Chilling Response. Friedman on Trump. What Offends Us Today!

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This chilling response to my previous "dictum" by Plato:"

The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

• From bondage to spiritual faith;
• From spiritual faith to great courage;
• From courage to liberty;
• From liberty to abundance;
• From abundance to complacency;
• From complacency to apathy;
• From apathy to dependence;
• From dependence back into bondage.
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• This article appeared in The Weekly Standard:
• http://www.weeklystandard.com/the-elephant-in-the-room/article/2001170. (See 1 below.)

I hope PC'ism will become a victim of this election.

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• Obama will be gone but Israel will have to live with the consequences of his arrogance. (See 2 below.)
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• Friedman on Trump's root strength. (See 3 below.)
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• The rally seems to be quieting down but probably has a bit more strength.  

No doubt, Europe's stalled recovery is having an impact on our own economy and one would have to expect slightly lower  corporate earnings as a consequence. 

I find no increased demand for commodities so I would expect the recovery in various metal prices, copper, silver  etc. to subside as well.

The stocks I emphasized in previous memos have participated, particularly the most speculative name  - OPKO.

Though I still favor them I would not be a buyer at this time.

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• Dick
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• 1)FEB 2016 | By DAVID GELERNTER,  (A YALE PROFESSOR OF COMPUTER SCIENCE)
• 
  Donald Trump is succeeding, we're told, because he appeals to angry voters — but that's obvious; tell me more. Why are they angry, and how does he appeal to them? In 2016, Americans want to vote for a person and not a white paper. If you care about America's fate under Obama, naturally you are angry; voters should distrust a candidate who is not angry.
  
  But there's more to it than mere anger. Chris Christie was angry, and he's gone. Trump has hit on important issues — immigration, the economy, appeasement unlimited — in ways that appeal to voters emotionally. There's nothing wrong with that; I trust someone who feels what I feel more than a person who merely thinks what I think. But though Rubio and Cruz are plainly capable of connecting with voters emotionally, Trump is way ahead — for many reasons, but the most important is obvious and virtually ignored.
  
  Political correctness. Trump hasn't made it a campaign theme exactly, but he mentions it often with angry disgust. Reporters, pundits, and the other candidates treat it as a sideshow, a handy way for Trump (King Kong Jr.) to smack down the pitiful airplanes that attack him as he bestrides his mighty tower, roaring. But the analysts have it exactly backward. Political correctness is the biggest issue facing America today. Even Trump has just barely faced up to it. The ironic name disguises the real nature of this force, which ought to be called invasive leftism or thought-police liberalism or metastasized progressivism. The old-time American mainstream, working- and middle-class white males and their families, is mad as hell about political correctness and the havoc it has wreaked for 40 years — havoc made worse by the flat refusal of most serious Republicans to confront it. Republicans rarely even acknowledge its existence as the open wound it really is; a wound that will fester forever until someone has the nerve to heal it — or the patient succumbs. To watch young minorities protest their maltreatment on fancy campuses when your own working life has seen, from the very start, relentless discrimination in favor of minorities—such events can make people a little testy.
  
  We are fighting Islamic terrorism, but the president won't even say "Islamic terrorism." It sounds like a joke — but it isn't funny. It connects straight to other problems that terrify America's non-elites, people who do not belong (or whose spouses or children don't belong) to the races or groups that are revered and protected under p.c. law and theology.
  
  Political correctness means that when the Marines discover that combat units are less effective if they include women, a hack overrules them. What's more important, guys, combat effectiveness or leftist dogma? No contest! Nor is it hard to notice that putting women in combat is not exactly the kind of issue that most American women are losing sleep over. It matters only to a small, powerful clique of delusional ideologues. (The insinuation that our p.c. military is upholding the rights of women everywhere, that your average American woman values feminist dogma over the strongest-possible fighting force—as if women were just too ditzy to care about boring things like winning battles—is rage-making.)
  
  The mainstream press largely ignored the Marines story. Mainstream reporters can't see the crucial importance of political correctness because they are wholly immersed in it, can't conceive of questioning it; it is the very stuff of their thinking, their heart's blood. Most have been raised in this faith and have no other. Can you blame them if they take it for granted?
  
  Why did the EPA try to issue a diktat designed to destroy the American coal industry in exchange for decreases in carbon emissions that were purely symbolic? Political correctness required this decree. It is not just a matter of infantile posing, like pretending to be offended by the name Washington Redskins. Bureaucrats have been ordered by those on high to put their p.c. principles into practice, and the character of American government is changing.
  
