the US got involved with was a war against communism, to contain the expansionist communist menace, and to promote democracy, freedom, and human rights.  Post-Soviet Union, every war the US has gotten involved with has been a war against the irrational, predatory ideology of "terrorism," and in support of democracy, freedom, and human rights.

In reality, the millions of civilians killed in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and elsewhere have all been killed by an invader that treated the entire populations of these countries as their enemy -- not at all the sort of war-fighting methods that had a chance of winning the hearts and minds of the populations being bombed -- because the point was not to help these countries develop, but to suppress opposition to US hegemony, and make the world safer for unquestioned US corporate domination.  In none of these cases was the US motivated by actually believing they were fighting "communism" or "terrorism" -- the leadership knew this was propaganda meant for mass consumption, to justify unjustifiable cruelty and mass murder, in the minds of the domestic population.  There was nothing beneficent about these imperial adventures.  They were all intended to bolster US control over a global order that was set up to benefit the US and other, lesser members of the imperialist club.

In the minds of Trump's advisors, however, it seems clear that they believe all of these wars really may have been about protecting the world from communism and terrorism, and now they resent all of this work the US has allegedly done to protect the world from these evils, and now Europe needs to step up and involve themselves more fully in this epic struggle.  It's all just a fantasy based on a fantasy, but for them, it happened -- it seems like they saw it on the History Channel, so it must be true.

It is the nature of propaganda to be convincing.  Countries around the world that consolidated their national identities and institutions by the middle of the 19th century and developed distinct national narratives and national media have mostly been very successful in instilling in their populations a sense of national identity and purpose that even might be worth fighting and dying for.  For most of this period, though, there has generally been the sense -- partially real, partially not, probably -- that the leadership is aware that the propaganda is fake, and is meant for public consumption, in order to pacify and control the public.

That reality is bad enough.  But now we seem to be in a new one, one where reality itself has been entirely thrown out the window, in favor of a fantasy based on Cold War propaganda that has been fully absorbed as truth by a stunningly unqualified collection of incompetent advisors, who are actively making policy based on their completely confused understanding of where we are and how we got here.

Viva Mexico! Viva los San Patricios!

A travelogue about five wonderful days in Mexico.

Twenty-five years ago, after hearing a talk by historian Howard Zinn, I wrote a song based on one of the anecdotes he shared with the audience that evening, about the Irish soldiers drafted into the US Army who deserted from the army's ranks and joined the Mexican Army, during the course of the US invasion of Mexico that began in its "full-scale" form in 1846.

This is an exercise I've engaged in now several hundred times since then -- hearing about a story from history, particularly one that speaks to the present moment in some way, and writing a song about it.  Of all of those songs about historical events, one of them would go viral, which would be this one I wrote around the year 2000.  Much like Howard Zinn's seminal book, A People's History of the United States, over the years this song would grow in popularity through the process of word of mouth or its modern equivalent, in a continual upward arc.

Soon after writing the song I had my first tour of Ireland, which involved an interview with Sinn Fein's newspaper, An Phoblacht, which focused on the song, and the history of the St. Patrick Battalion, the San Patricios.  There would be many more tours of Ireland after that one.

Over the years I'd hear from people in Mexico who would tell me about the commemorative events, the festivals, and the generally deep appreciation people in Mexico have for the Irish who fought for Mexico, and the deep appreciation for the concept of solidarity, and of music, as well.  Every day, for many years, I'm notified in my email inbox about another wonderfully gushing comment on my YouTube channel, on one of the various live videos of me singing "St. Patrick Battalion," talking about the everlasting brotherhood of the Mexicans and the Irish.

I long thought that someday, because of this song, I might get invited to play at a festival in Mexico.  It was evident from the stats on YouTube that a lot of the hundreds of thousands of views on some of the videos were from Mexico.  Last weekend, it happened!  My singing partner, Kamala Emanuel, and I spent five glorious days in Mexico City, which centered around the St. Patrick's Weekend events in the Mexico City neighborhood of Churubusco.

The initiative to bring me to Mexico came from the people who run the Destileria San Patricio.  As part of promoting their brand, this distillery became the first corporation that would ever use music from one of my songs for a social media promotion campaign -- or for any other advertisement, for that matter.  To promote the brand and, having met the distillery founders, probably more out of a deep appreciation for history and such displays of heroic solidarity as those represented by the history of the San Patricios, they also organize festivals -- where, of course, they also take care of drink sales.

