The Great Divide

President of Germany
 
There is a saying only a fool never changes his mind. So one assumes one can't be too hard on those who finally experience some sort of epiphany. Better late than too late.

In the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal, cited below, Peggy Noonan wrties: This is about distance, and detachment, and a kind of historic decoupling between the top and the bottom in the West that did not, in more moderate recent times, exist. 

What she and her fellow lovers of the Grand Old Party failed to see is this is part of Trump traction,  a topic we and many, many others have been writing about for some time, the great divide and the utter elitist contempt of people and for their so-called rights. The subject has never been Trump. It's been the divide.Yet she and her friends at the Journal editorial staff, mostly a group of literary eunuchs, did and have been doing everything they can to derail the Trump train since it first started.

As nearly everyone who cares to know knows, Europe has its own set of problems quite similar to the divide this upcoming election features. If  you think not, there's a new word in Webster's, Brexit. So what just happened in Germany is germane with a capital G. 

You say you want a revolution?

Germany's elite is going to get a well-deserved one soon.

“The elites are not the problem, the people are the problem.”
- German President Joachim Gauck

That may be the dumbest thing anyone has said since Marie Antoinette, and even she wasn't dumb enough to actually say it! 

This is a quote from a Germain outlet and the story posted here:
zerohedge.com/news/2016-08-13/german-president-booed-attacked-after-claiming-people-are-problem-not-elites.  .You can watch the video for yourself and decide.

Official German State TV and State Radio reported that "a handful of right wing extremists" have attacked the president and disturbed the otherwise peaceful and welcoming reception of the President. This is simply not the case, as seen in the video...
The people repeatedly shouted "Traitor!", "Get out!", "We don't want STASI Pigs" and "We are the people!".
One man, carrying his young son on his shoulders, appears to have spit on him whilst exclaiming insults. Other citizens were heard saying "You killed our children" and "What have you done to us?". They were blocked by police in riot gear, to whom they said "You are protecting warmongers, shame on you!"
The situation escalated and the riot police was forced to use pepper spray.

Heiko Maas, the German Justice Minister, called the attackers "cowards who insult the president because of their personal frustration". He himself was booed off the stage as a traitor by hundreds of Germans at the annual Labor Day celebration on the 1st of May. He said that they will be persecuted immediately, as "it cannot be allowed that such a tiny minority has influence on the political climate in Germany".
Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan explained perfectly...
The larger point is that this is something we are seeing all over, the top detaching itself from the bottom, feeling little loyalty to it or affiliation with it. 

If these disgruntled were such a tiny minority it would hardly be taking on a global magnitude. Look around, something it's far too painful for the entrenched to do, so they must resort to obfuscation and epithets. In the U.S. the big hypocrisy is that neither one of these parties care a big damn about the huge chasm between the top and the bottom.

Here is a letter to the editor of the WSJ about another group of bureaucratic elites who are either out of touch or sadists. Note the term "usually rural." It's is important here because Ms Noonan ends her piece with another rural element in this story, wsj.com/articles/how-global-elites-forsake-their-countrymen.

The Fed has maintained U.S. dollar strength in relation to many foreign currencies over an extended period. This is displayed in 25% to 30% devaluations in Canadian and Australian dollars, Chilean and Mexican pesos, and the South African rand, among others, in relation to the U.S. dollar. The negative results are amply demonstrated in the current status of the U.S. mining and metals industry. Global metals are typically sold in U.S. dollars. While all commodity producers have been impacted by slowing demand, the mining sectors in Canada, Australia, Chile, South Africa, etc., have retained relative health due to appreciation of U.S. dollar prices in local currency terms.

On the flip side, the U.S. mining and metals industry has seen real decreases in the value of its products resulting in mine and plant closures and bankruptcies at an increasing rate. This same dynamic can be extended to the oil, gas and agricultural sectors of our economy. Is it any wonder that many citizens in this country are saying, “enough is enough.” The Fed’s actions at playing the global financial stabilizer is costing jobs in the basic (usually rural) industries of our economy. This is the Trump vote and it is why people are angry. 
James Hesketh
Golden, Colo.

What's interesting about the German Justice Minister's comment is his objection to "such a tiny minority having influence on the political climate." Think that one through all the while comparing it with what exists today and Ms Noonan's opening comment.

Ms Noonan should have become a hedge fund manager. She's excellent at hedging words, "a kind of historic decoupling between the top and the bottom...." Jobs in rural America are notoriously low paying, few in number and difficult to find. When you stack more competitors for those jobs in rural areas just so they won't sully up your tonier suburbs tens of miles away it's hardly an act of egalitarian altruism.