I lived in Manhattan for 20 years and during the Obama years I was traveling across the country a lot, was very obvious to me Trump was coming but people thought I was nuts. I'd head back to the city and sip a cosmo thinking "people really love to hate 'other'".
I tend to take Marxist view: elites always exploit the common man, and when the common man becomes unhappy, it is the best strategy to channel hate towards the Other so that regular folk dont start asking inconvenient questions.
Like every time there is small blip in economy in the Us, it is always illegals and immigrants in general and poor people are blamed. Always.
Never have I ever seen a PE billionaire getting blamed for acquiring companies by borrowing at 0% rates and firing people to and outsource jobs
People in Bay Area feel it is okay to pay 50% in marginal taxes on payroll, while billionaire class either doesnt pay at all, or pays 10% capital gain at best
You overestimate rich folk's ability to woo masses while staying completely hidden, with some ultra nefarious agendas. There are some ways to achieve some stuff but there are many conflicting interests even up there.
The simple, but way more sad fact of life is - people, when we create large enough population, are pretty stupid. We are well capable to fuck ourselves up without anybody behind the wheel driving it. And its not just 'them', its all of us.
Humans are not that great, individuals can achieve greatness in some narrow meaning (and since its pretty rare its so celebrated, confirming what I write), sure but overall we are pretty dumb highly emotional beasts, trivial to manipulate like a baby doll. 99% of that is via emotions, the aspect of our existence we have almost no control of.
That is not true, plenty blame the rich, just look at the murder of the United CEO.
Generally though blaming the elite has become selective and polarizing, only blame the opposite side for being rich not yours (Hasan piker on the left or Elon musk on the right).