From the moment Kamala and I arrived at the airport, we were treated like royalty, starting with the gorgeous bouquet of flowers Luis handed to Kamala when we all met.  

Immediately, everywhere we went in Mexico City from then until we left, I was struck by the constant, and very welcome, reality that whenever you entered any space -- any business, any cafe, wherever -- people talked to each other, whether they had ever met before or not.  If you look at the available data, it suggests that while there is a loneliness epidemic in so many countries, this is much less the case in Mexico.  This is not at all surprising.  I'm reminded of a friend from Iran who used to say that "in my home town by the Caspian Sea we didn't need therapists, because we had neighbors."

On Saturday, March 15th Luis picked us up at our hotel and took us to Churubusco.

Churubusco is a particularly notable place, in the history of the San Patricios, and in the history of the US invasion of Mexico and the year 1847.  Around the convent in this neighborhood was where the San Patricios made their last stand, fighting the US Army in their fifth engagement, by the end of which most of the battalion had been killed in battle, fighting for a free Mexico.

I knew this history was well-known and well-loved by many Mexicans, but we were both still surprised as well as wildly impressed by the extent of the popularity of St Patrick's Day in Mexico.  Not just St Patrick's Day, but really St Patrick's Month.  And of course not just the holiday, but the man -- the saint, St Patrick, and just as importantly, the battalion named after him.

But far beyond the holiday, the saint, or the battalion, the love of Irish music and dance is abundantly evident wherever we went in Mexico City.  By all accounts this phenomenon is not limited to that weekend or the day itself, but there are events in all sorts of different parts of Mexico for several weeks leading up to St Patrick's Day.

In Churubusco for both of the two days we were at the St Patrick's Weekend festival, there was another festival happening only 100 meters away, on another side of the big old convent and church that are the center of the neighborhood.

The Irish dancing on display was really great.  So many of the musicians were fully capable of setting aside their instrument and dancing for a while.  Some of the folks at the festival had Irish ancestry, including one academic who was writing a book about the battalion, and in the process of her research had discovered her relative.

At least two of the bands that played have a Spanish-language rendition of my song, "St Patrick Battalion," in their repertoire.  Many other solo artists and bands in Mexico have recorded the song, and I keep learning about more of them -- including lots of musicians who weren't born yet when I first recorded the song.

It's not surprising that this seems to be a bit of a moment for this song, and for the memory of the battalion.  Perhaps the interest follows the same upward curve that my following on the various platforms has, since the 2024 election that led to Trump's second presidency.  It's the context, the attacks, the threats, the mass deportations and the false accusations from the biggest military power in the world, which of course is that country just to the north of Mexico, that inspires the renewed interest in solidarity, heroic sacrifice, anti-imperialist resistance, and music about these things.

Beyond the appreciation for history, solidarity, and cool saints, there is clearly a widespread appreciation for music, and the power of music to communicate the relevance of a story and evoke the emotions around it, and this was made clear to me by so many people over the course of the weekend and beyond, one after another, in so many ways.

I say this at the risk of appearing to be a bit of a narcissist.  It is humbling and wonderfully therapeutic to have written a song that is so appreciated, to be sure.  But what I think is instructive about the reaction to the song is not about the song itself, but about the importance of music to so many Mexican people, who understand how powerful a force it can be.

While there was no over-the-top Beatles kind of stuff going on or anything, if I was walking around the area I rarely went more than a couple of minutes before posing for another group photo with fans of the song.

It was interesting to note the broad array of politics represented at that festival.  Judging from the conversations Kamala and I had with folks, both the Mexican right and the Mexican left along with the Mexican center were all well-represented in the crowd.  The further left people tended to be a bit more circumspect about talking about politics, until it was clear we were on the same page.  In fact, that kind of reserve about expressing strong political views was something I encountered a lot.  People generally tended to err on the side of being diplomatic.  I tried to do the same, though both of us probably blew our leftwing covers with some of the songs in our set that addressed more contemporary subjects.

But whether people love the new Mexican president or despise her, whether they're stalwart supporters of the PRI or Morena, whiskey-drinkers or teetotalers, business owners or former guerrilla fighters -- and we met all of them there -- everyone agrees that St Patrick, Irish music and dance, and the San Patricios are all wonderful things, and everyone appreciates that gringo there who wrote the song about them.