  The IRS attacks conservative groups — and not one IRS worker has the integrity or guts to resign on principle, not one. Political correctness is a creed, and the creed holds that American conservatives are ignorant, stupid, and evil. This has been the creed for a generation, but people are angry now because we see, for the first time, political correctness powering an administration and a federal bureaucracy the way a big V-8 powers a sports car. The Department of Justice contributes its opinion that the IRS was guilty of no crime — and has made other politically slanted decisions too; and those decisions all express the credo of thought-police liberalism, as captured by the motto soon to be mounted (we hear) above the main door at the White House, the IRS, and the DOJ: We know what's best; you shut up.
  
  It's a gigantic, terrifying problem—and no other candidate even mentions it! If Cruz and Rubio and Bush choose to be taken seriously by voters (versus analysts), they will follow Trump in attacking this deadly corrosion that weakens democracy from the inside, leaving a fragile shell that crumbles to powder in the first stiff breeze.
  
  The State Department, naturally, is installing the same motto above its door — together with a flag emblazoned with a presidential phone and a presidential pen, the sacred instruments of invasive leftism. Christians are persecuted, enslaved, murdered in the Middle East, but the Obama regime is not interested. In a distant but related twist, Obama orders Christian organizations to dispense contraceptives whether they want to or not. This is political correctness in action — invasive leftism. Political correctness holds that Christians are a bygone force, reactionary, naïve, and irrelevant. If you don't believe it, go to the universities that trained Obama, Columbia and Harvard, and listen. We live in the Biblical Republic, founded by devout Christians with a Creed (liberty, equality, democracy) supported directly — each separate principle — by ancient Hebrew verses. Christianity created this nation. But p.c. people don't know history. Don't even know that there is any. Stalin forced the old Bolsheviks to confess to crimes they never committed, then had them shot. Today, boring-vanilla Americans are forced to atone for crimes committed before they were born. Radically different levels of violence; same underlying class-warfare principle.
  
  And we still haven't come to the main point. Many white male job-seekers have faced aggressive state-enforced bigotry their whole lives. It doesn't matter much to a Washington wiseguy, left orright, if firemen in New Haven (whites and Hispanics) pass a test for promotion that is peremptorily thrown in the trash after the fact because no blacks scored high enough. Who cares? It hardly matters if a white child and a black child of equal intelligence study equally hard, get equally good grades and recommendations—and the black kid gets into college X but the white kid doesn't. Who would vote for a president based on that kind of trivia? This sort of corruption never bothers rich or well-educated families. There's always room at the top. But such things do matter to many citizens of this country, who are in the bad habit of expecting honesty and fairness from the institutions that define our society, and who don't have quite as many fancy, exciting opportunities as the elect families of the p.c. true believers. In analyzing Trump, Washington misses the point, is staggeringly wide of the point. Only Trump has the common sense to mention the elephant in the room. Naturally he is winning.
  
  Why, by the way, was Trump alone honored by a proposal in the British Parliament that he be banned from the country? Something about Trump drives Europeans crazy. Not the things that drive me crazy: his slandering John McCain, mocking a disabled reporter, revealing no concept of American foreign policy, repeating that ugly lie about George W. Bush supposedly tricking us into war with Iraq. The British don't care about such things one way or the other — they are used to American vulgarians. But a man who attacks political correctness is attacking the holy of holies, the whole basis of governance in Europe, where galloping p.c. is the established religion—and has been effective for half a century at keeping the masses quiet so their rulers can arrange everybody's life properly. Europe never has been comfortable with democracy.
  
  The day Obama was inaugurated, he might have done a noble thing. He might have delivered an inaugural address in which he said: This nation used to be guilty of race prejudice, but today I can tell you that there is no speck of race prejudice in any corner of the government or the laws of this country, and that is an amazing achievement of which every American ought to be deeply proud. An individual American here or there is racist; but that's his right in a free country; if he commits no crime, let him think and say what he likes. But I know and you know, and the whole world knows, that the overwhelming majority of Americans has thoroughly, from the heart, renounced race prejudice forever. So let's have three cheers for our uniquely noble nation—and let's move on tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new.
  
  But he didn't.
  
  Worst of all its crimes is what invasive leftism has done to our schools. Trump's unprivileged, unclassy supporters understand that their children are filled full of leftist bile every day at school and college. These parents don't always have the time or energy to set their children straight. But they are not stupid. They know what is going on.
  
