Donald Trump and the Ghost of Christopher Lasch
Trump’s expansive narcissism brings to mind the social critic Christopher Lasch’s 1979 landmark study, The Culture of Narcissism, which described the rise of individual self-involvement and politics as celebrity theater. But his 1995 book, The Revolt of the Elites—published the year after he died of cancer at 61—provides the backstory to the class wars underlying this year’s fractious election.
In The Revolt of the Elites Lasch foresaw the disconnect between the nation’s political classes and the governed, as UCLA law professor Stephen Bainbridge has recently observed. America’s elites have devoted so much energy to building their collective moral system that they expect ideological obedience.
But that "collective moral system" and obedience thereto has come to an end, and as they say, payback is a bitch. It's not that the liberal-left has angered Middle America; more importantly, their rejection of God has come home to roost.
WHY do the heathen so furiously rage together? * and why do the people imagine a vain thing?
2 The kings of the earth stand up, and the rulers take counsel together * against the LORD, and against his Anointed:
3 Let us break their bonds asunder, * and cast away their cords from us.
4 He that dwelleth in heaven shall laugh them to scorn: * the Lord shall have them in derision.
5 Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, * and vex them in his sore displeasure:
6 Yet have I set my King * upon my holy hill of Sion.
7 I will rehearse the decree; * the LORD hath said unto me, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.
8 Desire of me, and I shall give thee the nations1 for thine inheritance, * and the utmost parts of the earth for thy possession.
9 Thou shalt bruise them with a rod of iron, * and break them in pieces like a potter's vessel. 10 Be wise now therefore, O ye kings; * be instructed2, ye that are judges of the earth.
11 Serve the LORD in fear, * and rejoice unto him with reverence.
12 Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and so ye perish from the right way, if his wrath be kindled, yea but a little. * Blessed3 are all they that put their trust in him.