The entire time we were in Mexico City I found myself reminded of my tour of the Occupied West Bank, Palestine in 2005.  The appreciation people had there that there was some guy writing songs in English about what they were going through was absolutely tremendous.  Everywhere I went, people were feeding me delicious multi-course meals.  Everywhere I went, at every gig, I was being given an award.  The treatment in Mexico was just like that, and I have both the belly and the award to prove it.

On our last day in Mexico, Luis took us on a boat ride in a lake full of artistically and very colorfully-decorated, covered boats.  It was St Patrick's Day itself, and the day after the festival.  Because it was a holiday, the lake was crammed with boats, and they were constantly ramming into each other, reminiscent of bumper cars at an amusement park.

The guys with very long, thick wooden poles who were maneuvering/steering the boats around each other and through the lake were often almost falling off of their perches and into the water, it seemed, but it never quite happened.  On many of the boats, hired mariachi bands and other types of musicians were entertaining people.  On our boat, we brought the musicians with us.

Somehow or other, the last time I had been in Mexico was in the fall of 2006 -- a long time ago.  I'm almost certain my next visit will be soon.  Perhaps as a refugee, the way things are going in Trump-land.  If I do end up escaping real or potential persecution in the US and finding relative safety in Mexico, I won't be the first.

The Disconnected 20% That Runs It All

Some thoughts on that majority element of top-quintile US society that persistently refers to itself as "the middle class."

My friend Peter Phillips has a new book out called Titans of Capital wherein he provides details for who it is, exactly, that owns most of the world's wealth, investments, property, etc.  He also provides details for who manages that wealth.  What got me thinking the most was the information on this relative handful of a couple hundred people who manage most of the world's investments, many of whom are not even millionaires themselves, though all of them are very well-paid, by any reasonable standard. 

By any way you can measure these things, the class divide is by far the most impactful one on society.  There is no demographic that has more money, power, or influence than the rich.  Compared to them, every other demographic, however you slice it, is poor.  The top quintile is disproportionately both male and white, and the highest reaches of the wealth spectrum much more so, but most white males are not part of it.

I mention this obvious truth here now because it is completely tied up with the false consciousness imbued in the minds of so many Americans, especially within the top quintile.  If, as NPR would have us believe, most white Americans are living comfortable "middle class" lives, why worry about them?  A good humanist should be concerned about other people -- the ones who are suffering, who almost always seem to be, by American liberal top-quintile definitions, LGBTQ and BIPOC.

That is to say, the system is working fine for white people, who make up most of the middle class, which is normative.  The poor white people are not normative, they're an example of an individual failure, or an indication of a crack within a system, which is otherwise working for them.  The concerns for society at large, if a person within the top quintile has any, are therefore focused on those who are truly deserving of concern, who are by definition not white.  This is the methodology of divide and conquer in the USA that has been deeply inculcated in the minds of Americans of all classes.

There is much to be said of the ultrarich, the handful of out-of-control billionaires who own half the world's wealth, and all the destruction and misery they're causing.

And I know many things will be changing dramatically in the world in the coming years that may especially impact the jobs of anyone whose job can be done from behind a screen, and the ways that will all play out with the rise of AI are still unclear, though it doesn't look good for white-collar workers of any kind.

But as of today the class setup still exists with its familiar curve, one that skyrockets upwards once it reaches the top quintile of the population, and then skyrockets far faster within the upward reaches of the top 1%.  It's that top quintile I'd like to ruminate on here.

The top quintile phenomenon is striking if you have a penchant for history, and the history of colonialism in particular.  If you look into it, you'll find in this history a common strategy on the part of the colonizing power to govern the colonized society in such a way that the top 15% or so of the population is privileged economically, socially, and politically.  This is the 15% of the society from whose ranks come those who will run the colonial show on behalf of the colonizing power.  The colonizers ran things according to this principle from India to Iraq.

Knowing about this history, it's striking to see that graph of how wealth gets more and more concentrated, particularly within that top quintile, in the US today, as with countries like Mexico and Brazil, where the same kind of phenomenon can be observed.

Who is in that top quintile in these societies?  What do they do?  How does being in the top quintile affect their outlook personally and professionally?  How does this impact the rest of us?