  Cruz, Rubio, Bush, and Carson — even Kasich — could slam thought-police liberalism in every speech. They'd concede that Trump was right to bring the issue forward. Their own records are perfectly consistent with despising political correctness. It's just that they lacked the wisdom or maybe the courage to acknowledge how deep this corruption reaches into America's soul. It's not too late for them to join him in exposing this cancer afflicting America's spirit, the malign and ferocious arrogance of p.c.
  
  David Gelernter, a professor of computer science at Yale, is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard.
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• 2) Living with Iran: Israel's Strategic Imperative
• BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 249, Professor Louis René Beres and General John T. Chain
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• EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: In response to the almost inevitable Iranian nuclear bomb, Israel must suitably integrate a clear nuclear deterrence posture with multi-layered active defenses. This complex effort should include relevant cyber-defenses, emergent space technologies, and certain core modifications of Israel's deliberate nuclear ambiguity. All regional enemies should already understand that Israel is a nuclear power, but taking the bomb out of the “basement” could help Jerusalem dispel any still-lingering doubts about the country's available nuclear capacity and resolve. Iran must never be allowed to believe that Israel's strategic forces are somehow too vulnerable to first-strike attack, or too destructive for operational military use.
• It is finally time to concede the obvious. Iran is closing in rapidly on a military nuclear capacity. It recently warned negotiators from the P5+1 nations that it refuses even to discuss ballistic missiles. When such status will be confirmed, probably in the next two years, Israel’s once-residual preemption option will no longer be realistic. Then, as we will explain below, the Jewish State’s plausible strategic choices will be limited to certain more-or-less promising combinations of nuclear deterrence and active defense.
  The mainstay of Israel's active defense for Iran remains the phased “Arrow” anti-ballistic missile program. Designed to intercept medium and short-range ballistic missiles, Arrow is intended to deal especially with Iran’s surface-to-surface missile threat. “Iron Dome,” a discrete and also-critical system designed to relieve shorter-range dangers, is meant primarily for the interception of rocket attacks from Gaza and Lebanon. For the moment, aerial threats from Gaza and Lebanon do not involve unconventional warheads, or weapons of mass destruction.
  From a strictly technical perspective, Israel's active defenses look good. Test results for the Arrow, as well as for Iron Dome, continue to be encouraging.
  If Arrow were wholly efficient in its expected reliability of interception, even an irrational Iranian adversary armed with nuclear and/or biological weapons could be dealt with effectively. Here, even if Israel's nuclear deterrent were somehow rendered irrelevant by Iran, or by any other enemy state willing to risk a credible and massive “counter-value”  Israeli reprisal, that aggressor’s ensuing first-strike could still be blocked by Israel’s ballistic missile defenses (BMD).
  There is, however, a serious problem with any such optimistic calculations. Nosystem of ballistic missile defense can ever be judged, on its face, as “reliable” or “unreliable.” Reliability of intercept is an inherently “soft” concept; any missile defense system will have “leakage.” Whether or not such leakage could still fall within acceptable levels would depend largely upon the particular kinds of warheads that are actually fitted upon a determined enemy's missiles.
  In assessing its still-evolving plans for nuclear deterrence, Israeli planners will need to reliably anticipate and predict the expected leakage rate of the Arrow. If their warheads contained “only” conventional or chemical high explosives, a small number of Iranian missiles penetrating Arrow defenses still might be deemed “acceptable.” But, plainly, if the incoming warheads were nuclear and/or biological, even an extremely low rate of leakage would be “unacceptable.”
  Only a fully zero leakage-rate of ballistic missile defense could adequately protect Israel from launched nuclear and/or biological warheads. Such a zero leakage-rate, however, is unattainable.
  It follows that Israel should move immediately to strengthen and refine its nuclear deterrence posture. To be dissuaded from launching a considered attack, a rational adversary would always need to calculate, among other things, that Israel's second-strike forces were sufficiently invulnerable to any contemplated first-strike attacks. By having to face the Arrow system this adversary could expectedly require a steadily-increasing number of missiles before being able to carry out any successful first-strike against Israel. Arrow, therefore, could genuinely support Israel's essential security, not by offering citizens any significant measure of added physical protection, but by safeguarding the country's nuclear deterrent.
