Today, there is no doubt that our country is fiercely divided. But the division that matters most is one of class, not of region or even culture or political party. The gap between the phenomenally rich and the desperately poor, and between the rich and the middle, is the fundamental fact of our society today. It hovers in the background of almost all political conversations that appear to be about other things: inflation politics, the politics of crime, the struggles over who can be made to have children, the question of elections, and protection for voting rights. Sometimes, the issue appears in anodyne terms: the stagnation of middle-class living standards, the decline in expectations, the skills mismatch. But the reality it describes is one of desperate and frightening poverty that haunts even people who have managed to eke out stability for the moment, alongside wealth that affords a level of consumption, comfort, and power that most of us can barely imagine.
What is often characterized in terms of “polarization” and conceived in regional terms might better be described in terms of the increasing confidence, power, and vitriol of the far right. At the heart of this politics are ferocious denunciations of a cultural elite that is supposed to threaten and sap masculine vitality by disrupting the “natural order”—whether this fantasy is expressed in terms of antagonism toward immigrants, railing against critical race theory, denouncing women who decide to end pregnancies, or stirring up hatred for people who do not identify with their biological sex. What might look like cultural divisions—or regional ones—really reflect the growing power of the extreme right, the inroads its activists and organizers have been able to make among people disaffected from the social order. They reflect a long process of political organizing and agitation as much as sectional differences of culture, lifestyle, and belief. Private fortunes have played a key role in fostering a radical anti-government politics, but equally important is that the far right’s conspiracy-drenched politics has taken root against the backdrop of exploitation and inequality.