I don't think you have to look much past the history of colonialism to answer these questions, because they're the same as they always were.  As in the colonial days, the top quintile runs everything.

Within this quintile you will find the politicians, most of the experts, the scientists, the lawyers, judges, those who run the universities, the banks, the real estate management companies, the corporate media outlets, the military generals, the chiefs of police, the owners of the apartment buildings, the owners of the trailer parks, most of the "mom and pop" landlords, and so many others.

Having grown up among this top quintile set in the US, I have spent my adult life both inside and outside of top quintile reality. 

Something that regularly hits me is how effective the propaganda we all grew up with in America about this "middle class" stuff has been.  Growing up in Wilton, Connecticut, everyone claimed to be part of the middle class.  A generation later as a parent with a child who, largely due to her French citizenship, like me, went to school with the children of the elite -- I went to school with the mayor's son, my daughter went to school with the mayor's daughter -- I find nothing has changed.  Those who live in spacious suburban homes with household incomes well into the six digits overwhelmingly still call themselves "middle class."

They're not, of course.  They're in the top quintile.  Top Quintilians?  Maybe there's a better term.  But certainly not "middle" in terms of either wealth or income.

Where I grew up, the vast majority of kids graduated from high school and then went to college.  I still find it shocking to look up the statistics and see that less than a third of Americans over the age of 25 have a college degree.  I don't either, but growing up in Wilton, I thought that made me extremely unusual, and something of an abject failure at life.  But apparently I'm perfectly normal.

Where I grew up, it would be normal to hear kids say something like, "almost everybody goes to college."  In Wilton, this appeared to be true.  They may perhaps on occasion watch the news or read a book, but what mainly succeeded in shaping their worldview was growing up in Wilton, it always seemed to me.

And the people who grew up in places like Wilton are the ones who go on to run the country, as well as the ones who go on to become the pundits on TV telling us how well or how badly they think it's being run.

I have friends and relations with members of the top quintile in other countries, like in Mexico, and India, and Lebanon, where in that segment of the population you'll commonly hear people say things like "everybody has a nanny."

I feel compelled to ask people if the nannies also have nannies.  And among the kids I grew up with in Wilton, I want to ask why are the bus drivers always people who speak Spanish and don't live in our town?  Where do they come from?  Did they go to college?  Do they also have families, and kids?  Where do their kids go to school?  Not in Wilton.  Will they be going to college, too?

When you live among the top quintile, most of the people you know are also top-quintile people.  The bus drivers and the nannies are the minority, and we're providing them with much-needed jobs, even if they can't afford to live in our town or send their kids to our schools.

If "middle class" were just a euphemism and everybody knew that that was the case, and that it had nothing to do with the middle of anything, then maybe it wouldn't bug me so much.  But I know these people, and I know that in their minds, their lives are average -- because for them, with almost everyone they know being fellow top-quintile people, their lives are average, and they feel very much in the middle.  The middle of somewhere, anyway.

The people living comfortable lives in the top quintile, sadly, are not the middle, however.  The bus drivers and the nannies are actually the vast majority of society.

Most of the bottom 80% don't live in, work in, or visit the affluent, polished suburbs the top quintile mostly live in, so they're not particularly visible as the vast majority, but people who live lives more along the lines of those nannies and bus drivers are, in fact, the vast majority.

Of course that means if you're in the top quintile and you're talking to your neighbors, your friends, other parents at the local school, etc., you're going to be talking to people where, for example, the vast majority are homeowners, and very few are renters.  Most of the homeowners won't themselves be landlords, but a significant minority of them will be.  In fact, the vast majority of "mom and pop" landlords in the country are in this top quintile.

If you're a politician living in a neighborhood like that, which is where they mostly live, even if you're truly interested in the welfare of your fellow people and thus you're asking your friends and neighbors about their concerns, those top quintile homeowners and "mom and pop" landlords, those 6-figure-earning neighbors are unlikely to be listing the urgency of rent control as a top issue.  They're unlikely to be too concerned with more state or federal funding for the schools, which in their town are doing just fine -- and if they're not, then the expense of private school is already enough to be spending money on, without a rise in taxes to pay for public schools many of your neighbors are not using.

As I travel I meet people from, for example, Chile, who will earnestly and honestly talk about the economic miracle that took place in that country under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.  These are people I meet randomly, in an airport or someplace, not people who know me.  