  There remains an urgent antecedent question, one that is still asked only in whispers. What if the Iranian leadership did not meet the usual criteria of rational behavior in world politics? What could be expected if this theocratic leadership should decide not to value Iran’s national survival more highly than any other single preference, or combination of preferences? Years, ago, Ayatollah Khomeini expressly prioritized Islamic obligation over Iran's national continuance.
  In this unlikely but not inconceivable scenario, all “bets” on Israeli nuclear deterrence would be off. After all, it could then become futile to deter an irrational Iranian adversary with even patently-credible Israeli threats of “massive retaliation.”
  Nonetheless, as part of a much broader and coherent strategy, Israel must continue to develop, test, and implement an Arrow-based interception capability, one fashioned to match the cumulative threat created by all enemy ballistic missiles. Prime Minister Netanyahu should also take certain corollary and nuanced steps to enhance the credibility of Israel's now still “ambiguous” nuclear deterrent.
  To this particular point, Israel must: (1) prepare to take its bomb out of the “basement” at the very moment that Iran is expected to cross a verifiable nuclear threshold; and (2) operationalize a recognizable second-strike nuclear force, one that is suitably hardened and dispersed, and that is ascertainably ready to inflict an unacceptable retaliatory salvo against readily-identifiable enemy cities.
  In properly ending its longstanding position of deliberate nuclear ambiguity, IDF planners will have to determine just how much incremental disclosure would be purposeful and cost-effective. The objective here would be to ensure authoritative Iranian perceptions of both usable and penetration capable Israeli nuclear forces. Although widely unacknowledged, this particular objective represents a goal of utterly unchallengeable importance.
  In all complex matters of national nuclear strategy, nuance is key. Israel, accordingly, must make it clear to any would-be nuclear aggressor that Arrow defenses would always operate simultaneously, or together, with Israeli nuclear retaliations. A prospective enemy aggressor state, it follows, must always be made to understand that Israel’s Arrow deployment would never preclude, or in any fashion render less probable, an intolerable Israeli nuclear reprisal.
  In the best of all possible worlds, Iran, still a party to the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), would never have been allowed to proceed toward full and illegal military nuclearization with impunity. But this is hardly the best of all possible worlds; the assorted sanctions plans never had a meaningful chance. Now, even as Russia plans to build additional nuclear reactors for Tehran (in addition to the Moscow-built reactor at Bushehr), Israel will have to deal capably with a recalcitrant regime in Tehran. Above all, this means further steady enhancements of Jerusalem's nuclear deterrence and active defense capabilities.
  There is one final point about the growing Iranian nuclear threat. Soon, this peril could be directed toward Israel, not only as a direct missile strike, but also by way of various low-tech delivery systems operated by various terrorist surrogates. For example, if a newly-nuclear Iran should sometime decide to share portions of its weapons-usable materials and scientific personnel with Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israel might then have to confront a substantially greater likelihood of nuclear terrorism.
  In principle, it is always in Israel's best interest to keep nuclear weapons and supporting infrastructures entirely out of all enemy hands. Coup-vulnerable and persistently unstable Pakistan is already nuclear. Under international law, a focused or discriminate preemption against Iran might still be permissible as “anticipatory self-defense,” but the existential obstacles now facing Israel are largely tactical, not jurisprudential.
  Summing up, Jerusalem must suitably integrate its evolving nuclear deterrence posture with the country's multi-layered active defenses. This complex effort should include relevant cyber-defenses, emergent space technologies, and, as corollary, certain core modifications of Israel's deliberate nuclear ambiguity. All regional enemies should already understand that Israel is a nuclear power, but taking the bomb out of the “basement” could help Jerusalem dispel any still-lingering doubts about the country's available nuclear capacity and resolve. In part, of course, this “excavation” has already begun, with Israel's conspicuous deployment of German Dolphin class submarines.
  In the end, Iran must never be allowed to believe that Israel's strategic forces are somehow too vulnerable to first-strike attack, or too destructive for operational military use.
  Louis René Beres (Ph.D., Princeton, 1971) is Professor of Political Science and International Law at Purdue. The author of many books and scholarly articles in the field, he contributes regularly to several major world newspapers and magazines. Dr. Beres was Chair of Project Daniel (Israel, 2003).
  John T. Chain (USAF/Ret.) was Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Strategic Air Command (CINCSAC), and Director, Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff. General Chain served as Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers Europe, and Director, Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs, U.S. Department of State. He was also Executive Vice-President, Burlington Northern Railroad, 1991-1996.
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• 3)The Roots of Trump’s Strength
  
