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I looked it up…you can get a lot of info using a surname. Wikepedia’s summary seems to check out with other explanations… en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki….
It sort of maps onto the demographic in the US that has gravitated to MAGA—locally high status people who run local businesses or are prosperous farmers, but are seen as bumpkins by the east c…
I looked it up…you can get a lot of info using a surname. Wikepedia’s summary seems to check out with other explanations… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patel#:~:text=4%20See%20also-,As%20a%20title,in%20the%20Politics%20of%20Gujarat.
It sort of maps onto the demographic in the US that has gravitated to MAGA—locally high status people who run local businesses or are prosperous farmers, but are seen as bumpkins by the east coast elite. Small business owners, local officials, entrepreneurs…sounds like he’d be right at home in a boat parade.
It is fascinating to see how Trump’s backstory is exactly what attracts his followers. His family was certainly wealthy but was not high social status in New York—and he spent his adulthood trying to break into the “master of the universe” Manhattan rich guy crowd and didn’t achieve acceptance—he was seen as a boor and a social climber and that fueled his sense of resentment.
Local elites are not necessarily downwardly mobile, but they are not keeping up with coastal economic gains. They feel downwardly mobile.
Bingo!
Old Money looks down on New Money, and New Money resents that it will never be seen as equal to Old Money. New Money has Musk, Richest Man In the World, as its champion, he gloms on to DJT, and together they say to Old Money, “Well, who needs you, anyway?!”. Doing well is the best revenge.
Somewhere there is a book that will educate me on this but how is Elon not considered an elitist that MAGA rails against?
Cause he's anti-government and on the right side of the culture war.
“Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds”. MAGA gives Elon a dispensation because he seems to be cheering on and FINANCING their venting of spleen.
Elon is still in his heart of hearts that smart obnoxious kid that nobody likes. You know—the one that went around asking people their SAT scores and then bragging about his.
He’s a brilliant guy, and I’m sure he’s perceptive—sometimes it takes somebody who is on the outside to see an opportunity clearly. He’s perceptive enough to understand that nobody likes him—the people around him are there because of his power and his money.
Ah, Andrew Gold’s 1977 “Oh What a Lonely Boy” comes to mind. Here’s the cut, for your musical pleasure: https://youtu.be/iq2TxnlWunw?si=6DzuLIzAW7afIgRM
So MAGA is the revenge of the bumpkins? That idea goes beyond the idea of racism as the motivator. Actually that explains a lot.
Yes—it’s a much better explanation of MAGA. I think JVL had a lot of material on this after J6–research done into the backgrounds of people who showed up at the ellipse and later the Capitol. The common thread seemed to be people who had enjoyed a certain amount of affluence and security and then had had some kind of setback that knocked them down financially or socially. It certainly explains the grievance and resentment that drives the movement.
Musk, for all of his wealth and fame, seems to be driven by grudges. Only his mommy loves him, but he’s estranged from his kids, he’s never had a successful marriage, and booty hooty hoo mean old President Biden didn’t invite him to the EV summit—never mind that the summit was about scaling up and transitioning from ICE cars to EV’s. If your business model is EVs to start with, you are not in that category. Musk is even more of a man-baby than Trump is.
Anne Applebaum talks about such bumpkins in her 2020 book, "Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure Of Authoritarianism". Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham all have such affluent backgrounds and they were not accepted by the elites. She calls them political entrepreneurs and they're leading "thought leaders" in the authoritarian movement.
Clarence and Ginni Thomas are both like that too. Ginny’s family was quite well off, even wealthy, by Nebraska standards. Clarence grew up poor in the south at the tail end of Jim Crow.
If you end up vaulting out of your band into a more elite band of the culture, I guess there are two ways to look at it. Some people will think “wow—I am so blessed in life to be here and have this great education and these opportunities.” Other people will look at the opportunities that are given to people they are newly rubbing elbows with and resent that they get better stuff than the arrivistes.
Bumpkins? how classist of you.
I grew up in a small town. My granddad was on the school board. I am a bumpkin at heart even if I got a graduate degree and moved to California to become a coastal elite.
I have 2 advanced degrees, but my great grandparents on both sides were farmers and, while I spent most of my life living in cities, I now live in what is considered as small town by many. It shares Tim Walz’s attitude, “mind your own damn business” when it comes to neighbors. So long as comment is made as a person who isn’t denigrating working folks, as a fellow costal elite myself, I can live with the term. Context makes all the difference.😉
“Bumpkin” sounds American, while calling then them the “local gentry” gives them an aura of class they don’t deserve.