This used to shock me, knowing what I already knew about how Pinochet's rule greatly benefited the top 10% of Chilean society, while impoverishing most of the rest of it.

But if you're part of that top 10%, hell, that's a lot of people, your fellow top 10%ers.  Even in Chile, that's a lot of people -- two million or so, at its current population.  Whether you're in Santiago or Mexico City or Portland, Oregon, it is exceedingly easy never to go to the neighborhoods where the 80% live, or have much of anything to do with the people who live in them, unless it's because the highway goes through that neighborhood, or you're stuck at a red light somewhere, or if you go out to eat and you have a brief interaction with your server, or because you have a nanny.

Thinking of the top quintile issue in relation to the current gutting of the federal bureaucracy, a couple points come to mind that seem relevant, in terms of different reactions to the whole situation from different elements of society.

While there are all kinds of federal workers being fired in the ugliest of ways, those project managers, scientists, and IRS revenue officers are in the top quintile.  Most of the rest of the federal workers are, too, if they're in a two-income household.

If you live in a peaceful suburban neighborhood or an upscale urban enclave, these mass layoffs are happening to your neighbors.  If you live in a Class C apartment complex next to a busy road, likely not.

If you live in a top quintile suburb, not only are some of your neighbors losing their jobs, and having their lives and the lives of their families upended, but most people in the neighborhood previously had relatively positive experiences with government.  For them, the schools are pretty good.  In their town or neighborhood, the trash gets picked up reliably, the water supply is clean, the facilities in the public parks are well-maintained, and the roads are repaved regularly.  For them, if they call the police, the police come to help, with an assumption that the person in the suburban house calling for help is the one who needs help, not whoever else might be involved with the situation.

So for them, the idea of tearing apart the federal bureaucracy seems even crazier than it does to most people.

While there may be many people concerned about what's going to happen to popular institutions like Social Security and Medicaid, judging from what's going down on the streets, there is not a massive groundswell of people from the bottom 80% who are horrified by what DOGE is doing (or horrified by the idea of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, for that matter).  I'd surmise that this lack of widespread opposition is due to the fact that for people who aren't living within the top-quintile bubble, their experiences with government have been largely negative.

For them, taxes are always too high, on wages that are always too low.  Housing is generally precarious, skyrocketing in cost, especially in the past 20 years or so, with no effective intervention on that impossible trajectory from any federal or state legislature.  The schools in the neighborhoods of the bottom 80% are understaffed and overcrowded.  The streets are often full of rubbish, which gets worse every year, as the housing crisis worsens.  When people need help, there so often doesn't seem to be a solution forthcoming from any element of the bureaucracy.  This is how they experience government.

Whatever the way forward for any of us may be, it probably will need to involve collectively coming to terms with the class reality of it all.  And in reality, the top quintile is not the middle class, in the sense of being a class that's in the middle, between the poor and the rich, as if society were a Bell curve.  US society isn't a Bell curve.  It's a steep mountainside that climbs upwards almost vertically as it rises.  The top quintile owns the vast majority of it all, with a tiny handful of them owning around half of what the rest of the quintile owns.  And collectively as a quintile in one role or another they run everything, basically on behalf of the stockholders -- or was that the stakeholders?  No, that's a euphemism.  The stockholders, particularly the biggest of them.

The top quintile may not be a middle class.  But it is very much in the middle, in the sense of being between the rich and the struggling majority, a buffer class that keeps the whole top-heavy house of cards from collapsing.  It may be normative for many or probably most of the top quintile people to believe they are the middle class, and normative for so many of the other 80% of society to aspire to be part of this fantastical middle class, to pretend they already are in it, and to feel inadequate for failing to be in it.

Either way, the widespread belief that this top quintile is this thing called "the middle class" is both a necessary delusion for the maintenance of domestic tranquility, such as it is, and one that needs to be overcome by both the top quintile as well as by the rest of society, if we have any hope for forward motion in this country.

If people within or not within the top quintile believe the top is the middle, then this is no different from believing 2+2=5.  It's not real, it doesn't make sense, and it skews reality for everyone involved with this collective fantasy.  Who owns our world?  Who runs it?  Who is on top, who is in the middle, and who is on the bottom?  If we don't have a concrete, broad agreement on the answers to these extremely basic questions about society, how can we conceivably begin to address the massive problems with this whole setup?  I don't think that's possible.  But another world is.