  
  Donald Trump appears likely to be the Republican candidate for president. This does not mean that he will become president, but it does mean that he might. It also means that the basic dynamic of the American political system has shifted, suggesting the behavior of the United States might change. And that makes Trump a matter of geopolitical interest.
  These geopolitical consequences cannot be considered until we have looked at how and why Trump differs from other candidates and why he has emerged as a political power.
  Let’s begin with a criticism that has generally been made of him. His supporters tend to be less educated, less well-off, and white. This has become a central, disaffected class in the United States, and while focus has been on other groups, Trump has spoken to this one. He has addressed their economic and cultural interests, and no candidate has done that in a long time. 
  This strategy is what has made him effective. Yet it also poses a challenge, as this class by itself isn’t large enough to give him the presidency. And it generates an almost unanswerable question: Did Trump plan this strategy or did it just happen? But let’s begin with why poorer, less educated white voters have flocked to him.

  The Invisible Man—The White Lower-Middle Class

  In the United States, the median household income is about $51,000. In California, a state with high taxes, the take-home pay would be about $39,000 a year. That translates into about $3,250 a month in take-home pay for living expenses. If we assume that a home in an inexpensive suburb, a car, and some limited annual vacation is what we mean by middle class life, it is hard to see how the middle class affords that life today.
  The fourth quintile, the heart of lower-middle class, earns about $31,000 a year before taxes per household. I grew up in a lower-middle class household (my father was a printer, my mother a homemaker, and there were two children). We owned a house and a car and took a vacation.
  Today, people in the lower-middle class are bringing home, at best, $2,000 a month, and they will not own a house but instead pay $1,200 a month to rent an apartment, with the rest going to food and other basics. The lower-middle class can no longer afford what used to be a lower-middle class life.
  The Democrats have made a huge case about inequality, assuming that the problem is that the rich own too much. American political culture has rarely been triggered by inequality, but by the inability to acquire the basics of American life. The problem with the Republicans is that they have not noticed that the defining issue of this generation is the collapse in the standard of living of the middle and lower-middle classes. This is part of what brought Trump to where he is today, but only part.
  The deeper problem was the perception of the white segment of the lower-middle class that their problems were invisible. They heard talk about African-Americans or Hispanics and the need to integrate them into society. However, from the white lower-middle class perspective, there appeared to be little interest in the challenges facing their demographic. Indeed, there was a perception that the upper strata and the media not only didn’t care about them, but had contempt for their beliefs.
  The white lower-middle class is divided into two parts. One part has already been shattered by economic pressures, family fragmentation, drugs, and other forces. Another part is under equal economic pressure but has not yet fragmented. It retains values such as religiosity, traditional sexual mores, intense work ethic, and so on.
  This is the class that has been deemed pathological by the media and the upper classes. Its opposition to homosexuality, gay marriage, abortion, promiscuity, and the rest (which was the social norm a generation ago) is now treated as a problem that needs to be overcome, rather than the core of a decent society. The speed of the shift in the values of dominant classes has left this class in a position where those values taught at home and at church are now regarded by the broader society as despicable. Repercussions are bound to happen.
  The simultaneous economic disaster and delegitimation of their values marginalized this class. When Mitt Romney referred to the 47% who were parasites in our society, he was referring to these people. When Barack Obama was elected, this group felt that the focus had shifted to the black community and saw itself as invisible (and to the extent seen, contemptible). Economic, social, and cultural evolutions had bypassed them.
  Their perception of the political system has become intensely cynical. They see the political elite, bankers, lawyers, and lobbyists as a near criminal and entirely incompetent class. We speak of unemployment after the 2008 recession in terms of numbers. These are the people who were unemployed. They view this elite as claiming rights they haven’t earned. The lower-middle class can tolerate earned wealth, and even respect it, but cannot accept what they see as manipulated wealth and power.
  They also see politicians as being dishonest in other ways: saying whatever they need to say in order to be elected. This is not a new view of politics. However, in this case, what the politicians have said is neither in the language of the white lower-middle class, nor does it address any of their issues. It is not only indifference to the economic problems of the white middle and lower-middle class, but obeisance to a political correctness that delegitimized their values. The politicians are implicitly and explicitly rejecting lower-middle class values.

  The Champion of the White Lower-Middle Class

  Enter Trump. He is rich, but he is perceived, rightly or wrongly, to have earned his wealth—not stolen it through financial trickery. That was one of Trump’s first assertions. The fact that he is a billionaire has helped, not hurt him. The Democratic fantasy of class jealousy doesn’t work where Trump is concerned. The lower-middle class admires his wealth.
  Trump spoke against Mexican immigrants (and implicitly a broader grouping of Hispanics). He is not seen as having his statements vetted by marketing people. And he says things the way his supporters would say things. Trump made it clear that he heard their cultural concerns. Even his debating style—pugnacious, insulting, unapologetic and frequently preposterously wrong—is not fundamentally different from the lower-middle class style of arguing.
  It is the very lack of polish that endears him to his followers (and makes him seem like a man from outer space to the upper-middle class). His occasional cursing and threats are part of the entire package. Trump maneuvered himself into the position of a man who, though he may be rich, thinks and feels like the lower-middle class. More important, he shows that they are not invisible to him—not because he speaks to them, but because he speaks like them.
  The fact that Trump had never run for office is also a powerful factor in his favor. To this group, the political class is the problem, not the solution. The Republican establishment did not grasp that a career politician groomed to run for president has become anathema to this class.
  That Trump was successful as a builder also helped him. The claim that he built things is essential to a class who sees construction as real business… and hedge funds as legalized fraud. The bottom half of society is hurting, and Trump is not seen as one of those who helped bring the pain, as Romney of Bain Capital was seen.
  And Trump is perceived as a tough guy, who is willing to lie, insult, or threaten to get his way. From the lower-middle class point of view, nothing else will get them the solutions they need. The very idea that he might get the Mexicans to pay for a wall or tell the Chinese a thing or two might not be practical. But the thought that he would deal this way with the two nations they see as responsible for their misery is overwhelmingly seductive.
  Finally, and in some ways most important, he says the things they all think but are no longer permitted to say. When he accused Fox News anchorwoman Megyn Kelly, implicitly, of being offensive because she was having her period, observers thought the world would end. For the white lower-middle class, this was a common assertion.
  When Trump claimed that John McCain was not a hero just because he had been taken prisoner, he was speaking to the class who has served in the military going back to Vietnam… and never been called a hero for it. Observers thought Trump had destroyed himself. To many of these voters, McCain had carried his burden, but many knew men who had chosen to die for their buddies. Nothing taken away from McCain, they’d say, but let me tell you about a real hero. For the lower-middle class, McCain had done his duty and endured great hardship… but their definition of a hero was more demanding. They were not appalled by what Trump had said.
  This is Trump’s strength. It is also his weakness.

  Can Trump Win?

  The Republican Party is complex. It is more than a party of the wealthy. It is also the party of lower-middle class whites who reject the current cultural tendencies that have marginalized them. Trump got the marginalized white lower-middle and middle class out over cultural issues. But it is difficult to see how this translates into the presidency. This class is not large enough to give him a victory, and his running will energize his opponents to go to the polls.
  The culture wars have been won in the Democratic Party, so there are few voters to win over on that basis. Any Democratic candidate will counter Trump on the economic issue. And those in the Republican upper-middle class are no friends of the Republican lower-middle class. It is not clear how he bridges the gap.
  I don’t think Trump can win the presidency. But he has revealed a serious structural weakness in the American polity. As Americans who earn below the median income are increasingly unable to live the life they could have expected a generation ago, they will join in with resentment against the upper classes. That resentment will be built around cultural issues, as well as economic ones.
  The issue is not the gap between rich and poor, but the fact that the lower-middle class is becoming part of the poor, and the middle class is moving that way as well. As in Europe, the inability of the political and financial elite to see that they are presiding over a social and political volcano will produce more and more exotic alternatives.
  When those people who have skills and are prepared to work can’t get a job that will allow their families to live reasonably well, this is a problem. When statistics show that vast numbers of people are entering this condition, this is a crisis. When there is a crisis, these people will turn to politicians who speak to them and give them hope. What else should they do?
  Whether Donald Trump planned this brilliantly or was simply extraordinarily lucky doesn’t matter. He has found the third rail in American society. The lower-middle class doesn’t make enough to live a decent American life, and the middle class is only a little better off. Whether supporting or opposing Trump, it is essential to understand the foundations of his power and its limits. Trump makes no sense until his appeal to the lower-income white demographic is understood.
  
  George Friedman
  Editor, This Week in Geopolitics
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